Barrow-wight
[5][6][7][8] In Norway, country people in places such as Eidanger considered that the dead went on living in their tombs as vetter or protective spirits, and up to modern times continued to offer sacrifices on the grave-mounds.
"[5] Eiríkr Magnússon and William Morris used it, too, in their 1869 translation of Grettis saga, which features a fight with the "barrow-wight" or "barrow-dweller", Kárr:[10][11] Everything in their way was kicked out of place, the barrow-wight setting on with hideous eagerness; Grettir gave back before him for a long time, till at last it came to this, that he saw it would not do to hoard his strength any more; now neither spared the other, and they were brought to where the horse-bones were, and thereabout they wrestled long.
[11] The Grettis Saga calls the undead monsters Glámr and Kárr haugbúar ("mound-dwellers", singular haugbúi; a similar term is draugr).
[12] Barrow-wights have appeared in Scandinavian literature in the modern era, for instance in the Swedish poet Carl Michael Bellman's 1791 song no.
32 Träd fram du Nattens Gud ("Step forth, thou god of night"), whose second stanza runs (translated):[13] Your quilt covers everything... Look at Flora's gardens!
Here the most beautiful heights flee, there dark Barrow-wights (griftevårdar) stand on black hills; and under owls' crying moles, snakes, and martens leave their chambers.
[T 5] After leaving Tom Bombadil, Frodo Baggins and company are trapped in the Barrow-downs, and nearly killed by a barrow-wight:[T 4] Suddenly he saw, towering ominous before him and leaning slightly towards one another like the pillars of a headless door, two huge standing stones...
[T 4][14] The cairn was that of the last prince of Cardolan;[T 5] Merry's exclamation on waking from his trance confirms this, as he names Carn Dûm, capital of the Witch-Kingdom of Angmar, continually at war with the Númenórean realms (and as Bombadil later explains):[T 4] Of course, I remember!
"[T 6] The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that it is a "great moment" when Merry awakens in the barrow from the wight's spell and "remembers only a death not his own".
The deathly-white robes, the writhing hand, the hobbits arrayed for death, give the thrill of fantasy, but this is given solidity by being tied into a wider history which is at least hinted at.
The humanities scholar Brian Rosebury argues that the removal is acceptable to reduce running time, because the episode does not fundamentally change the story.
Smith further noted that their character design would reflect their noble status in life as "[k]ings, queens, high-ranking officials", contrasted by their "glowing blue eyes, piercing through the dark".
The Rings of Power VFX team took the opportunity to reflect on Tolkien's writings, with Smith stating, "The feeling the passages give you is of a doom that is approaching, not by speed but by being indefatigable....
