Elven Characteristics

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Lissë

Thank you, Galin and Nerwen. This was very helpful. So elven women wore their hair braided? And Fingon as well?

You're welcome Lisse. Fingon seems to, generally speaking; I mean if Tolkien chose to mention this style for him...

At the moment I'm not sure about Elven women in general. The quote with Idril is from the very early [and abandoned] work called The Book of Lost Tales, and the reason I posted it was more to see if anyone knew of any possible Primary World description or custom that might reflect Idril wearing her hair 'unbraided' on her wedding day.

As I say in 'Hairy-pottering' I was more focusing on male descriptions, although today I was just reminded of Arwen Halfelven's description in The Lord of the Rings, with a mention of braids anyway: 'Young she was and yet not so. The braids of her dark hair were touched by no frost; her white arms...' There must be more descriptions for the women in JRRT's tales, but I haven't been looking for them lately.


Concerning Native Americans, I only have a vague memory of Carpenter's biography mentioning that Tolkien liked Native American stories and that he longed to shoot with a bow. Tom Shippey writes:

'In the same way Fenimore Cooper's hero Natty Bumppo prides himself on his English ancestry, while Tolkien recorded an early devotion to Red Indians, bows and arrows and forests' ('On Fairy Stories' in Reader, p. 63)'

Tolkien's sources: the True Tradition, The Road to Middle-Earth, T. Shippey

That's quite general however. And I know nothing about Native American hair styles in any case. Since posting that quote about Idril I've read a decent chunk of the Kalevala, but so far I can find no reference, with respect to a wedding [plenty of references to braids in general however] to echo Tolkien's description here. And even if I did, again it might only serve as a 'possible' inspiration in any event.

Anyway, sourcing Tolkien's inspiration is tricky! Despite Shippey's chapter title [the 'true tradition']