It is often said that the North is as large as the other six kingdoms put together, but the truth is somewhat less grand: the North, as ruled today by House Stark of Winterfell, comprises little more than a third of the realm. Beginning at the southern edge of the Neck, the domains of the Starks extend as far north as the New Gift (itself part of their realm until King Jaehaerys I convinced Winterfell to cede those lands to the Night’s Watch). Within the North are great forests, windswept plains, hills and valleys, rocky shores, and snow-crowned mountains. The North is a cold land—much of it rising moorlands and high plains giving way to mountains in its northern reaches—and this makes it far less fertile than the reaches of the south. Snow has been known to fall there even in summer, and it is deadly in winter.
For centuries it has been the custom to speak of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. This familiar usage derives from the seven great kingdoms that held sway over most of Westeros below the Wall during years immediately preceding Aegon’s Conquest. Yet even then, the term was far from exact, for one of those “kingdoms” was ruled by a princess rather than a king (Dorne), and Aegon Targaryen’s own “kingdom” of Dragonstone was never included in the count.
Nonetheless, the term endures. Just as we speak of the Hundred Kingdoms of yore, though there was never a time when Westeros was actually divided into a hundred independent states, we must bow to common usage and talk of the Seven Kingdoms, despite the imprecision.
White Harbor, the North’s sole true city, is the smallest city in the Seven Kingdoms. The most prominent towns in the North are the “winter town” beneath the walls of Winterfell and Barrowton in the Barrowlands. The former is largely empty in spring and summer but filled to bursting in autumn and winter with those seeking the protection and patronage of Winterfell to help them survive the lean times. Not only do townsmen arrive from the outlying villages and crofts, but many a son and daughter of the mountain clans have been known to make their way to the winter town when the snows begin to fall in earnest.
The rusted crown upon the arms of House Dustin derives from their claim that they are themselves descended from the First King and the Barrow Kings who ruled after him. The old tales recorded in Kennet’s Passages of the Dead claim that a curse was placed on the Great Barrow that would allow no living man to rival the First King. This curse made these pretenders to the title grow corpselike in their appearance as it sucked away their vitality and life. This is no more than legend, to be sure, but that the Dustins share blood and descent from the Barrow Kings of old seems sure enough.
Barrowton, too, is somewhat of a curiosity—a gathering place built at the foot of the reputed barrow of the First King, who once ruled supreme over all the First Men, if the legends can be believed. Rising from the midst of a wide and empty plain, it has prospered thanks to the shrewd stewardship of the Dustins, loyal bannermen to the Starks, who have ruled the Barrowlands in their name since the fall of the last of the Barrow Kings.
The men of the North are descendants of the First Men, their blood only slowly mingling with that of the Andals who overwhelmed the kingdoms to the south. The original language of the First Men—known as the Old Tongue—has come to be spoken only by the wildlings beyond the Wall, and many other aspects of their culture have faded away (such as the grislier aspects of their worship, when criminals and traitors were killed and their bodies and entrails hung from the branches of weirwoods.)
In the North, they tell the tale of the Rat Cook, who served an Andal king—identified by some as King Tywell II of the Rock, and by others as King Oswell I of the Vale and Mountain—the flesh of the king’s own son, baked into a pie. For this, he was punished by being turned into a monstrous rat that ate its own young. Yet the punishment was incurred not for killing the king’s son, or for feeding him to the king, but for the breaking of guest right.
But the Northmen still retain something of the old ways in their customs and their manner. Their life is harder, and so they are hardened by it, and the pleasures that in the south are considered noble are thought childish and less worthy than the hunting and brawling that the Northmen love best.
Even their house names mark them out, for the First Men bore names that were short and blunt and to the point; names like Stark, Wull, Umber, and Stout all stem from the days when the Andals had no influence on the North.
One notable custom that the Northmen hold dearer than any other is guest right, the tradition of hospitality by which a man may offer no harm to a guest beneath his roof, nor a guest to his host. The Andals held to something like it as well, but it looms less large in southron minds. In his text Justice and Injustice in the North: Judgments of Three Stark Lords, Maester Egbert notes that crimes in the North in which guest right was violated were rare but were invariably treated as harshly as the direst of treasons. Only kinslaying is deemed as sinful as the violations of these laws of hospitality.
