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    Default Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    So this might seem like a really strange question, but why is it that in the Lord of the Rings movies that everyone, especially the male characters, have long hair? I think that in the books it mentions the elves having long hair, and in the specific land Gimli was from the men had long hair, but I also think it mentioned that Boromir had cropped hair [citation needed, obviously, since I don't have the book with me at the moment]. Was there a specific culture that Peter Jackson was trying to emulate, or was it just a personal design choice?
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Because when you don't live in a world with barbers the only ways you've got is hack it off or hope something in nature tugs it off. Also what do you consider "long". Is shoulder length long? Is past the ears? Because none of the Hobbits we see have hair that goes beyond their shoulder, nor do many of the Men. Only the Elves and Dwarves (and at least in the Lord of the Rings we don't see many of those) have hair past their shoulders.

    So...your question is flawed on it's onset.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Long hair was also a popular style for men in the early to mid middle ages, which LotR is modelled after. I think it had something to do with how long hair signified strength and manliness.
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Razade View Post
    Because when you don't live in a world with barbers the only ways you've got is hack it off or hope something in nature tugs it off. Also what do you consider "long". Is shoulder length long? Is past the ears? Because none of the Hobbits we see have hair that goes beyond their shoulder, nor do many of the Men. Only the Elves and Dwarves (and at least in the Lord of the Rings we don't see many of those) have hair past their shoulders.

    So...your question is flawed on it's onset.
    What world didn't have barbers?

    I mean, barbers were a thing since the stone age, with particularly important ones cropping up in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece. They were definitely a staple of society in the early medieval period, which lotr is based on in terms of technology.

    Anyway, long hair is less practical and harder to maintain than shorter hair. This usually, but not always, makes it a marker of wealth and previlige among people. I know some of the early Germanic barbarian kingdoms saw it as such. And as a fashion it came and went repeatedly through the medieval period. But it wasn't universal.

    The movies likely picked it up as shorthand to demonstrate that this is a foreign medieval-ish culture. We think of longer hair as being medieval, so it gets used as such in movies. Which causes the next batch of humans to think of medieval people as having long hair and so on and so forth.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Short hair is a lot more high maintenance than long hair, because you have to keep stopping what you're doing to get it cropped again. Long hair you just let grow and flow.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dienekes View Post
    What world didn't have barbers?
    The one where you spend weeks traveling around wilderness or in abandoned, ruined cities/mines.

    Having said that, I think they probably trimmed their hair that length on purpose, since it never seems to grow over the months the story takes place, until Aragorn gets crowned and actually grooms himself.
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    LotR is a work of high fantasy, complete with warring immortals and a creation myth. Hairstyles are an affectation. Sam Gamgee, arguably the most heroic character in the trilogy, has relatively short hair. Easterners appear to favor clean-shaven heads.

    The movies were very much inspired by medieval Europe, especially Nordic and Celtic cultures. Characters in all three movies were also white without exception.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Fashions swing constantly. Long hair is probably as common as short hair when all is taken into account across time and cultures. Reasons behind the fashion choices vary as well...there are both practical and cultural status reasons that could be given for anything. Some have suggested hair of some length was actually an asset when wearing certain types of helmets. The Iliad uses the epithet "long haired Achaeans", for those manliest of men, the dark age Greeks.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Luxurious long hair can indicate health. There are a grand total of two eligible women who can interbreed with humans in the entirety of LoTR. You've gotta signal that you are fit and healthy like a bastard if you want to have a prayer. I mean you think Eowyn's gonna look twice at some bald dude? Hell no, you gotta baby those locks.

    Hobbits can get away with short hair because it's convenient for their quasi-subterrainian lifestyle, and they also suffer from a less terrible gender ratio.
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    One of the things the LotR movies did well which is something you'd never really note unless you see it done poorly is, the lead characters are very easy to differentiate at a glance even in darker action scenes. Sure, the visual trickery with the various heights of the characters is part of that, as is the gaits they gave each of them, but the hair being various colours, styles, and lengths also assists the eye quite well especially when they're stunt people shown from a distance.

