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What colour was 🧝Legolas' hair?

As it's quite likely that Oropher was related to Elu Thingol, and Thingol seems to have had dark hair, I would say that Legolas's hair was probably actually dark... However his mother isn't mentioned, so if she was fair-haired she could have passed the gene on to him... I guess this is one of those questions that doesn't really have a definite answer.
 
Oropher is mentioned to have silver hair himself as well as Thingol. Thranduil is blonde too.
 
Well, we don't know anything about his mother, and we can't be sure she's a Nando. She could have been from Doriath for all we know.

We know that the Sindar resembled the Exiled Noldor in general: "being dark-haired, strong and tall, but lithe" (JRRT Quendi And Eldar) -- the description adds that "grey, pale or silvery grey" 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)."

Indeed it's (Quendi And Eldar again) said that owing to the intermarriage between the Vanyar, golden hair sometimes later appeared among the Noldor, notably in the case of Finarfin and his descendants.

And the Sindar are really a subgroup of the Teleri, as well as the Nandor. Anyway, I'd ask JRRT why point of that the Vanyar seem the ones responsible for this trait, if many among the Teleri slash Sindar slash Nandor also had golden hair.

Also, the Sindar are Eldar, and the Eldar were dark-haired save for the golden house of Finarfin (if admittedly a sweeping comment in Appendix F).

But hold on Elthir!

If "canon" equals Tolkien-published text (as I believe), then the Elves of Mirkwood and Lorien are
"not Eldar" according to The Lord of the Rings, and indeed we see a golden-haired Elf in Lorien that isn't Galadriel. Hmm. And if the "Vanyar" are Eldar they would seem to be dark-haired too -- and if so, who knows from whence the golden hair of Finarfin's head springeth and sprouteth?

In the end: my "default colour" for the Sindar, generally speaking, is dark-haired -- based on both Tolkien-published text, and posthumously published Tolkienian description (and in the latter the Nandor east of the Misty Mountains become "Eldar") -- so I go with "dark" unless otherwise described.

My thought is: Tolkien described the Elven-king of The Hobbit without really thinking about it
much. Although that said, JRRT never revised the detail (if he ever considered it later, that is), and so, according to my own rule regarding canon, I must take the golden-haired Elven-king "becoming" Thranduil father of Legolas as an in-story truth.

But for me (so far). . .

 
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Tolkien, at about the same time as Q&E, also wrote:

"Ingwë had curling golden hair. Finwë (and Míriel) had long dark hair, so had Fëanor and all the Noldor, save by intermarriage which did not often take place between clans, except among the chieftains, and then only after settlement in Aman."
NoMe, Hair

Which could be problematic as Thranduil and the random elf in Lorien don't seem to have any connection to the Vanyar in Aman.
It also does not quite fit in with:
"It was arranged – for Imin, Tata, and Enel said men [i.e., Elvish males] awoke first, and began the families – that when any woman married one of another Company, she was reckoned to have joined the Company of her husband."
NoMe, A Generational Scheme
...which seems to imply at least some early intermarriage.


Possible, considering he was, at the point of initial writing, just borrowing in aspects of the greater legendarium. However, even at that, he does not seem to have established more 'definitive' hair-colours until later.
 
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Possible, considering he was, at the point of initial writing, just borrowing in aspects of the greater legendarium. However, even at that, he does not seem to have established more 'definitive' hair-colours until later.

Oh agreed. I didn't mean to imply (with my "without really thinking about it much" statement) that Tolkien's later hair ideas were present back when The Hobbit was penned. Nor do I "believe" in a Celegorm Fairfax ("fair-haired") within the later hair-scenario.

Which makes me wish (again) that JRRT had "finished" his 1960 Hobbit -- at least in draft -- to see what he might have done or said when encountering his golden-haired Elven King.

Oh well.
 
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