As knighthood is rare in the North, the knightly tourney and its pageantry and chivalry are as rare as hen’s teeth beyond the Neck. Northmen fight ahorse with war lances but seldom tilt for sport, preferring mêlées that are only just this side of battles. There are accounts of contests that have lasted half a day and left fields trampled and villages half–torn down. Serious injuries are common in such a mêlée, and deaths are not unheard of. In the great mêlée at Last Hearth in 170 AC, it is said that no fewer than eighteen men died, and half again that number were sorely maimed before the day was done.
Moat Cailin (illustration credit 92)
THE KINGS OF WINTER
Song and story tell us that the Starks of Winterfell have ruled large portions of the lands beyond the Neck for eight thousand years, styling themselves the Kings of Winter (the more ancient usage) and (in more recent centuries) the Kings in the North. Their rule was not an uncontested one. Many were the wars in which the Starks expanded their rule or were forced to win back lands that rebels had carved away. The Kings of Winter were hard men in hard times.
The arms of House Stark (center) and some of its vassals (clockwise from top): Glover, Ryswell, Manderly, Dustin, Bolton, Tallhart, Reed, Umber, Karstark, Hornwood, and Mormont. (illustration credit 93)
Ancient ballads, amongst the oldest to be found in the archives of the Citadel of Oldtown, tell of how one King of Winter drove the giants from the North, whilst another felled the skinchanger Gaven Greywolf and his kin in “the savage War of the Wolves,” but we have only the word of singers that such kings and such battles ever existed.
More historical proof exists for the war between the Kings of Winter and the Barrow Kings to their south, who styled themselves the Kings of the First Men and claimed supremacy over all First Men everywhere, even the Starks themselves. Runic records suggest that their struggle, dubbed the Thousand Years War by the singers, was actually a series of wars that lasted closer to two hundred years than a thousand, ending when the last Barrow King bent his knee to the King of Winter, and gave him the hand of his daughter in marriage.
Even this did not give Winterfell dominion over all the North. Many other petty kings remained, ruling over realms great and small, and it would require thousands of years and many more wars before the last of them was conquered. Yet one by one, the Starks subdued them all, and during these struggles, many proud houses and ancient lines were extinguished forever.
Amongst the houses reduced from royals to vassals we can count the Flints of Breakstone Hill, the Slates of Blackpool, the Umbers of Last Hearth, the Lockes of Oldcastle, the Glovers of Deepwood Motte, the Fishers of the Stony Shore, the Ryders of the Rills … and mayhaps even the Blackwoods of Raventree, whose own family traditions insist they once ruled most of the wolfswood before being driven from their lands by the Kings of Winter (certain runic records support this claim, if Maester Barneby’s translations can be trusted).
Chronicles found in the archives of the Night’s Watch at the Nightfort (before it was abandoned) speak of the war for Sea Dragon Point, wherein the Starks brought down the Warg King an
d his inhuman allies, the children of the forest. When the Warg King’s last redoubt fell, his sons were put to the sword, along with his beasts and greenseers, whilst his daughters were taken as prizes by their conquerors.
House Greenwood, House Towers, House Amber, and House Frost met similar ends, together with a score of lesser houses and petty kings whose very names are lost to history. Yet the bitterest foes of Winterfell were undoubtedly the Red Kings of the Dreadfort, those grim lords of House Bolton whose domains of old stretched from the Last River to the White Knife, and as far south as the Sheepshead Hills.
The enmity between the Starks and Boltons went back to the Long Night itself, it is claimed. The wars between these two ancient families were legion, and not all ended in victory for House Stark. King Royce Bolton, Second of His Name, is said to have taken and burned Winterfell itself; his namesake and descendant Royce IV (remembered by history as Royce Redarm, for his habit of plunging his arm into the bellies of captive foes to pull out their entrails with his bare hand) did the same three centuries later. Other Red Kings were reputed to wear cloaks made from the skins of Stark princes they had captured and flayed.
