Trollhammaren!

[Eönwë]

Originally Posted by Groin Redbeard

How could Huirn have killed 70 eighteen foot trolls?

Well, he was a very good warrior...

but I agree. No normal man could kill 70 trolls.*


*edit: but Hurin was no normal man

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

That part also says that Orc arms grappled him after they had been cut off, or something similar. Implication is that Trolls and Orcs were fighting him at the time. He uttered the cry 70 times, but that could mean he killed 20 Trolls and 50 Orcs.

[Lalwendë]

Hail to the Trollhammeren

I like the way that trolls are a bit mysterious and there are not definite accounts of all their origins nor even a definitive account of what a troll looks like or can do. They're just big and scary. Thinking back to when I was a child, the idea of Trolls was quite frightening enough - to have them described in all their gory detail might have spoiled them. When my Nan told me that the single slab bridge with a big hole in the middle, that crossed the brook at the bottom of the back field had Trolls living under it, and that one of them had grabbed her leg one day, she didn't have to say any more about what the monsters looked like...

As with a lot of his horrors, I think Tolkien intended it that way. I'm even beginning to think he left the case of the Balrog wings unproven because he knew it was both more scary that way and because he knew it would give everyone something to argue about

[mormegil]

Agreed. Tolkien's trolls seem more like ogres to me than trolls.

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Eomer of the Rohirrim

That part also says that Orc arms grappled him after they had been cut off, or something similar. Implication is that Trolls and Orcs were fighting him at the time. He uttered the cry 70 times, but that could mean he killed 20 Trolls and 50 Orcs.

Yes I'm not convinced the seventy refers all to Trolls myself, albeit Húrin was certainly mighty. In The Grey Annals it was said that:

'Then he cast aside his shield and wielded his axe two-handed; and it is sung that in that last stand he himself slew an hundred of the Orcs. But they took him alive at last...'

Similarly one hundred Orcs in Tolkien's earlier Quenta Silmarillion (HME V).

Christopher Tolkien explains that the text of chapter twenty in the published Silmarillion was primarily derived from the story in The Grey Annals, but elements were introduced from the old chapter sixteen in Quenta Silmarillion, and also from a third text, that: 'was intended as a component in the long prose Tale of the Children of Húrin (the Narn)'. It seems that in the new book Children of Húrin Christopher Tolkien took the passage concerning the great battle from the Narn version, whereas in the constructed Silmarillion he followed the Annals with some features taken from the Narn version.

A hundred orcs is an amazing feat (if indeed the songs merely meant to imply 'some great number', it was still notably great). Interesting that the number decreases a bit to seventy, though along with less explicit wording too, in my opinion, as to just what number Trolls were slain.

[The Sixth Wizard]

Hurin defied Morgoth.

Hurin. defied. Morgoth.

HURIN, ALONE, DEFIED THE LORD OF DARKNESS.

Case closed.

(so yes, he killed 70 trolls)

[Eönwë]

Originally Posted by VI

Hurin defied Morgoth.

Hurin. defied. Morgoth.

HURIN, ALONE, DEFIED THE LORD OF DARKNESS.

Case closed.

(so yes, he killed 70 trolls)

Yes, its true. And he may have actually killed all those trolls. After all, Morgoth punished Hurin very severely (maybe more than anyone else). There must have been a reason (And I'm sure there were others who killed 70+ orcs in their lifetime).