It's fairly possible they do exist. Little does Tolkien speak of Forodwaith. Men living there only appear in the appendix, the ones that help Arvedui. Besides, Angband was said to be very near the cold north of Middle-earth. So it is possible that after the fall of Angband after the War of Wrath, many of his servants would flee to where the Valar and the elves and men would not follow: the far and frozen reaches of Middle-earth.—Unsigned comment by Danilo (talk • contribs).
The section detailing their portrayal in adaptions needs to be updated to account for the video game The Lord of the Rings: War in the North.
A sentence in Appendix A
A closer look at the appendices reveals that the term "snow-troll" existed in the in-universe literature of Middle-earth. The entire section "Soon afterwards the Long Winter…line of mounds was begun." is in quotation marks as per a sentence in the second paragraph of Appendix A that says that "Actual extracts from longer annals and tales are placed within quotation marks". In other words, the section the term “snow-troll” is mentioned in is in quotation marks, which means (according to the statement in the second paragraph of Appendix A) that this section is an extract from a longer annal or tale.
This means that the term “snow-troll” existed in some form within the literature of Middle-earth. That is not questionable. What is questionable is if they were real creatures that lived in Middle-earth or if they existed solely within at least one in-universe text. Even then, it is unclear if snow-trolls were even a real subrace of trolls or if they were just trolls that were affiliated with snow in some way. Regardless, the term exists in-universe and Helm’s stalking was compared to a snow-troll.
While all of TLOTR and The Hobbit is a translation of the Red Book, not all of it are direct quotes. Some parts are, but not all. In the second paragraph of Appendix A, Tolkien states that anything in quotes in that specific appendix is an extract from a longer annal or tale. The section that the term “snow-troll” appears in is in quotes.Dour1234 (talk) 21:33, 29 December 2024 (UTC)