    Edit: They also did this with The Hobbit movies, at least for the Dwarves which were important for us to remember were given a different silhouette through their hair.
    Last edited by Kitten Champion; 2018-01-12 at 06:34 PM.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Lord of the Rings originated as a sort of replacement mythology for Celtic myths that had been largely lost, among other things. That particular culture favored long hair, particularly for warriors. It was hardly unique in this; similar patterns show up across millennia on basically every inhabited continent.

    That then made it into the movie.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    They do mention men having shoulder-length hair, when Strider is introduced and the men of Rohan heading to Helm's Deep.

    However, it's not just the Lord of the Rings movies. Practically all medieval men in movies have long hair. I don't know if it started because of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan, but I think it's more of an aesthetic. Since modern "non-hippie" men have short hair, even in the 1960s, the change in hair style is to reflect olden times.

    I may be wishful thinking imagining, but if the men of a medieval movie don't have long hair the movie is low-budget/low quality. This could be because they couldn't afford to wait for the male actors to grow their hair and/or afford the necessary wigs.
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
    They do mention men having shoulder-length hair, when Strider is introduced and the men of Rohan heading to Helm's Deep.

    However, it's not just the Lord of the Rings movies. Practically all medieval men in movies have long hair. I don't know if it started because of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan, but I think it's more of an aesthetic. Since modern "non-hippie" men have short hair, even in the 1960s, the change in hair style is to reflect olden times.

    I may be wishful thinking imagining, but if the men of a medieval movie don't have long hair the movie is low-budget/low quality. This could be because they couldn't afford to wait for the male actors to grow their hair and/or afford the necessary wigs.
    Interesting aversion to this is Game of Thrones. Jon Snow and Eddard Stark have long hair, but most of the major male characters don't. This is possibly to distinguish them from the more "barbaric" characters like Khal Drogo, Shagga, and Tormund. The noble lords as a whole keep their hair pretty short.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rodin View Post
    Interesting aversion to this is Game of Thrones. Jon Snow and Eddard Stark have long hair, but most of the major male characters don't. This is possibly to distinguish them from the more "barbaric" characters like Khal Drogo, Shagga, and Tormund. The noble lords as a whole keep their hair pretty short.
    Hmm.

    I don't watch Game of Thrones, so I wouldn't have known. It is only conjecture on my part. I'm not claiming it as universal fact.
    Last edited by Pex; 2018-01-13 at 01:48 PM.
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rodin View Post
    Interesting aversion to this is Game of Thrones. Jon Snow and Eddard Stark have long hair, but most of the major male characters don't. This is possibly to distinguish them from the more "barbaric" characters like Khal Drogo, Shagga, and Tormund. The noble lords as a whole keep their hair pretty short.
    Game of Thrones is also very late medieval in a lot of ways, with the major inspirations involving England and Spain, particularly emphasizing the moorish influence in Spain. The shorter hair fits that better than a lot of places.

    "Medieval" works tend to focus on a few major periods and areas. There's the more roman ones where short hair is fairly common, there's Celtic cultures (which show up in Arthurian movies) where long hair is and should be standard, the 3rd crusade which often has a mix of hair lengths, and there's viking cultures, where long hair is and should be standard.

    Lord of the Rings, the book, has a material culture that is very celtic, and very migration period. A lot of this doesn't make it to the films, with the changes in armor and architecture being the most overt aspects of this, but the very basics of hair style do.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Originally Posted by 8BitNinja
    ...I also think it mentioned that Boromir had cropped hair....
    From the Council of Elrond:

    "[Boromir] had a collar of silver in which a single white stone was set; his locks were shorn about his shoulders."

    So, shoulder-length or thereabouts, long by modern standards but not when compared to the elves.

    Originally Posted by Pex
    They do mention men having shoulder-length hair, when Strider is introduced….
    Here’s the passage from the Prancing Pony:

    “Frodo found that Strider was now looking at him, as if he had heard or guessed all that had been said…. As Frodo drew near he threw back his hood, showing a shaggy head of dark hair flecked with grey, and in a pale stern face a pair of keen grey eyes.”

