LotR Trivia POI

tailstrike · Feb 10, 2009

Well in my hours of research for my new WiP (read

rocrastinating while blindly clicking random things on the net) i came across an interesting piece of trivia...

Not once in anything that J.R.R.Tolkien wrote did he ever say what colour hair Legolas had or his age...His father was mentioned to have golden hair and Legolas was mentioned to have a dark head but no actual description of his hair colour or a definite age given...

Just thought y'all would find that interesting...

Cheers

Death Wizard · Feb 10, 2009

tailstrike said:
Well in my hours of research for my new WiP (readrocrastinating while blindly clicking random things on the net) i came across an interesting piece of trivia...

Not once in anything that J.R.R.Tolkien wrote did he ever say what colour hair Legolas had or his age...His father was mentioned to have golden hair and Legolas was mentioned to have a dark head but no actual description of his hair colour or a definite age given...

Just thought y'all would find that interesting...

Cheers

I can't say for sure, but this doesn't sound right to me. Seems like he was described as fair-haired many times. But I can't swear by it and I'm too tired to check.

tailstrike · Feb 10, 2009

Well this seemed pretty convincing.... (just a q: should i put up here where i got this from?)

Note on the hair color of Legolas:

Legolas's hair color is not stated anywhere in the text of The Lord of the Rings. There is one vague description that might be taken to mean that Legolas had dark hair.

Frodo looked up at the Elf standing tall above him, as he gazed into the night, seeking a mark to shoot at. His head was dark, crowned with sharp white stars that glittered in the black pools of the sky behind.
The Fellowship of the Ring: "The Great River," p. 403

However, this passage is ambiguous because Frodo may only have seen the silhouette of the Elf's head in the dark night.

In The Hobbit, Legolas's father Thranduil is described as having golden hair:

... at the head of a long line of feasters sat a woodland king with a crown of leaves upon his golden hair ...
The Hobbit:"Flies and Spiders," p. 165

If this passage is considered accurate, then Legolas may have inherited golden hair from his father.

Elven hair color is addressed in a comment in the Appendices:

They [the Quendi] were a race high and beautiful, the older Children of the world, and among them the Eldar were as kings, who are now gone: the People of the Great Journey, the People of the Stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finarfin ...
Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings: Part II, "On Translation," p. 415-16

This passage is frequently taken to mean that the only Elves with golden hair were those of the House of Finarfin and that since Legolas was of Sindarin descent, he should not have golden hair but be dark haired. However, in Christopher Tolkien's commentary on "The Cottage of Lost Play" in The Book of Lost Tales I, he suggests that this stricture on golden hair did not apply to all Elves, but only to the Noldor (who were originally called Gnomes):

In the last paragraph of Appendix F as published the reference to 'Gnomes' [for Noldor] was removed, and replaced by a passage explaining the use of the word Elves to translate Quendi and Eldar ... This passage - referring to the Quendi as a whole - continues however with the same words as in the draft: 'They were a race high and beautiful, and among them the Eldar were as kings, who are now gone: the People of the Great Journey, the People of the Stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finrod [later corrected to Finarfin] ...' Thus these words describing characters of face and hair were actually written of the Noldor only, and not of all the Eldar: indeed the Vanyar had golden hair, and it was from Finarfin's Vanyarin mother Indis that he, and Finrod Felagund and Galadriel his children, had their golden hair that marked them out among the princes of the Noldor.
The Book of Lost Tales I: "The Cottage of Lost Play" (commentary), p. 44

If this is correct, then the comment about Elven hair color from Appendix F does not apply to the Sindarin Elves, who were a group of the Eldar separate from the Noldor, and thus it could be possible that some among them might have had golden hair.

There is another clue on the appearance of Sindarin Elves in a reference to the origin of the name Sindar, which means "the Grey" or "the Grey-Elves":

The Loremasters also supposed that reference was made to the hair of the Sindar. Elwe himself had long and beautiful hair of silver hue, but this does not seem to have been a common feature of the Sindar, though it was found among them occasionally especially in the nearer or remoter kin of Elwe (as in the case of Cirdan). In general the Sindar appear to have very closely resembled the Exiles, being dark-haired, strong and tall, but lithe.
The History of Middle-earth, vol. XI, The War of the Jewels: "Quendi and Eldar," p. 384

This passages states that the majority of the Sindar were dark-haired, but it also allows that there were exceptions in the case of silver-haired Sindar. Thus it seems possible that there might also have been exceptions of Sindar with golden hair, such as Thranduil.

