4. Over Hill and Under Hill:
Meanwhile, in the first Hobbit movie, when Bilbo and the Dwarves are sheltering in the cave that turns out to be the doorstep of the Great Goblin’s domains, after Bilbo seriously considers returning to Rivendell, Balin could have said to Thorin, at least in the movie’s extended edition, that they should not dare go any further without Gandalf because they do not know the pass very well and whether or not they must go over or around or under the Mountains. Then Gloin could have said that if they were further south they could have gone over or around the Mountains above their ancient kingdom or actually through Khazad-dum/Dwarrowdelf, known as the Black Pit by Men and Moria by Elves.
Then Balin could have said that after the Battle of Azanulbizar Dain had advised the Dwarves against entering Khazad-dum after Dain saw the nameless fear through Durin’s Gate during the battle at which Dain had said that the world must change or some other power must go in there before any Dwarf passed through there again. Then Gloin could have sighed and said that long had their fathers worked there and they had wrought the images of the Mountains into works of metal and stone and tales and songs. Then he could have given the Dwarves, Elves and Men’s names for the Mountains and the Dale on the east side of them. Furthermore, perhaps as Balin speaks, there could have been a brief scene of Dain seeing the Balrog to allude to the meaning of Balin’s name and a scene of Dain looking ‘death-like’ as his name can translate speaking to Thorin, Balin and Dwalin at Azanulbizar. Meanwhile, as Gloin speaks, there could have been a brief scene of the rising sun illuminating the Mountains above Moria to allude to the meaning of Gloin’s name and a scene of the Dwarves forging images of these Mountains in their metal work.
This would have alluded to Balin’s future failed attempt to re-colonize Moria after mistakenly thinking that the world had changed sufficiently for such a venture and to Gandalf being the power that eventually goes into Moria and slays the nameless fear, i.e. the Balrog. Also, it would have alluded to how Gimli Gloin’s son in The Lord of the Rings gives all the Dwarves, Elves and Men’s names for the Dwarves’ ancient kingdom, the Mountains that it lies beneath and the Dale on the east side of them, while the Fellowship must decide to either go over or around or under all of the Misty Mountains as Bilbo, Gandalf and the Dwarves have to in The Hobbit. This, in turn, would have alluded to how in an Old Icelandic poem called Alvissmal Thor comes to Alviss/All-wise the dwarf and keeps asking him questions about the different races of beings’ terminology for natural phenomena until dawn seems to turn the dwarf into stone, which Thor seemingly causes so to prevent Alviss from marrying his daughter. And that, in its turn, is alluded to by Gandalf, in The Hobbit, keeping the Trolls arguing about how to kill and cook Bilbo and the Dwarves after they capture them, until dawn turns the Trolls into stone, which is changed in the first movie to Bilbo trying to advise the Trolls how to do this et al until dawn turns the latter into stone.
Meanwhile, Balin and Gloin’s conversation at the Great Goblin’s doorstep in the movie also could have happened after Fili and Kili go to the back of the cave and make a discovery there with their respective ‘filer’ and ‘wedger’ of what could be another chamber. This, in turn, prompts them to call Dori, Nori and Ori to come over to them with their respective ‘borer’, ‘chipper’ and ‘violator’ to open up things more. Then after the conversation between Balin and Gloin, Oin and Gloin could have been called over by Fili and Kili to inspect a vein of what may be mithril at the back of the cave, which prompts everyone to come over. Then Oin and Gloin could have told Fili and Kili that it is not mithril, at which Thorin, Balin and Dwalin could have drawn their weapons and said that it could be a trap. Then the ground could have begun to open, at which Bifur, Bofur and Bombur’s respective ‘trembling’, ‘tumbling’ and ‘tubbiness’ could have caused them all to fall into the Goblins’ wooden cage below. Perhaps also during this Dwalin could have tried to ‘delay’ the trap’s mechanism with his weapon, while Oin could have got caught up ‘alone’ in it, after attempting to assist Dwalin, before falling into the wooden cage below with all his ‘friends’ to anticipate what happens to him in the last days of Balin’s colony, as stated above.