    This is all that’s mentioned of Aragorn’s hair when he first meets the hobbits. Neither long nor short, just unkempt and hinting of rugged middle age.

    Originally Posted by Pex
    …and the men of Rohan heading to Helm's Deep.
    I didn’t see anything about hair connected to Helm’s Deep, but there is this passage from much earlier, when Eomer’s riders first overtake Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas:

    “The men that rode [their horses] matched them well: tall and long-limbed; their hair, flaxen-pale, flowed under their light helms, and streamed in long braids behind them; their faces were stern and keen.”

    Originally Posted by Pex
    This could be because they couldn't afford to wait for the male actors to grow their hair and/or afford the necessary wigs.
    No one is going to hold up production for someone to grow out his hair; they’ll just hire actors who already have long hair.

    This was a sticking point for Harrison Ford when he signed onto American Graffiti, because his character was supposed to have short hair, but he was concerned that if he cut his hair he wouldn’t be able to get other acting gigs. Lucas compromised by giving him a cowboy hat to hide the long hair.

    Originally Posted by GolemsVoice
    Long hair was also a popular style for men in the early to mid middle ages....
    Also in the 70s.


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    Last edited by Palanan; 2018-01-15 at 11:29 PM.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    I realise this is not useful in anyway to this discussion, but reading the title of this thread without any context made me laugh out loud.

    ...and then the question wouldn't stop playing on my mind.....

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Hair varies wildly among cultures. Even techniques for making braiding hair varied among cultures, so it's obvious hair fashion was as representative of a culture as much as clothes were, or even more. Native Americans mixed half scalped heads with long hair. Scandinavians fashioned a similar style, but not quite as extreme. Eastern tribes kept an almost completely shaved head with a single, long braid of hair to distinguish their sociocultural origins. And in the middle, from short to long hair, you find any other culture with their distinctive fashion.

    But I'm fairly sure that among warrior societies, short hair was never so widespread, except during the Roman Empire. There's a lot of advantages to have an extra insulating tissue protecting your skull from your own helmet's heat and an extra cushion whenever it failed to accomplish it's sole purpose. More than keeping a trimmed hairstyle, anyway. I'm also sceptical to believe short hair was considered "masculine" on every social level before WWI and II. So I don't see why a setting where every warrior prefers a Hard Rock style over a James Bond style.

    Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
    Having said that, I think they probably trimmed their hair that length on purpose, since it never seems to grow over the months the story takes place, until Aragorn gets crowned and actually grooms himself.
    Hair doesn't naturally grow to unlimited length. There's a personal hair-length limit that varies wildly between person, and is also wildly affected by diet, age and the likes. I'm quite sure genetics have the lesser impact too (so there isn't a "standard" among ethnicities either). For instance, my sister can't grow it past her shoulders, it just keeps growing in volume, but not in length. Both my brothers used to have it longer, and I'm quite sure I would be able to grow it closer to my waist (or maybe past it?) if I had a more healthier lifestyle.

    Point in case, hair only grows so far. There's a point where it won't grow any longer, no matter how much you let it be. But I agree LOTR characters reflect the wilderness/battle effects more on their skins and clothes than their hair.

    Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
    No one is going to hold up production for someone to grow out his hair; they’ll just hire actors who already have long hair.
    Alternatively, they could use hair extensions. I'm sure hair technology improved a little since Harrison Ford did that movie. Or CGI, like Bruce Willis apparently did on Hudson Hawks.
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    I imagine Aragorn with short hair. Well, shortish, but very badly kept. His hair is simply described as "shaggy", or somesuch.

    As Frodo drew near be threw back his hood, showing a shaggy head of dark hair necked with grey, and in a pale stem face a pair of keen grey eyes.
    Yes, Boromir had fairly long hair for today's standards: shoulder-length, maybe that's the character Pex is thinking of.

    And seated a little apart was a tall man with a fair and noble face, dark-haired and grey-eyed, proud and stern of glance.

