Dark-skinned elves in J. R. R. Tolkien's works

Question

Are there any indications in any of Tolkien's works (stories, letters, notes, or anything) that suggest there can be elves of dark skin?

And the opposite: Is there any indication that there cannot be dark-skinned elves?

I'm interested in the race called Elves, the first born created by Illuvatar. But if there's another race that could be similar to elves, but dark skinned, that's a nice comment.

I am aware of the Moriquendi (Elves of Darkness), but as far as I know they received that name because they never gazed upon the light of the Trees, and the name is not at all related to their skin color.

For reference, I'm not familiar with British English from the first half of the previous century, so if some terms had a specific meaning back there and then I might have missed that meaning.

Answer 1

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think the answer is that Tolkien's published writings give no clear indication either way. It's important to note that the books focus almost exclusively on the north-west of Middle-earth, and there are large regions east of the Sea of Rhun and to the south and east of Umbar about which we know very little. There is no way to determine if any elves live there, or exactly what they look like. For a more definitive answer, we would need:

(1) A description of an elf as having dark skin.

or

(2) A statement from Tolkien (writing as an 'all-knowing narrator') that such elves do or do not exist.

Now we face the problem of looking for statements that may or may not exist (and that could be worded in many different ways) in a large body of work.

It seems to me that the best places to look for (1) are sections of the text in which Elvish characters appear for the first time, for example descriptions in the early parts of the Silmarillion (especially in Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalie), Elrond and the Wood Elves in the Hobbit, Gildor, Glorfindel, Arwen, assorted elves at the Council of Elrond, Haldir, Galadriel and Celeborn in LotR. In most of these cases, elves are either described as fair, or there is no mention of skin tone at all. Of course Tolkien often uses 'fair' to mean beautiful. For example, it's not clear exactly what is meant when Gildor's group is described as 'fair' in Three is Company, since their speech is also described as 'fair'. On the other hand, Ar-Feiniel is described as 'pale' in Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalie, so she must have been paler than (most) other Noldor elves, meaning there is at least some variation in skin tone. Similarly, Arwen is described as having white arms, which would be an odd statement if all elves had the same. However, I found no description of an elf as having dark skin.

Looking for a general statement about the exsitence of dark-skinned elves is also difficult, but we can make some progress. First of all, a statement that all elves are fair-skinned must refer to the elvish race as a whole, so the most likely places are Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor (since there the elves are all together), or in some general description in a location such as one of the letters. I cannot find any such general statement about skin tone (but someone else did; see below). Another approach is to note that Tolkien sometimes describes darker skinned men as 'Swarthy' (e.g. Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin; and Hirgon's remark in The Muster of Rohan). The indices to LotR, the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales have no entries for Swarthy Elves, and there is no entry in the complete Guide to Middle-earth (CGtM, which is generally quite comprehensive). Likewise, I can find no mention of Swarthy Elves in the History of Middle-earth, or the letters (though there is a mention of a Swart elf; again, see below). There is also an isolated (and somewhat derogatory) description of a darker race of men in The Battle of the Pelennor Fields. However, neither the indices nor the CGtM mention black elves. So, after a considerable (though not exhaustive) search, I found no statement that proves or disproves the existence of dark-skinned elves.

Quotes and further information from comments

Some quotes I missed have been pointed out by other users. @Tristan noted that Maeglin is described as 'swart' in book II of the Lost Tales (The Fall of Gondolin):

Less fair was he than most of this goodly folk, swart and of none too kindly mood, so that he won small love, and whispers there were that he had Orc's blood in his veins, but I know not how this could be true

A similar description appears in The Shaping of Middle-earth (The Quenta):

He was swart but comely, wise and eloquent, and cunning to win men's hearts and minds.

However, the Silmarillion (Of Maeglin) clearly states that his skin was white. I can't find any discussion of this change, but I think CJRT's edits to the Silmarillion were made mostly to keep names, family trees, etc. consistent and it seems unlikely that it's due to anyone other than JRRT himself.

@Eugene, pointed out the following, in LotR appendix F part II:

They [elves] were a race high and beautiful, the older children of the world, and among them the Eldar were as kings, who are now gone; the People of the Great Journey, the People of the Stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finarfin.

Since the Eldar and the Avari come from the same three tribes, this appears to apply to all elves, and looks (at first glance) to be definitive. However, it can't apply to all elves, for two reasons. First, Thranduil (of the Teleri) is described as having golden hair in The Hobbit (Flies and Spiders, pointed out by @Amarth). Second, the very meaning of the word Vanyar (given in the index to the Silmarillion) is 'golden-haired'. Christopher Tolkien discusses this text in his comments toward the end of the first chapter of Lost Tales I. He writes

... these words describing characters of face and hair were actually written of the Noldor only, and not of all the Eldar ... I am unable to determine how this extraordinary perversion of meaning arose.