Yet in the end, even the Dreadfort fell before the might of Winterfell, and the last Red King, known to history as Rogar the Huntsman, swore fealty to the King of Winter and sent his sons to Winterfell as hostages, even as the first Andals were crossing the narrow sea in their longships.
After the defeat of the Boltons, the last of their Northern rivals, the greatest threats to the dominion of House Stark came by sea. The northern boundary of the Stark domains was protected by the Wall and the men of the Night’s Watch, whilst to the south, the only way through the swamps of the Neck passed below the ruined towers and sinking walls of the great fortress called Moat Cailin. Even when the Marsh Kings held the Moat, their crannogmen stood staunch against any invaders from the south, allying with the Barrow Kings, Red Kings, and Kings of Winter as need be to turn back any southron lord who sought to attack the North. And once King Rickard Stark added the Neck to his domain, Moat Cailin proved even more imposing—a bulwark against the powers of the south. Few sought to push past it, and the histories say that none ever succeeded.
The North’s long, ragged coastlines, both to the east and the west, remained vulnerable, however; it would be there where the rule of Winterfell would be most oft threatened … by ironborn in the west and Andals in the east.
Crossing the narrow sea in their hundreds and thousands, the longships of the Andals made landings in the North just as they did to the south, but wherever they came ashore, the Starks and their bannermen fell upon them and drove them back into the sea. King Theon Stark, known to history as the Hungry Wolf, turned back the greatest of these threats, making common cause with the Boltons to smash the Andal warlord Argos Sevenstar at the Battle of the Weeping Water.
In the aftermath of his victory, King Theon raised his own fleet and crossed the narrow sea to the shores of Andalos, with Argos’s corpse lashed to the prow of his flagship. There, it is said, he took a bloody vengeance, burning a score of villages, capturing three tower houses and a fortified sept, and putting hundreds to the sword. The heads of the slain the Hungry Wolf claimed as prizes, carrying them back to Westeros and planting them on spikes along his own coasts as a warning to other would-be conquerors. (Later in his blood-drenched reign, he himself conquered the Three Sisters and landed an army on the Fingers, but these conquests did not long endure. King Theon also fought the ironborn in the west, driving them from Cape Kraken and Bear Island, put down a rebellion in the Rills, and joined the Night’s Watch in an incursion beyond the Wall that broke the power of the wildlings for a generation).
Until King’s Landing rose beside the Blackwater, White Harbor was the newest city in the Seven Kingdoms. Built with the wealth that the Manderlys had brought with them from the Reach after having been driven into exile by Lord Lorimar Peake at the behest of King Perceon III Gardener, who feared their swelling power in the Reach, White Harbor has more in common with the fine castles and towers of the Reach than with the castles of the North; it is said that the New Keep was built to reflect the castle of Dunstonbury, which the Manderlys had lost in their exile.
Even before the coming of the Andals, the Wolf’s Den had been raised by King Jon Stark, built to defend the mouth of the White Knife against raiders and slavers from across the narrow sea (some scholars suggest these were early Andal incursions, whilst others argue they were the forebears of the men of Ib, or even slavers out of Valyria and Volantis).
Held for centuries by a succession of houses (including the Greystarks, an offshoot of House Stark itself, as well as Flints, Slates, Longs, Holts, Lockes, and Ashwoods), the ancient fortress would be the focus of a succession of conflicts. During the wars between Winterfell and the Andal Kings of Mountain and Vale, the Old Falcon, Osgood Arryn, laid siege to the Wolf’s Den. His son, King Oswin the Talon, captured it and put it to the torch. Later, it fell under attack from the pirate lords of the Three Sisters and slavers out of the Stepstones. It was not until some thousand years before the Conquest, when the fugitive Manderlys came to the North and swore their oaths at the Wolf’s Den, that the problem of the defense of the White Knife—the river that provides access into the very heart of the North—was resolved with the creation of White Harbor.