Then after the Dwarves are captured and taken by the Goblins to the Great Goblin, and after they hear from him that Azog is alive, the scene could have changed to the Dead Marshes where Gollum’s voice could have been heard in a voice-over singing the song beginning with the words: ‘The cold hard lands’, without referencing the ‘fish’ riddle, as the camera sweeps over images of the dead waking in their barrows under the Marshes. This is because the verse alludes to Gollum saying it to Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings, when he leads them to the Marshes, not long after they first meet. And that, in turn, alludes to how in The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise Hervor, the king’s mother, retrieves the sword Tyrfing from her father Angantyr’s barrow, which is similar to the barrows in the Marshes. This is while the spirit that guards Angantyr’s barrow in the saga suggests the Barrow-wight that guards the barrow in the Barrow-downs from which the Hobbits get their swords early on in the book. And this would have indicated, in The Hobbit movies, that the Necromancer/Sauron’s power, which causes the corpses to exist as they do in the Marshes, has been used by him to raise Azog from the dead as well as others. This includes Thrain, which various media has suggested, and Elrond’s brother Elros, from who the Men of the North descend, whose name has been credited for the later movies. This is while Gollum has a sense of this in being, up to that point, the Ring-bearer.
Meanwhile, when Gollum sings the line in the verse stating: ‘But stream and pool’ the scene in the first movie could have changed to Bilbo awaking to seeing the Goblin who tried to capture him nearly dead and Gollum crouched over it, during which Gollum drops the Ring and Bilbo picks it up. Then the action could have resumed from there as it does in the movie up to the riddle-game between Bilbo and Gollum.
Then Bilbo and Gollum could have told all of the riddles in The Hobbit and in the same order in at least the movie’s extended edition. This is because one of the earlier ones in the book about ‘sun on daises’, which is not in the movie, brings up memories for Gollum of when he lived in a house built in a hole in the ground in the Vales of Anduin. And this could have been shown in flashbacks in the movie where Gollum is seen as Smeagol with Deagol and their grandmother living in their house, which they could have referred to as a smial to allude to Tolkien devising the word for ‘burrow’ for Hobbit-holes out of the same Old English word that he created Smeagol and Smaug’s names, which sounds similar to the Old English word that he created Deagol’s name from, which, in turn, means ‘secret’. Meanwhile, the latter could have been indicated in a flashback where Deagol says a riddle about ‘eggses’ to Gollum as Smeagol, who is seen teaching their grandmother to suck eggs at the same time, after Bilbo asks Gollum the same riddle. This is so to suggest the affinity existing between Bilbo and Gollum because they are both Hobbits/Holbytlan, which leads to Bilbo sparing Gollum’s life.
Also, such flashbacks could have informed possible scenes in the next movie where Bilbo and Beorn talk about the Hobbits/Holbytlan originating in the Vales of Anduin, and later Bilbo and Bard talk about the name Hobbit wearing down from the Eotheod/Rohirrim/Beorning/Barding name of Holbytlan for half-sized people who lived in holes in the ground. And during these scenes there could have been images of Smeagol and Deagol’s people in their smials in the Vales. These, in turn, could have drawn on a conversation that Theoden, Merry and Pippin have outside the ruins of Isengard in The Lord of the Rings, which was not in the movies and happens while Frodo, Sam and Gollum are outside the Black Gate into Mordor where Gollum tells the Hobbits about how when he was young and lived by Anduin with his people he used to hear tales about the Men of Gondor.
This is so to highlight the Eotheod/Rohirrim, Beornings and Bardings’ kinship and their languages’ similarity with the Hobbits/Holbytlan, which could also have been expanded on in the movies to come. For example, the Beornings and the Bardings’ respective music score themes, could have had Old English-like and/or Old Icelandic-like lyrics that complemented the Old English-like ones used for the Eotheod/Rohirrim theme in The Lord of the Rings movies and complemented with the Middle English-like ones that could have been used in the Shire theme in the first Hobbit movie. And perhaps the latter also could have complemented with Elvish-like and Dwarvish-like lyrics if Bilbo also had similar conversations with Thranduil and Dain about the Hobbits so to represent the variations between the Stoor-Hobbits, Fallohide-Hobbits and Harfoot-Hobbits respective dialects.
Meanwhile, the movie could have had the ‘fish’ riddle in its expanded form as said by Gollum to Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings when they first meet. This is because it references an island, thus alluding to Angantyr’s barrow’s location in The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, and the riddle itself alluding to a riddle contest that happens between Heidrek and Odin, who uses the alias Gestumblindi. There Odin asks a riddle which includes the question: ‘What lives without breath?’, for which the answer is ‘fish’, which is alluded to in a line of the ‘fish’ riddle that Gollum asks of Bilbo, while the expanded version that Gollum tells the Hobbits alludes to other things in the riddle that Odin asks Heidrek in the saga. Meanwhile, in the latter, Odin ends the contest similarly to how Bilbo ends his contest with Gollum by asking Heidrek a questionable non-riddle where he asks the king: ‘What did Odin whisper in the ear of his son, before Baldir was carried to the pyre?’ This refers to Baldir’s fate at Ragnarok, and indicates to Heidrek that he has been contesting with Odin who is the only one that could know the answer to that question.