Later, in the Peoples of Middle-earth (The Appendix on Languages), CJRT revised his opinion, writing

... my father carefully remodelled the passage in order to apply it to the Eldar as a whole, and it does indeed seem 'extraordinary' that he should have failed to observe this point [the golden hair of the Vanyar]. It seems possible that when he re-used the passage in this way the conception of the golden hair of the Vanyar had not yet arisen.

However, in the subsequent note (numbered 4), CJRT points out that a description of Idril Celebrindal (in Of Maeglin) from 1951 mentions her having golden hair due to Vanyar heritage and predates LoTR, which seems to contradict his earlier suggestion.

How to read this riddle? One of Tolkien's own literary devices is that he obtained a copy of the Red Book of Westmarch and acted as translator. LotR appendix F II is written from the translator's perspective, so it makes no sense for it to contain information about any aspect of Middle-earth unless that information comes from the Red Book itself. In other words, we need additional quotes and (in my opinion) should not rely the translator's assertion alone, especially as it is wrong about hair colour. Why should we assume it is correct about skin tone?

I'm inclined to stick with my original conclusion: we don't know. If dark-skinned elves exist, they are probably located in regions of Middle-earth that don't feature much (if at all) in the books. If someone can find a more definitive statement from JRRT then I will stand corrected (or perhaps argue about its canon status!).

Answer 2

Elves has been used to translate both Quendi, ‘the speakers', the High-elven name of all their kind, and Eldar, the name of the Three Kindreds that sought for the Undying Realm ... They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finarfin. --LotR Appendices

Some argue the highlighted (bold) sentence only applies to the Eldar (as apposed to Avari), or only Noldor. The subject of this paragraph has been "Elves", "Quendi", "all their kind", and only narrowed down to "Eldar", but the golden haired Vanyar are obviously ignored. It's possible Tolkien made a mistake here. Either there's a sudden hidden change of subject, or Tolkien forgot about the Vanyar in this context. I'm inclined to think Tolkien at least meant all Eldar were fair of skin.

The Avari were from the same three tribes of Elves. They only refused to migrate to Valinor, and I don't think their decision was based on their skin color. They were mostly from older generations of the same groups of Elves who became less adventurous because of aging.

The younger generations therefore progressed rapidly in strength, nobility, and intellectuality of character, and made natural leaders. The first few generations (expending much vigour in begetting) were least adventurous and were nearly all Avari in the event. -- Nature of Middle-earth.

Answer 3

Are there any indications in any of Tolkien's works (stories, letters, notes, anything) that suggest there can be elves of dark skin?

Not that I recall. The closest would be the Morquendi and Eöl references, but it is as you say that they were called dark elves because they had never seen the the Trees in Valinor.

Eöl was called the Dark Elf, but he is Morquendi, he lives in the darkest part of the forest and is generally dark in his ways rather than his complexion.

And the opposite: Is there any indication that there CANNOT be dark-skinned elves?

Well, as someone quoted from the LotR appendices, elves were said to have "fair skin" and from there on people can have some etymology debate about what "fair" means. The quote that elves were of fair skin and with dark hair save for those of house Finarfin (like Galadriel) is evidently wrong though, because Thranduil is described as blond in The Hobbit and he is Sindar. So Tolkien contracts himself.

Another contradiction is the very reason why Finarfin was blond and that was because his mother was Indis of Vanyar. So it would rather seem that Vanyar are mostly blond, Noldor as most definitely dark-haired and the other elves... of diverse hair color? Not a lot is said about skin color.

But if there's another race that could be similar to elves but dark skinned, that's a nice comment.

Err well yes, there are the orcs. Not particularly elf-like in LotR, but they were originally elves corrupted by Morgoth. To quote Tolkien gateway:

Tolkien describes them as "swart" or "sallow", although one in Mordor is "black-skinned" and others are described generally as "black" (possibly not a reference to skin colour).

Anyway, the whole out-of-universe explanation of the various races' appearance is likely that Middle Earth was loosely inspired by Europe and so the inhabitants come to look like native Europeans. Also, most fiction written in Europe before 1970 or so is, sadly, implicitly or explicitly racist. It was unthinkable that the heroes of any book written in UK would not be white and with a native British appearance.

Generally, the enemies of the "good" nations are described as "swarthy", for example the orcs and the Haradrim. There is no denying that this is at least implicitly racist. Although there's also the 'based on Europe' argument meaning that the further south you go, the darker the skin of the natives. Tolkien said at some point that Mordor was geographically located at a similar location as real world Turkey, so naturally people further south would be inspired by Arabian and African ethnicities, simply by making a vague parallel to the real world.

