Timeline Stuff

Before I delve in depth into the Night’s King legend itself, I will tackle the mistaken conflation of the Night’s King events with the Long Night. Measter Yandel’s information on the Night’s King is the most succinct, but contains crucial timeline pointers. He tells us that an alliance of two kings from both sides of the Wall brought the Night’s King down: a Stark King of Winter, Brandon the Breaker, and Joramun, King-Beyond-the-Wall.

This give us some rough idea when the Night’s King lived. We know there was

This all means that the Night’s King lived AFTER the Long Night. Unfortunately, readers often discuss the Night’s King as if he was alive during the Long Night. They were distinct separate events though. When this is pointed out to theorists especially, some go as far as to present their own non-canon timeline, claiming that GRRM lied about the history, rather than reassess their theory.

Readers and theorists who make this mistake tend to argue that a Night’s King copy like the one of the past is necessary, because who else is going to lead the Others? The answer of course is that the Others do not need a Night’s king-copy to lead them, because they did not have a Night’s King during the Long Night that lasted a generation. And especially when a present-day Night’s King theory hinges on this fabricated “necessity” for the Others, some of its proponents will go as far as to claim that the Night’s Watch and the Wall  predate the Long Night, and that this provoked the Others. But so far nobody has managed to successfully explain to me why humans who’ve expanded their settlements from Dorne as far at least as the Fist of the First Men would raise a 700 feet ice Wall filled with magic warding spells and a Night’s Watch army of more than ten thousand men without a known magical, deadly threat.

Index

The Long Night timeline

Of course, you should not just believe my assertions, without the evidence for this, which are several cross references, involving the Long Night, the last hero and Brandon the Builder. All the world book info we have on these are the foundation for why we can conclude with certainty that the Night’s King came generations and centuries after the Long Night.

  • (8000 or 6000 years ago) A generation lasting Long Night

It is also from these histories that we learn of the Long Night, when a season of winter came that lasted a generation—a generation in which children were born, grew into adulthood, and in many cases died without ever seeing the spring. Indeed, some of the old wives’ tales say that they never even beheld the light of day, so complete was the winter that fell on the world. (tWoIaF – Ancient History: The Long Night)

  • (during the Long Night) A type of proto Night’s Watch is formed. It is not one united army yet. It likely were warriors and guardsmen from separate and individual ringforts trying to defend them from the Others.
  • (towards the end of the Long Night) The last hero sets out in search of the children of the forest for aid. After an arduous journey where the last hero loses his sword, dozen friends, horse and dog to the cold, ravenous giants, cold servants and Others, he finds the CotF and this tips the scales against the Others.
  • (the end of the Long Night) Because of the aid that the last hero procured, the first men of the proto Night’s Watch band together. So, at this point the various warriors and guardsmen form one army we can now call the Night’s Watch, including having the most ancient sounding part of the vows. This is the section where they declare who they are –  “I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men.” 
  • (the end of the Long Night) At the Battle for the Dawn, these first men of the Night’s Watch defeat the Others. Surviving Others flee to the icy north (presumably the Heart of Winter).

How the Long Night came to an end is a matter of legend, as all such matters of the distant past have become. In the North, they tell of a last hero who sought out the intercession of the children of the forest, his companions abandoning him or dying one by one as they faced ravenous giants, cold servants, and the Others themselves. Alone he finally reached the children, despite the efforts of the white walkers, and all the tales agree this was a turning point. Thanks to the children, the first men of the Night’s Watch banded together and were able to fight—and win—the Battle for the Dawn: the last battle that broke the endless winter and sent the Others fleeing to the icy north. Now, six thousand years later (or eight thousand as True History puts forward), the Wall made to defend the realms of men is still manned by the sworn brothers of the Night’s Watch, and neither the Others nor the children have been seen in many centuries. (tWoIaF – Ancient History: the Long Night)

  • (after the Long Night) The founder of House Stark, Brandon the Builder raises Winterfell. His descendants style themselves the Kings of Winter.

Legend says that Brandon the Builder raised Winterfell after the generation-long winter known as the Long Night to become the stronghold of his descendants, the Kings of Winter. (tWoIaF – The North: Winterfell)

There are a few crucial conclusions we can already derive from this information.

  • Firstly, the King of Winter Brandon the Breaker, who took down the Night’s King, comes after Brandon the Builder: he is a Stark and a King of Winter, and both the House and the title come after the founding of the House and the raising of the castle.
  • The story of the last hero gives us some info on the relation between the CotF and the First Men during the Long Night. During the Dawn Age, the CotF and First Men initially were committed in deadly hostilities against one another. These ceased after they agreed to a peace via a Pact at the God’s Eye. But agreeing to a peace does not mean the start of an alliance. It may move to an alliance over time, but not before it becomes in the interest of both sides to work together. So, after the Pact, CotF kept to themselves in the forests and hollow hills, while First Men did their thing: fighting each other, migrating, settling, … Only when both races/species are under existential threat by the Others during the Long Night they form an alliance.