    He was cloaked and booted as if for a journey on horseback; and indeed though his garments were rich, and his cloak was lined with fur, they were stained with long travel. He had a collar of silver in which a single white stone was set; his locks were shorn about his shoulders. On a baldric he wore a great horn tipped with silver that now was laid upon his knees. He gazed at Frodo and Bilbo with sudden wonder.

    `Here,' said Elrond, turning to Gandalf, `is Boromir, a man from the South.
    Other characters:

    'These black men,' said the landlord lowering his voice. 'They're looking for Baggins, and if they mean well, then I'm a hobbit. It was on Monday, and all the dogs were yammering and the geese screaming. Uncanny, I called it. Nob, he came and told me that two black men were at the door asking for a hobbit called Baggins. Nob's hair was all stood on end.
    Which makes me believe that Nob had short hair.

    Immediately, though everything else remained as before, dim and dark, the shapes became terribly clear. He was able to see beneath their black wrappings. There were five tall figures: two standing on the lip of the dell, three advancing. In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes; under their mantles were long grey robes; upon their grey hairs were helms of silver; in their haggard hands were swords of steel. Their eyes fell on him and pierced him, as they rushed towards him. Desperate, he drew his own sword, and it seemed to him that it flickered red, as if it was a firebrand. Two of the figures halted. The third was taller than the others: his hair was long and gleaming and on his helm was a crown. In one hand he held a long sword, and in the other a knife; both the knife and the hand that held it glowed with a pale light. He sprang forward and bore down on Frodo.
    Nazgul have hair visible beneath their helmets, and the King actually has long hair.

    The rider's cloak streamed behind him, and his hood was thrown back; his golden hair flowed shimmering in the wind of his speed.
    Glorfindel has flowing hair.

    Gandalf was shorter in stature than the other two; but his long white hair, his sweeping silver beard, and his broad shoulders, made him look like some wise king of ancient legend.
    Gandalf has long hair.

    A door opened and in came Tom Bombadil. He had now no hat and his thick brown hair was crowned with autumn leaves.
    Tom is brown.

    His hair was dark as the shadows of twilight, and upon it was set a circlet of silver; his eyes were grey as a clear evening, and in them was a light like the light of stars.
    Elrond, no special description. I imagine him with short hair.

    `There is one of my people yonder across the stream,' he said `though you may not see him.' He gave a call like the low whistle of a bird, and out of a thicket of young trees an Elf stepped, clad in grey, but with his hood thrown back; his hair glinted like gold in the morning sun. Haldir skilfully cast over the stream a coil of grey rope, and he caught it and bound the end about a tree near the bank.
    One blond Elf of Lorien.

    and the hair of the Lady was of deep gold, and the hair of the Lord Celeborn was of silver long and bright
    Celeborn has long hair.

    Frodo was just in time to grasp Sam by the hair as he came up, bubbling and struggling.
    Sam has graspable amounts of hair.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rogar Demonblud View Post
    Short hair is a lot more high maintenance than long hair, because you have to keep stopping what you're doing to get it cropped again. Long hair you just let grow and flow.
    Short hair you get cropped what, once a month? The entire rest of the time, you don't worry about it. Long hair gets in the way of work unless you put it up, and takes longer to clean. These are daily things. Compared to a monthly shearing, short hair is incredibly low-maintenance compared to long.
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Short hair you get cropped what, once a month? The entire rest of the time, you don't worry about it. Long hair gets in the way of work unless you put it up, and takes longer to clean. These are daily things. Compared to a monthly shearing, short hair is incredibly low-maintenance compared to long.
    This depends. Very short hair you can have trimmed back once a month or so, but you have to keep on top of it or it grows out. Long hair is manageable because after a certain length its weight keeps it out of the way, or you can just tie it back if necessary. Mid-length hair is the most difficult to deal with.