In the end there is no definitive word on the color of Legolas's hair, be it dark, golden, or otherwise.

Deleted member 42 · Feb 10, 2009

You need to look at the Letters and then the History of Middle Earth, to be certain

Darzian · Feb 10, 2009

Wow- imagine having your work so closely inspected. It must be fun!

Chumplet · Feb 10, 2009

It is DARN fun, I tell ya. I have a copy of The Silmarillion and also Unfinished Tales. I guess I'd better take a gander at them. I am now curious.

Deleted member 42 · Feb 10, 2009

My copy is in storage, but there's a good article in Michael Drout's Tolkien Encyclopedia of Critical Assessment and Scholarship, which Google has a lovely image of:

http://books.google.com/books?id=B0...86msCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

But I note no hair-color reference

Memnon624 · Feb 10, 2009

The age question intrigues me more than his hair color. There's no mention of him in the Tale of Years -- no year of birth as there is for the other members of the Fellowship. But, in the tale of the Fall of Gondolin (I think) a "Legolas Greenleaf" is mentioned. If it's the same Elf, that puts him on par with the likes of Glorfindel . . . and makes him older than Elrond. I expect there's quite a bit of controversy over that, though.

Scott

tailstrike · Feb 10, 2009

This might clear things up a bit...

Little is known about Legolas's early life. His date of birth is not known, though he made some vague references to his age:

"It [Fangorn] is old, very old," said the Elf. "So old that almost I feel young again, as I have not felt since I journeyed with you children."
The Two Towers: "The White Rider," p. 94

"Five hundred times have the red leaves fallen in Mirkwood in my home since then," said Legolas, "and but a little while does that seem to us."
The Two Towers: "The King of the Golden Hall," p. 111

"These are the strangest trees that ever I saw," he said; "and I have seen many an oak grow from acorn to ruinous age."
The Two Towers: "The Road to Isengard," p. 152

Based on these comments it would appear that Legolas was at least several hundred years old at the time of the War of the Ring, and possibly even several thousand, but an exact age cannot be determined. The age attributed to the character of Legolas in Peter Jackson's film version of The Lord of the Rings is 2,931; however, this figure has no basis in the text.

It should also be noted that in The Book of Lost Tales II, an Elf named Legolas Greenleaf was present at the Fall of Gondolin in the First Age. But this Elf was of the Noldor and went to Tol Eressea where he remained and thus was almost certainly not the same as Legolas of the Fellowship.

Memnon624 · Feb 10, 2009

Did some digging. From the Encyclopedia of Arda's entry on Legolas, specifically footnote #2:

Circumstantial evidence suggests that he [Legolas] was probably born sometime during the Second Age. We know from The Tale of Years that his father, Thranduil, passed into the east of Middle-earth from Lindon in the first millennium of the Second Age. However, this account doesn't mention Legolas his son, strongly suggesting that he had not been born at that point. The fact that Legolas saw himself as one of the Silvan Elves also supports this idea, as his father had not settled among the Silvan people at that time. Most likely, then, he was born after Thranduil had settled in Mirkwood, presumably in the latter part of the Second Age. Roughly speaking, this would make him somewhere between 3,000 and 5,500 years old during the War of the Ring.

I do love me some LOTR

Scott

MelancholyMan · Feb 11, 2009

This brings up an interesting thing about LOTR. It is fiction which means, it is made up and has little bearing on events in the 'real' world. It might by said by some that 'research' into this subject is a waste of time. What good could it possibly do you?

But look at the Illiad. There are english professors at major universities who specialize in Homer. And his works were fiction, or at least fictionalized accounts of actual events. Even by the time of Rome there were specialists in Homer. Tolkien will be in this class someday, perhaps sooner rather than later. Anyone know of anything like a Chair of Middle Earth Literature anywhere, yet?

ChaosTitan · Feb 11, 2009

Since this really isn't specific to writing, I'm moving it to the Book Club.

Deleted member 42 · Feb 11, 2009

MelancholyMan said:
But look at the Illiad. There are english professors at major universities who specialize in Homer. And his works were fiction, or at least fictionalized accounts of actual events. Even by the time of Rome there were specialists in Homer. Tolkien will be in this class someday, perhaps sooner rather than later. Anyone know of anything like a Chair of Middle Earth Literature anywhere, yet?

