Daily Dose of Tolkien Geekery

Gary the Tolkien Geek rounds out his posting on Book One of The Fellowship of the Ring with Chapter 12 - Flight to the Ford, with an interesting comparison of the time it took Bilbo and Frodo, respectively, to make the journey from the Shire to Rivendell. (What always bothered me about this chapter was Strider's assertion that Weathertop was about half-way between Bree and Rivendell. It certainly didn't seem that way, given the amounts of time taken on the two stages of the journey.)

Gary also mentions the Hobbits' encounter with the old stone trolls from Bilbo's prior adventure:

Tolkien even decides to make a stop at a place familiar to readers to The Hobbit. As they follow a worn path, they discover the troll-hole where Bilbo had found Sting, his elvish blade. Further off in a clearing they come upon the three trolls that were introduced in Chapter 2 of The Hobbit, and stood there still having been turned to stone some sixty years earlier. Frodo and Sam recognize them from the many times Bilbo told them the story. I almost wish, however, that Tolkien had not included this reminder that in his earlier work there were trolls with the names Bill, Bert and Tom that spoke with a cockney dialect. That depiction of trolls seems too inconsistent with the way they are presented in The Lord of the Rings.

I suppose that's the danger of trying to write both a children's and an adult version of the same matter. On the other hand, in one of the earliest chapters of FOTR reporting on the growing threat of evil in the world, Tolkien mentions that trolls were abroad again, no longer dull, but cunning and armed with dreadful weapons. (I can't remember the exact quote.) I always thought this was an attempt to cover the inconsistency of their prior depiction in The Hobbit.

As for Frodo's harrowing arrival at the Ford, I'd just like to point out that Peter Jackson's insertion of Liv Tyler doing a Xena impersonation at this point serves no purpose whatsoever other than to give the audience some eye-candy. Surely you movie buffs are going to let me have this gripe.

By the way, Gary also links to what looks like a very interesting book: Karen Wynn Fonstad's The Atlas of Middle Earth. We wants it! We waaaaaantsss it!