    In pre-modern cultures, too, long hair is somewhat safer. Cutting your hair - especially short - means running the risk of cutting yourself, which can lead to infection or tetanus, and that's bad. Aragorn probably isn't in danger of this because of his magic elf blood or whatever, but for people out on the road in general this would be a concern.

    I'm sure there are barbers in Middle-Earth but that's still an expense unless you cut your hair yourself (easier to do if it's long). And barbers don't deal exclusively in short hair: women with long hair go to the hairdressers too, after all.

    It's also worth noting that most of the characters in The Lord of the Rings are high-status individuals for whom any purported difficulty in maintaining long hair wouldn't be a serious worry. Frodo, Merry and Pippin are gentry. Legolas is a prince; Boromir is in all but name; Gimli is dwarven aristocracy. They're hanging out with kings and lords. Aside from Sam, we see relatively little, if anything, of "common" folk in the trilogy.

    Ultimately though it's just a cultural thing. At the moment we're going through a phase for men to have short hair but that'll swing back round. As recently as the 70s, men with long hair wouldn't draw a second glance. There are some cultures where long hair is the norm for men. During the period(s) that LotR was aiming to invoke, both books and films, long hair among men was unremarkable, if not normative.
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    That, of course, depends on how much you care about style. I crop mine short and it's usually 5-6 months of growing out before it starts to bother me. So maybe not while fleeing the Shire, but if you had someone at Rivendell shave your head before setting out, you'd probably be good for the duration of the quest.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Short hair you get cropped what, once a month? The entire rest of the time, you don't worry about it. Long hair gets in the way of work unless you put it up, and takes longer to clean. These are daily things. Compared to a monthly shearing, short hair is incredibly low-maintenance compared to long.
    I think you are overestimating how much time people spent washing their hair before the rise of the modern 'health and beauty' industry.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rogar Demonblud View Post
    I think you are overestimating how much time people spent washing their hair before the rise of the modern 'health and beauty' industry.
    I think that you are underestimating how long people spent washing their hair before the rise of the modern 'health and beauty' industry.

    The idea that people didn't clean themselves before Victorian times is simply false. People in Europe in the middle ages continued to use Roman baths regularly and soap existed and was widely available. Rich enough people who could afford to do so spent a significant part of their time in grooming activities, as a demonstration of wealth: they were so rich they had nothing better to do with their time.

    For everyone else, long hair was probably a major bother. Which is not to say that young peasant women may not have had to have long hair as a sexual signifier, and had to work the fields with it being in the way. But even they probably washed it every morning, together with their face and hands.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rogar Demonblud View Post
    I think you are overestimating how much time people spent washing their hair before the rise of the modern 'health and beauty' industry.
    Not necessarily (thanks, Grey Wolf!), but even assuming I am, then you'd have dirty, greasy hair getting in your way unless you put it up, which is even worse than nice, clean hair getting in your way unless you put it up.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    Lord of the Rings originated as a sort of replacement mythology for Celtic myths that had been largely lost, among other things. That particular culture favored long hair, particularly for warriors. It was hardly unique in this; similar patterns show up across millennia on basically every inhabited continent.

    That then made it into the movie.
    I always assumed that Lord of The Rings was more of a Germanic mythology thing? With whole elves, dwarves etc. ring givers and ring bearers, horns, shields and axes. Plus whole lot of monotheistic/mystic elements with one absolute omniscient Being creating the universe out of its thought for some mysterious, profound purpose. The latter of course mostly in Silmarillion.

    I guess the elves/Sidhe sailing out to some mysterious, magical world beyond the veil/mist has Celtic feeling.

    There's a lot of advantages to have an extra insulating tissue protecting your skull from your own helmet's heat and an extra cushion whenever it failed to accomplish it's sole purpose.
    I've had long hair since for a long time now and I can't really see it as being true.

    Hair is way too thin/light to provide any serious cushion.


    If it heavily matted/felted in some kind of dreads or similar thing, then maybe - but it would probably be problematic with a helmet. And there's also no sign of such practices among cultures of Europe that LotR was roughly based on, and in LotR itself, of course.


