Us mere mortals have hairs that fall out everyday. Lucky ones have new hair grow back. But what about elves? This could have led to Feanor like scraping a couch Galadriel sat on. Wouldn't be hard to find radiating hair. Or maybe this in itself is evidence they don't shed hair.
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13Coming soon to scifi stack exchange: Did elves cut their toenails? Stay tuned!– Organic MarbleCommented Aug 7, 2023 at 11:51
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6@OrganicMarble - Tolkien's coverage is so arbitrary that it's hard to develop an intuition for what has answers and what doesn't. And then even when you do read everything, new publications (like the stuff in Nature of Middle-earth can still take you by surprise). Tolkien is very sparse or often completely silent about many areas one would consider important while also sometimes extremely detailed in areas one wouldn't expect. I think this question is a reasonable question to ask.– ibidCommented Aug 7, 2023 at 13:57
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Feanor scraping a couch Galadriel sat on... Umm... Bwahaaha :D That would be very different books if stuff like that happend in them.– MithoronCommented Aug 8, 2023 at 14:49
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1 Answer
Tolkien does not discuss whether elves shed hair or not.
A few of Tolkien's notes do discuss the style and color of elvish hair, and whether or not they grow facial hair. Sometimes these notes are written of the whole species and sometimes written of specific characters or groups of characters. But even this is rather sparse.
Perhaps you could indeed use this instance as a proof that they do not shed hair. Or perhaps you could say that Fëanor wanted a hair freely given, or that it had to be artificially cut off to work. I don't think there's anything Tolkien has written that can weigh in on it though.
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4we could also take the interpretation that Galadriel's shed hair would have lost its radiance (becoming in some sense "dead") whilst Fëanor presumed a plucked hair (having been taken whilst still "living") would not– TristanCommented Aug 7, 2023 at 13:49