Answer 4

So I have been asked to post an answer. Either Tolkien said they were white skinned, or he didn't. We have only the following quote:

They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finarfin. --LotR Appendices

Now fair of skin has two meanings; and only one means white-skinned and some would debate the other meaning is intended here. No matter; we can read of the world as we can. I am going to be using knowledge here that Tolkien probably didn't have, though I can't really prove it.

We know Tolkien intended the whole thing to be a legend and an alternate history of northern Europe. This would seem to rule out dark-skinned elves from merely the peoples Tolkien was working with. We can go farther than that. With this tech level (and Tolkien appeared to like Dark Ages tech level; early steel working, etc. but anything before the age of the explorers would work) we simply don't get mixing of races or mixing of skin colors. The environmental drive constrains the answer; near the equator you get dark skinned people and near the poles light skinned people. The intermediate shade occurring in people of Arabic descent follows the pattern.

Also note Elves having grey eyes. This is uniquely fit to extreme north and being active when the sun is down for months at a time. This has long been known to be a property of grey eyes. The old teaching of grey eyes genetics being a hybrid cross is challenged in modern writing so I can't talk about the genetics of grey eyes.

In addition to starting far north, the history of the high elves runs through two genetic bottlenecks. Anything that wasn't uniform to begin with would have a tendency to end up uniform after that. We should be very surprised at finding high elves in middle earth having more than one skin color.

An interesting thing happens when we run geology backwards and produce a map immediately after the retreat of the ice age, before the oceans had a chance to rise, and then we add the place names. There's only one good fit for Europe. We get a map like this one:

https://i.sstatic.net/hYHHZ.jpg (I've had this bookmarked as an image for some time. If somebody could find attribution I'd appreciate it.)

This map is in some ways too convenient; and explains well the unfilled voids in the map in the book; however it preserves attributes that Tolkien would have wanted. The shire is indeed modeled after the countryside of England, and look where the map puts it. How nice.

Notice just how far north this puts the elf-dominated regions of Eregion, Dunland, Lorien, and Mirkwood. We have an answer for the skin color. They are very white indeed, or dead. Without the sun in the long winters they would never reach adulthood. We solve this problem now with vitamin D fortification; which is at far too high a tech level.

[Next section is on politics. Skip if you prefer.]

Recall the runup to the 2018 Wrinkle in time movie where the news was bragging about diversity casting? I do. It was well-received by the critics before release, and on release it bombed and dropped out of the news. The movie development favored politics over world construction and paid the price. Look again at Amazon's LoTR offering. We're getting a bunch of news articles talking about race, diversity, etc. and almost nothing about storyline, background, worldbuilding, etc. We may predict a similar disaster. As I said, Tolkien probably didn't know about skin color and vitamin D. You could get away with casting dark skinned actors as elves; it wouldn't bother me much. However if that's the runup in the news I believe the writing is bad.

Answer 5

Okay, so I may be able to add context due to having grown up as a Brit in South Africa, and even though he was only there while young, JRR would have soaked it up. The word "swart" means "black" (the colour) in Afrikaans, and Tolkien would have had a lot of interaction with black people as a child. I highly doubt that if he described Maeglin as "swart" that he did not originally imagine him to be black. It's just too specific a word, one he'd have heard a lot of if he was exposed much to Afrikaans. Which we know he was. It occurs to me that had attitudes to ethic diversity been less stringent, Tolkien may have expanded his Middle Earth further South and perhaps have darker skinned elves and people who lived there, as there are in the East. But he was writing a book, and once something moves on from being bed time stories and becomes commercial, it generally must comply with a publishers standards. Explicitly dark-skinned people would have probably been nixed by the publisher, so there would be no real point in writing them in. Though I find it interesting that Hobbits are "darker" skinned and that JRR Tolkien seemed very comfortable with them. People focus on Elves as the fair, pure race, but his truest love seemed to be telling stories about Hobbits whom everything seemed to happen to. Make of it what you will but while the Shire does certainly evoke ideas of quaint villages in the English heartland, where I myself am from, it would not surprise me if there isn't a little bit of Africa in there too.

Answer 6

My impression from reading the Silmarillion is there is at least a general correlation between light and dark, and moral nature. The lighter a thing is the younger and more moral it is. The darker a thing the older and more immoral it is.

However, I don't think this precludes black elves and white orcs. The important thing is that skin color indicates the moral character, the moral character is not a product of the being's race. The moral choices come first, and then the race descends into darker shades. This is in contrast to racism which posits a being's moral character is a function of the race. That's why Tolkien's correlation between light/dark and moral nature is technically not racism. It is taking place outside the evolutionary context of racism, and is instead based on a sort of moral determination of racial characteristics.

This is why it is acceptable to cast black elves and white orcs, just like it's fine to cast Peter Pan as a female. If a black actor captures the more fundamental moral qualities of Elrond better than a white actor, it's perfectly acceptable to cast Elrond with a black actor.