    In reality, seriously long hair doesn't have any 'practical' reasons - it's mostly a liability, especially in a fight, since it allows anyone who can get a firm grab on it amazing control over your head.

    The reason for long hair is showing off some not particularly clear attributes of the wearer... But it appears to be somehow intertwined in humanity, since it had evolved after all.

    In pre-modern cultures, too, long hair is somewhat safer. Cutting your hair - especially short - means running the risk of cutting yourself, which can lead to infection or tetanus, and that's bad. Aragorn probably isn't in danger of this because of his magic elf blood or whatever, but for people out on the road in general this would be a concern.
    It really seems unlikely to me.... Of course, anything resembling a buzz-cut would be problematic without modern technique, but not any middle length hair.

    Just slash the hair away from the scalp with a knife. Or scissors, which wouldn't be that cumbersome or unlikely travel equipment in some cases.

    Result would likely be ugly by our standards, but road is road.

    And plenty 'ye olde people' wore their hair short.

    Hell, from what I recall Germanic Warrior from Suebi or related tribes in Late Roman Period, was specifically allowed to cut his hair and marry only after managing to kill a foe of the tribe?

    The idea that people didn't clean themselves before Victorian times is simple false. People in Europe in the middle ages continued to use Roman baths regularly and soap existed and was widely available. Rich enough people who could afford to do so spent a significant part of their time in grooming activities, as a demonstration of wealth: they were so rich they had nothing better to do with their time.
    That's true, but 'middle ages' in Europe is fairly limited time and place.

    Going just a few hundred years backwards, from what I recall, Roman writers state that Germanic people were using soap only as some kind of gel/shining agents for their hair. Together with butter, of course, which seems plain yucky for us.

    Majority of humanity, especially in more 'primal' times probably weren't really ever washing their long hair.

    Hell, plenty of tribes in Africa or wherever still do not.
    Last edited by Spiryt; 2018-01-18 at 03:52 PM.
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Spiryt View Post
    I always assumed that Lord of The Rings was more of a Germanic mythology thing? With whole elves, dwarves etc. ring givers and ring bearers, horns, shields and axes. Plus whole lot of monotheistic/mystic elements with one absolute Being creating the universe out of its thought for some mysterious, profound purpose.

    I guess the elves/Sidhe sailing out to some mysterious, magical world beyond the veil/mist has Celtic feeling.
    There's a Letter (more than one, actually) by Tolkien about this. His reviewer around 1937 said that the Silmarillion was too dark and Celtic for modern Anglo-Saxons. Tolkien later occasionally used this description for his work, but he also called it a misdescription.

    Needless to say [the names] are not Celtic! Neither are the tales. I do know Celtic
    things (many in their original languages Irish and Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste:
    largely for their fundamental unreason. They have bright colour, but are like a broken stained glass
    window reassembled without design. They are in fact 'mad' as your reader says – but I don't believe
    I am.

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    I've had long hair since for a long time now and I can't really see it as being true.

    Hair is way too thin/light to provide any serious cushion.


    If it heavily matted/felted in some kind of dreads or similar thing, then maybe - but it would probably be problematic with a helmet. And there's also no sign of such practices among cultures of Europe that LotR was roughly based on, and in LotR itself, of course.


    In reality, seriously long hair doesn't have any 'practical' reasons - it's mostly a liability, especially in a fight, since it allows anyone who can get a firm grab on it amazing control over your head.

    The reason for long hair is showing off some not particularly clear attributes of the wearer... But it appears to be somehow intertwined in humanity, since it had evolved after all.



    It really seems unlikely to me.... Of course, anything resembling a buzz-cut would be problematic without modern technique, but not any middle length hair.

    Just slash the hair away from the scalp with a knife. Or scissors, which wouldn't be that cumbersome or unlikely travel equipment in some cases.

    Result would likely be ugly by our standards, but road is road.
    The Egyptians used very short hair. It was doable, and it was done. I definitely think that it's much easier to maintain. And I think that, if you can pad your helmet with your hair, it's more easily and better done with proper padding.



