Ancient orcs believed that they lived in the middle of a clear patch surrounded by mist. That the world was flat (or at least a non-featureless plane) seems to have been an assumption too obvious to challenge. The mist idea explained why they could only see a certain distance in any direction. This idea meant that a whole range of meteorological phenomena made sense, or at least could be seen to have some discernable cause.
The clear patch was assumed to move with the tribe as they travelled, one of many examples of innocent ancient anthrocentrism. They offered no single theory for why the mist was there, although there is some indication that they thought the world couldn't concentrate hard enough to keep all of itself existing at once. They seem to have held no theories about the sky; it was just there.
Trolls cottoned onto the sphere idea while most of the rest of the bipedal world still thought thunder was a living animal, and early trolls made frequent estimates of the world's curvature and diameter, some correct to within a few thousand miles. Their calculations used the angles of shadows, implying that they knew something about the sun's apparent movement in the sky.
They knew much less about the extraplanetary bodies, though, and seem to have believed the stars and planets, including their own, to be scattered at random through space and moving in independent patterns. Ancient written descriptions of the "dance of the globes" are known to have been allegorical, probably written for children to introduce them to astronomy.
Trollish ideas did not become widespread for many centuries, largely because clans felt no urge to spread their ideas, and were willing to modify their theories in light of other people's evidence. This attitude is taken as a sign of weakness (and, by implication, incorrectness) by primitive cultures.
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