The west coast of the North has also oft been beset by reavers, and several of the Hungry Wolf’s wars were forced upon him when longships out of Great Wyk, Old Wyk, Pyke, and Orkmont descended upon his western coasts beneath the banners of Harrag Hoare, King of the Iron Islands. For a time the Stony Shore did fealty to Harrag and his ironmen, swathes of the wolfswood were nothing but ashes, and Bear Island was a base for reaving, ruled by Harrag’s black-hearted son, Ravos the Raper. Though Theon Stark slew Ravos with his own hand, and expelled the ironmen from his shores, they would return under Harrag’s grandson, Erich the Eagle, and again under the Old Kraken, Loron Greyjoy, who retook both Bear Island and Cape Kraken (King Rodrik Stark reclaimed the first of those after the Old Kraken’s death, whilst his sons and grandsons battled for the latter). The wars between the North and the ironborn would continue thereafter, but less decisively.
THE MOUNTAIN CLANS
The clans of the Northern mountains are especially famed for their adherence to the laws of hospitality, and the petty lords who rule these clans often vie with one another to be the most open-handed of hosts. These clans—located largely in the mountainous regions beyond the wolfswood, in the high valleys and meadows, and along the Bay of Ice and certain rivers of the North—owe their allegiance to the Starks, but their disputes have oft created difficulties for the Lords of Winterfell and the Kings of Winter before them, forcing them to send men into the mountains to quell the bloodshed (commemorated in such songs as “Black Pines” and “Wolves in the Hills”), or to summon the chiefs to Winterfell to argue their cases.
The mightiest of the Northern clans are the Wulls, the fisherfolk who dwell along the shores of the Bay of Ice. Their hatred of the wildlings is matched only by their hatred of the men of the Iron Islands, who have often raided along the shore of the bay, burning their halls, carrying off their crops, and taking their wives and daughters as thralls and salt wives. Large tracts of the Stony Shore, Bear Island, Sea Dragon Point, and Cape Kraken have all been held by ironmen at times. Indeed, Cape Kraken, closest to the Iron Islands, has changed hands so many times that many maesters believe its populace to be closer in blood to the ironmen than to Northmen.
The histories of the North claim that Rodrik Stark won Bear Island back from the ironborn in a wrestling match, and perhaps there is truth to this tale; the kings of the Iron Isles were often moved to prove their prowess and their right to wear the driftwood crown with feats of strength. More sober scholars call this into question, suggesting that if there was “wrestling,” it was with words.
THE STONEBORN OF SKAGOS
Despite centuries of feuds, the mountain clans have tradition
ally remained loyal to the Starks through war and peace. The same cannot be said of the savage denizens of Skagos, the mountainous island east of the Bay of Seals.
The Skagosi who reside there are little regarded by the other Northmen, who consider them no better than wildlings and name them Skaggs. The Skagosi call themselves the stoneborn, referring to the fact that Skagos means “stone” in the Old Tongue. A huge, hairy, foul-smelling folk (some maesters believe the Skagosi to have a strong admixture of Ibbenese blood; others suggest that they may be descended from giants), clad in skins and furs and untanned hides, and said to ride on unicorns, the Skagosi are the subject of many a dark rumor. It is claimed that they still offer human sacrifice to their weirwoods, lure passing ships to destruction with false lights, and feed upon the flesh of men during winter.
A warrior of Skagos. (illustration credit 94)
Like as not, the Skagosi surely did once practice cannibalism, though whether this custom still lingers to this day is a matter of much dispute. The Edge of the World—a collection of tales and legends compiled by Maester Balder, who served the commander of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea during the sixty-year rule of Lord Commander Osric Stark—is our chief source for much of what we know of the Skagosi, including the Feast of Skane, wherein a Skagosi war fleet descended upon the smaller nearby isle of Skane, raping and carrying off the Skanish women whilst slaying the Skanish men and consuming their flesh in a feast that lasted a fortnight. Whether this be true or not, Skane remains uninhabited to this day, though tumbled stones and overgrown foundations testify that men did once dwell amongst its windswept hills and stony shores.
The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones Page 23
