Who was the old man?

[CSteefel]

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

This may be because Saruman demonstrated both keen interest and impatience in leaving Orthanc to gather news, or perhaps because he has a palantir at his disposal. But the notion of the old man being non-physical does have some substantiation, however minimal.

This suggests to me an interesting interpretation of the old man, although one that I am hard pressed to provide any evidence for. The thought does arise, however: Why would Saruman bother to personally visit the campsite on the borders of Fangorn if he has a Palantir at his disposal? Now it may not always be straightforward to bend the Palantir to one's will, but given Saruman's intense desire to know what happened to his raiding party, it is actually hard to imagine that he was not busy using the Palantir he possessed to this end.

Now why the use of the Palantir by Saruman, if successful in locating and seeing the three on the borders of Fangorn, would result in a vision, I don't know, and there is no direct support to this. But it seems likely that in one way or another, he was "bending his thought" in that direction, so an evanescent phantom of him might be reasonable, whether aided by the Palantir he held or not...