Split Personality?

[davem]

Originally Posted by alatar

. Seventy to me sounds immediately suspicious as it's too 'round' of a number...not 68, 69 but 70? There's that magic number (at least in my culture) 7 again. Was 70 chosen to make some mythic point that escapes more causal readers like myself?

I'd be more inclined to put the round number down to it being something like a 'Company' of Trolls sent out specifically to capture Hurin, rather than a bunch of Trolls who just got together & decided to take him on. It seems they were obeying specific orders - to capture him. Hence, one assumes that witnesses would only have to see a Company of Trolls assaulting Hurin to know that there were 70 of them. One would only then have to see them all piled up to know he had slain 70 of them. Anything else, it seems to me, calls the exact number into question, & it may well have been a tale that 'grew in the telling', & the reality that he actually killed 27 of them - or 7.