If you could ask Tolkien one question, what would it be?

[shadowbrides]

Mine would be what exactly he had in mind when he described Aegnor's hair: "notable: golden like his brothers and sister, but strong and stiff, rising upon his head like flames"

I'd request a sketch. Because the only thing I can come up with is this:

Comments

[oloriel]

The version that's been suggested to me was Cloud from Final Fantasy:

[shadowbrides]

Heh. That looks a bit better, definitely. But I am trying really hard to imagine realistic elvish version of it and I just can't. I mean I keep thinking about Avari in the punk scene rather than 1st Age Noldor.

[oloriel]

What amuses me most of all is that weird, not-really-natural (as in, HAIR JUST DOESN'T GROW THAT WAY DOES IT?) hairstyles are normally something you encounter in 16-year-old LARP beginners who want to play cool punky assassins. The writings of a conservative (even in early 20th century terms) professor? NOT the place I would've expected it.
To be honest, I'm not getting it. In my Helcaraxë pic, I gave him sort of lanky, spiky hair - that was as far as I could bring myself. XD

[shadowbrides]

Yeah, that too! Which is why I'm convinced he has to have meant something different by it. I just can't for the life of me figure out what. Historical hair can actually be pretty crazy though. I recently learned something about this trend in Byzantium where youths shaved a kind of spider-shape into their hair. @_@

[oloriel]

New insight, new insight! Yesterday evening when Felix' hair was kinda sweaty, I combed it with my fingers and it kept standing sort of flame-like, all by itself! So maybe Aegnor really just was sweating all the time and brushed the hair out of his face and that was how that happened. XD

There are a lot of crazy hairstyles in history. Presumably, nothing tops the 18th century, but even the ancient Egyptians had some pretty whacky (from our perspective) hairstyles. It just seems... odd that Aegnor would sport a fashion onto himself. Well, maybe he didn't. Maybe there was a cool (or hot :P) Noldorin (or Vanyarin!) subculture of Elves Who Styled Their Hair Rising Up Like Flames, and Aegnor is just the only one who made it into the records!