We're already there. Major scholars have particular expertise in Tolkien--Michael Drout, Jane Chance, Scott Nokes, Tom Shippey. Drout was hired and achieved tenure in large part because of his Tolkien scholarship. He's now the editor of Tolkien Studies, a reputable scholarly journal. I think there are a couple of Tolkien endowed chairs already.

A fair number of those of engaged in Tolkien scholarship are medievalists but not all of us, and there are Tolkien classes all over the place, at both graduate and undergraduate level.

lkp · Feb 12, 2009

I co-taught a class on Tolkien a couple of years ago that was very much a history of culture/history of religion class and very much not a literature class. It was lots of fun. We had a big party afterwards and everyone dressed up. Thankfully, there are no pictures. At least of me. The Ring Wraiths made nitrogen ice cream, which was very obliging of them.

I'm more than half convinced that Tolkien did not entirely believe that what he was writing was pure fantasy. That is certainly true of the drowning of Numenor --- for him, the tale of the drowning of a major civilization a la Atlantis was a too common feature of too many cultures not to have a basis in fact. And with the problem of the meaning of the word Earendil when it appears in the Anglo-Saxon Crist poem. In some ways everything he wrote was just filling in the blanks between those two facts --- who was Earendil? What was Middle Earth? What was Numenor? And what came after?

Deleted member 42 · Feb 12, 2009

lkp said:
That is certainly true of the drowning of Numenor --- for him, the tale of the drowning of a major civilization a la Atlantis was a too common feature of too many cultures not to have a basis in fact. And with the problem of the meaning of the word Earendil when it appears in the Anglo-Saxon Crist poem. In some ways everything he wrote was just filling in the blanks between those two facts --- who was Earendil? What was Middle Earth? What was Numenor? And what came after?

Tolkien had dreamed of a drowned land since early childhood; there's a letter about it in his collected letters.

dirtsider · Feb 12, 2009

If I remember correctly, the Sindarian are a sort of middle route between the Silvan elves and the Noldorians. The Noldorian/Quendi followed the Valar to the Blessed Realm when the Elves first woke where they learned from the Valar and Maiar. The Silvan (sp?) didn't follow the Valar and remained in Middle Earth. The Sindar also didn't follow the Valar and remained in Middle Earth but they learned from the Maiar who remained with them. In this case, Thranduil (Legolas' father) met and fell in love with a Maiar who married him.

Of course, this is all I remember from reading the Silmarilian years ago.

lkp · Feb 12, 2009

Medievalist said:
Tolkien had dreamed of a drowned land since early childhood; there's a letter about it in his collected letters.

Yup, and the idea that it may be a true collective memory rather than just a personal dream was the idea behind his Notion Club Papers and I think some other early writing.

Sarpedon · Feb 12, 2009

I seem to recall in the battle in the beginning of Peter Jackson's movie there is an elf who resembles legolas that the camera zooms in on for no apparent reason during the Sauron Explosion. I'm pretty sure that it is supposed to be Legolas.

I guess if Legolas was born in the second age, it would make sense that he be present at that battle.

Memnon624 · Feb 13, 2009

In this case, Thranduil (Legolas' father) met and fell in love with a Maiar who married him.

No, that was Thingol of Doriath. He fell in love with and wed Melian, who was a Maia.

Scott

dirtsider · Feb 13, 2009

Well, I got most of it right. lol

lkp · Feb 18, 2009

From today's PM. This may be fun, though I bet the lecture will be more interesting than the text:

"J.R.R. Tolkien's THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRUN, including an introduction by J.R.R. Tolkien, drawn from one of his own lectures on Norse literature, with commentary and notes on the poems by Christopher Tolkien, to Ken Carpenter at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, by HarperCollins UK."

LotR Trivia POI

tailstrike

Thinking, always thinking!

Death Wizard

Tumhe na koci puujetha

tailstrike

Thinking, always thinking!

Deleted member 42

Darzian

To-to-to-ron-to

Chumplet

This hat is getting too hot

Deleted member 42

Memnon624

A Boy and his Orc . . .

tailstrike

Thinking, always thinking!

Memnon624

A Boy and his Orc . . .

MelancholyMan

Wear Thick Armor

ChaosTitan

Around

Deleted member 42

lkp

Deleted member 42

dirtsider

Not so new, really

lkp

Sarpedon

Memnon624

A Boy and his Orc . . .

dirtsider

Not so new, really

lkp