In addition, a riddle about ‘a fish on a little table, a man sitting nearby on a stool and a cat having the bones’ that is also not told in the movie, which Bilbo tells in the book after Gollum tells the ‘fish’ riddle, alludes to an Old English riddle about a lot of complicated relationships amongst five people sitting at a table for which the answer is Lot’s incestuous family. This suggests that the riddle said by Bilbo is slightly risqué, which, in turn, suggests that when he next asks Gollum: ‘What have I got in my pocket?’ he could be alluding to an Old English riddle about a key in a man’s pocket, which also could be referring to a certain part of a man’s anatomy. This, in turn, indicates that the question Bilbo asks Gollum, in a sense, is a riddle, which would have been maintained in the movie if the riddle about ‘a fish on a little table et al’ had not of been omitted. And obviously Tolkien did not turn the question into a similar riddle because he was telling the riddles to his children when telling The Hobbit as a bedtime story and in all versions of the story he did not want Gollum to guess that Bilbo has got the Ring, or at least not straight away.
Furthermore, because The Hobbit was a story that Tolkien told his children, Bilbo and Gollum’s encounter in the story is a toned down analogue of Loki and the dwarf Andvari’s encounter in The Saga of the Volsungs where Loki tricks Andvari out of his gold, including a ring that causes problems for its possessors. This is because the ‘fish’ riddle in The Hobbit can allude to how Andvari can turn into a pike and is asked a question by Loki referring to that after the god captures him in a net.
Also, Tolkien wrote the lays in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun before he wrote The Hobbit, in which he titled Loki and Andvari’s encounter: ‘Andvara-Gull’. This suggests that it is analogized in Bilbo and Gollum’s encounter because the Old Icelandic word gull, which the word ‘gold’ originates from, also can mean ‘precious treasure’, and suggests that Gollum is referring to the plural gullum when he alternates between saying ‘gollum’ and ‘precious’, which, in turn, indicates that he is referring to both the Ring and himself as ‘precious’. Hence when Tolkien changed the story of Bilbo and Gollum’s encounter from The Hobbit’s first edition, where the Ring is offered as a present by Gollum to Bilbo if he wins the riddle game, to the one where Gollum offers to show Bilbo the way out of the Orc-tunnels instead, in the book’s subsequent editions, Tolkien went back to the story about Loki and Andvari’s encounter in the saga in order to devise the change.
And in doing this Tolkien managed to make Sting more analogous of Gullinn-Hjalti in The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki than he does in The Hobbit’s first edition where he has Bilbo gain Sting surreptitiously like Hott Hjalti gains Gullin-Hjalti in the saga. Also, he does this by enhancing the affinity between Bilbo and Gollum, which is suggested not only in Bilbo’s name analogizing Hott Hjalti, as referred to above, but in Gollum’s name being similar to gullinn and in the way Bilbo demonstrates the strength and nobility of Hott Hjalti in sparing Gollum’s life when he has the chance to slay him in his invisible state when Gollum is in the way of him escaping from the Orc-tunnels. This is also portrayed in the movie when Bilbo is seen hesitating between slaying Gollum with Sting when Gollum is in the way of him joining Gandalf and the Dwarves as he sees them running out of the Mountains, or demonstrating his courage by sparing Gollum, and choosing the latter, thus heeding Gandalf words to him on first giving him the sword that true courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one.
Unfortunately this theme becomes diluted later on in The Lord of the Rings movies in Sam not being hesitant about slaying Gollum on Mount Doom like in the book. And this could have been achieved if Frodo had given Sting to Sam on the plains of Gorgoroth and told him how Gandalf had said to him that it was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand from slaying Gollum who still may have a part to play before the quest is all over, which is also why Frodo spares Gollum’s life. This is a theme that Tolkien extended on by making Sting partially an anti-thesis of Tyrfing in The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise with the latter being cursed to bring death to its bearer after performing three shameful deeds with it, while Sting, it seems, saves the lives of the three Hobbits because they each demonstrate compassion towards Gollum.
