Do individual hairs actually have the color gray, or is gray just the appearance of a mixture of white with darker hair?

In my own hair it seems like it’s a mix. I don’t see hairs that all by themselves appear to have a gray color. But I’m not in the best position to judge, and it’s really hard to look at a single hair and see its color.

It’s my impression that people with naturally blond hair—light Scandinavian blond, for instance—don’t appear to turn gray the way others do. Instead their hair seems to acquire a silvery quality before eventually turning white. I haven’t been able to observe any one such person up close over time. An old friend whom I hadn’t seen in a long time still looks blonde after 40 years, and she said, “We Swedes don’t turn gray.” Is this so? If true, it suggests that the white-only theory is correct.

My impression of plenty of others from a reasonable social distance is that the hair is actually gray, but when I look as closely as I can, I only see a mix of white and dark.

I imagine a hairdresser would know for sure.