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William: "What are yer?"
Bilbo: "Bilbo Baggins, a bur—a hobbit."
Tom: "A burrahobbit?"
The Stone-trolls and Bilbo Baggins[1]

Tom, Bert, and William "Bill" Huggins were three trolls encountered by Bilbo Baggins in the Trollshaws west of the Misty Mountains, while with Thorin and Company on their quest to regain the Lonely Mountain. Like most of their kind outside of Mordor, they were vagabonds who robbed, stole, and killed for what they needed or wanted. They were destroyed by sunlight which turned them to stone with the aid of Gandalf's trickery.

Biography

Quest to the Lonely Mountain

When Bilbo tried to pick William's pocket to test his skill as a burglar, William's purse squealed, alerting him. The trio of trolls captured Bilbo who, almost revealing himself as a burglar, identified himself as a "bur—a hobbit", which they mistook for a "burrahobbit". Eventually all of the Dwarves in Thorin's company came looking for Bilbo, and were waylaid by the trolls and put into sacks. The trolls then discussed ways to kill and eat the Dwarves, until Gandalf came and mimicked the trolls' voices, starting a fight amongst them. He kept them arguing about how to cook the Dwarves until dawn came, and the sun turned them into stone before they could get to cover. Afterward, Thorin and Company found and explored the Trolls' lair.

TheThreeTrollStatues RD

The three trolls as statues, by Ralph Damiani

Legacy

Strider: "There stood the trolls: three large trolls. One was stooping, and the other two stood staring at him. Strider walked forward unconcernedly. ‛Get up, old stone!’ he said, and broke his stick upon the stooping troll. Nothing happened."
Frodo: "Well! We are forgetting our family history! These must be the very three that were caught by Gandalf, quarrelling over the right way to cook thirteen Dwarves and one hobbit."
Strider and Frodo find the trolls[2]

On the way to Rivendell, Aragorn and the four hobbits Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Meriadoc Brandybuck, and Peregrin Took encountered the three trolls that had been turned to stone on the Troll Ridge[3] seventy-seven years previously, and the hobbits momentarily thought them to be alive.[2]

Notably, Frodo says that the trolls were arguing about how to cook "thirteen Dwarves and one hobbit" when they were turned to stone. However, they were actually only arguing about how to cook the Dwarves, as Bilbo had escaped from their clutches during the fighting, and was hiding in a nearby thorn-bush during the trolls' argument. This could be an error on Tolkien's part, or Frodo could have remembered the story wrong.[2]

In adaptations

The Hobbit film trilogy

In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the three trolls are encountered by Bilbo, Fíli and Kíli after having stolen several of the Dwarves' ponies. Fíli and Kíli stay back, while Bilbo tries to steal a blade from the trolls to cut the ponies free. When Bilbo is caught accidentally by the trolls, the Dwarves charge them and a small skirmish ensuses as Bilbo tries to free the ponies. However, Bilbo is caught, and when the trolls threaten to tear Bilbo apart, the Dwarves surrender and are put into sacks. Half of the Dwarves are put onto the spit to be cooked over the fire, while the others, including Thorin, along with Bilbo, are left on the ground in their sacks. Bilbo spots Gandalf sneaking around, and begins to discuss with the trolls ways of cooking dwarf in order to buy time. As this plan starts to fail as Tom attempts to eat Bombur raw, Bilbo quickly states the Dwarves are infested with intestinal parasites to try to stop the trolls from eating them, but they do not get easily fooled, especially William. Then Gandalf appears, and as the trolls curiously wonder who he is (and if he can be eaten), the wizard using his staff splits a rock that was shielding the trolls from the sun's light as it rises, turning them to stone. After the company was set free, Thorin and Gandalf believe that the trolls never ventured this far south from the Ettenmoors since a darker power ruled the lands.

StonedTrolls2

The Fellowship finds the bodies of Tom, Bert, and William, in the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring film

They were portrayed by William Kircher, Peter Hambleton, and Mark Hadlow (who also played the Dwarves Bifur, Glóin and Dori in the film series) by motion capture in the first part of the film.

The Lord of the Rings film trilogy

In Peter Jackson's first film of the The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo recounts the story of his encounter with the trolls to several hobbit-children at his 111th birthday party.

In the Extended Version, after Frodo had been stabbed on Weathertop by the Nazgûl Lord and before Arwen arrives to take him to Rivendell, the trolls are seen, still turned to stone and Sam indicates them to Frodo, saying, "Look, Mr. Frodo. Mr. Bilbo's trolls".

Gene Deitch (1966)

Trolls in Gene Deitch's film were greenish, wet, and are dressed with more filthiness than in the Peter Jackson's work.

The Hobbit (Rankin/Bass Production - 1977)

Tom, Bert and William (The Hobbit - 1977)

Tom, Bert and William as portrayed in The Hobbit 1977 movie

The three trolls in the Rankin/Bass film are just as large as the other depictions, though they wear more clothes, including tunics, trousers, shoes, and hats. They are very muscular and pot-bellied, with massive ears, shaggy green hair, and giant snouts full of sharp teeth like a tyrannosaurus.

Video games

Voice dubbing actors

Foreign Language Voice dubbing artist
Spanish (Latin America) Germán Fabregat, Ricardo Hill and Miguel Ángel Ghigliazza
Portuguese (Brazil) (Television/DVD) Paulo Bernardo, Ricardo Telles and Sérgio Stern
German Jörg Reitbacher-Stuttmann, Christoph Jablonka and Torsten Münchow
Italian (Italy) Francesco Meoni, Francesco De Francesco and Gianfranco Salemi
French (France) Jérémy Prevost, Pascal Casanova and Guillaume Lebon
Polish Miłogost Reczek, Mirosław Zbrojewicz and Artur Dziurman
Czech Marcel Vašinka, Zdeněk Maryška, Petr Oliva
Slovak Martin Kaprálik, Matej Landl, Juraj Predmerský

Gallery

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Tom the Troll (right)
The-Hobbit-An-Unexpected-Journey-Dwarves-vs.-Trolls
William the Troll
A Troll that turned into stone a.k.a. Bilbo's troll
William turned to stone
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Bert the Troll
Original
Bert, William, and Tom at the San Diego Comic Con 2012
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One of trolls portrayed in Gene Deitch's version (1966) by Ghostwalker2061
Bert - LOTR The Card Game
Bert from The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill expansion
Tom - LOTR The Card Game
Tom
William - LOTR The Card Game
William

Translations

Foreign Language Translated name
Chinese 伯特、湯姆和威廉
Danish Tom, Bert og William
Finnish Tom, Bertti ja Viljami
German Tom, Bert und William
Greek Τόμ,Μπέρτ και Γουίλλιαμ
Italian Berto, Maso e Guglielmo 
Japanese トム, バート, そして ウイリアム
Norwegian Tom, Albert, Viljam Skankerud
Russian Том, Берт и Билл
Spanish Tom, Berto, y Guille

References

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