Stone-trolls

Stone-trolls as depicted by Angelo Montanini

Stone-trolls were huge trolls who turned into stone in direct sunlight.

Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield, and twelve other Dwarves encountered three talking stone-trolls, named Tom, Bert, and William, in TA 2941.

Description

Stone-trolls tended to be dumb and ill-tempered. Many stone-trolls had first names, and a few (like William Huggins) had last names. Stone-trolls ate things such as wild fowl, wild pigs/boars, Dwarves, hobbits, and fish (if they could actually catch them). They hunted simply by chasing or ambushing the animals, then hitting them with a weapon such as an axe or a club.

They commonly lived in caves or large burrows that stretched many yards underground, where they were safe from the sunlight at day. They slept on beds made of grasses and leaves or animal hides.

In adaptations

Tom, Bert, and William, seen in film

In Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Bilbo and company meets a group of stone trolls known as Tom, Bert, and William - they fight a violent skirmish against them before being put into sacks. Gandalf defeats these trolls by tricking them into staying in the clearing until the sun comes out, when they turn to stone.

Early in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo tells a story to a group of children about the trolls who were about to eat him and the Dwarves until their demise. Later, when Frodo has been stabbed with the Morgul-blade and is laid down in the woods before Sam searches for Athelas, the same trolls Bilbo and the Dwarves had encountered in The Hobbit are in the background.