    That's true, but 'middle ages' in Europe is fairly limited time and place.
    476-1492, from Constantinople to Granada, through Florence, Aachen, Nadros and Vladimir looks like a lot of time and place to me Although each new fashion spread amazingly fast (see Norse Greenlandic settlers wearing clothes after a Florentine fashion).
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    476-1492, from Constantinople to Granada, through Florence, Aachen, Nadros and Vladimir looks like a lot of time and place to me Although each new fashion spread amazingly fast (see Norse Greenlandic settlers wearing clothes after a Florentine fashion).
    Well, what I meant is that towards the beginning of this period, Late Roman and Migration, Germanic people would still mostly use some simple soapy paste from lye, chiefly for washing.


    From what I understand, more modern soap in solid, block form started appear around 8th century in Mediterranean, then under Arab rule.

    Not sure how it looked in the land of former Western Empire, but from Scandinavia to Slavic lands, people would mostly use 'sauna style' baths, using simply water and very hot steam, and some scrubbing, likely. Not any detergent bathing.


    What Grey Wolf had described is more high medieval - with guild already available to produce commercially sensible soap, and organizing bathhouses. So, medieval as well, but different medieval...
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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Spiryt View Post
    What Grey Wolf had described is more high medieval - with guild already available to produce commercially sensible soap, and organizing bathhouses. So, medieval as well, but different medieval...
    What I described is an extension of how Romans used the baths, which the romanized world (i.e. Western Europe) did not abandon, combined with germanic approach to cleanliness. Yes, that means that by "soap" I meant a combination of tallow or lye and ash (or, checking wikipedia, any number of other mixtures - I am mostly familiar with the lye + ash, though). Not something you want in your eyes, but it got the worst of the dirt and sweat out. As far as I know, they also used pumice rocks as scrapers. I won't claim everyone in Europe used the same methods to clean, just that they did have some method they used. And that included hair care.

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    Default Re: Why does everyone in Lord of the Rings have long hair?

    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    Lord of the Rings originated as a sort of replacement mythology for Celtic myths that had been largely lost, among other things. That particular culture favored long hair, particularly for warriors. It was hardly unique in this; similar patterns show up across millennia on basically every inhabited continent.

    That then made it into the movie.
    Quote Originally Posted by Spiryt View Post
    I always assumed that Lord of The Rings was more of a Germanic mythology thing? With whole elves, dwarves etc. ring givers and ring bearers, horns, shields and axes. Plus whole lot of monotheistic/mystic elements with one absolute omniscient Being creating the universe out of its thought for some mysterious, profound purpose. The latter of course mostly in Silmarillion.

    I guess the elves/Sidhe sailing out to some mysterious, magical world beyond the veil/mist has Celtic feeling.....

    Tolkien's Sindarin "Elvish" language is partially based on Welsh so "Celtic",

    his Quenya "Elvish" language is based on Finnish so "Uralic"

    and the Rohirrim are based on Anglo-Saxons so "Germanic" (but are horse nomads, because surviving Anglo Saxon words for colors are for the colors of horses, but the Anglo Saxons really didn't fight from horses much, thus Jones in her Tough Guide to Fantasyland mocks the Rohirrim by referring to "Anglo-Saxon Cossacks").

    I regard Lord of the Rings as mostly "British", (with bits of the Finnish Kalevala epic)

    so like the British there's a mix of Celtic (Cornish, Scot, and Welsh), Germanic (Anglo-Saxons), and Norse (the "Danelaw"), so like the British there's a mix of Celtic (Cornish, Scot, and Welsh), Germanic (Anglo-Saxons), and Norse (the "Danelaw").

    The book "Blood of the Isles" (published in the U.S.A. as "Saxons, Vikings, and Celts", is a guide to the "genetic heritage" of the British, and if I read it right, the Brits (I'm not using "Britons" because that once meant the pre-Roman, and Anglo-Saxon inhabitants), are mostly "Celtic" by blood, and "Germanic" by tongue, their a mix, as was Tolkien"'s "Mythology for England".
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