Inexorably, the war ground on across generations, until at last the children understood that they could not win. The First Men, perhaps tired of war, also wished to see an end to the fighting. The wisest of both races prevailed, and the chief heroes and rulers of both sides met upon the isle in the Gods Eye to form the Pact. Giving up all the lands of Westeros save for the deep forests, the children won from the First Men the promise that they would no longer cut down the weirwoods. All the weirwoods of the isle on which the Pact was forged were then carved with faces so that the gods could witness the Pact, and the order of green men was made afterward to tend to the weirwoods and protect the isle. (tWoIaF – Ancient History: The Coming of First Men)

Building_the_Wall_Chase_Stone
Building the Wall by Chase Stone
Brandon the Builder

Note: I also recommend the video on Brandon the Builder from History of Westeros.

These above conclusions and implications surrounding Brandon the Builder and when the alliance between CotF and First Men formed help us clear up when the Wall was raised. In the following quotes we get all the necessary clues.

Maester Childer’s Winter’s Kings, or the Legends and Lineages of the Starks of Winterfell contains a part of a ballad alleged to tell of the time Brandon the Builder sought the aid of the children while raising the Wall. He was taken to a secret place to meet with them, but could not at first understand their speech, which was described as sounding like the song of stones in a brook, or the wind through leaves, or the rain upon the water. The manner in which Brandon learned to comprehend the speech of the children is a tale in itself, and not worth repeating here. (tWoIaF – Ancient History: the Dawn Age)

Brandon the Builder is not only tied to being the first to build Winterfell with stone after the Long Night. He is also connected to the building of the Wall. The above quote has three interesting points. The Builder sought out the children, WHILE raising the Wall. In other words, construction and work on the Wall had commenced when he sought the children. Secondly, this seeking out of CotF and staying with them at a secret place has a commonality with the story of the last hero. Brandon the Builder went in search for them as did the last hero. And since Brandon the Builder had to learn their language first to understand them, we can infer that the last hero would have to learn as well.

Finally, maester Yandel makes a suspicious remark. He says the manner in which Brandon the Builder learned their speech is not worth repeating. The expression “not worth repeating” is an opinionated dismissal. And we know that maester Yandel most often dismisses magical stuff, such as greenseeing. While maester Yandel does reveal what type of powers greenseers are claimed to have, he throws shade on whether such abilities existed and refuses to tie this ability to a specifically named hero of the Age of Heroes. Most likely the tale of Brandon the Builder learning the language of the CotF would make clear to us that he was a greenseer. And yes of course, George as actual author did not want to go into the details of this teaching process. It is something we (shall) witness via Bran Stark in the current timeline in the secret cave with Bloodraven. Hence, why George would not consider it worth repeating – we must read for ourselves in aDwD and the as of yet unpublished tWoW.

Some of the commonalities between the last hero and Brandon the Builder seeking the CotF should raise the question whether Brandon the Builder was the last hero? I would say, “yes”.

Aside from the Wall and Winterfell, Brandon the Builder is also tied to the building of Storm’s End and the Hightower at Oldtown.

As Brandon the Builder is connected with an improbable number of great works (Storm’s End and the Wall, to name but two prominent examples) over a span of numerous lifetimes, the tales have likely turned some ancient king, or a number of different kings of House Stark (for there have been many Brandons in the long reign of that family) into something more legendary. (tWoIaF – The North: Winterfell)

It was only with the building of the fifth tower, the first to be made entirely of stone, that the Hightower became a seat worthy of a great house. That tower, we are told, rose two hundred feet above the harbor. Some say it was designed by Brandon the Builder, whilst others name his son, another Brandon; the king who demanded it, and paid for it, is remembered as Uthor of the High Tower. (tWoIaF – The Reach: Oldtown)

By yielding to a mortal’s love, Elenei doomed herself to a mortal’s death, and for this the gods who had given her birth hated the man she had taken for her lord husband. In their wroth, they sent howling winds and lashing rains to knock down every castle Durran dared to build, until a young boy helped him erect one so strong and cunningly made that it could defy their gales. The boy grew to be Brandon the Builder; (tWoIaF – The Stormlands – House Durrandon)

In a non-magical world without greenseers, maester Yandel’s dismissal of Brandon the Builder being responsible for the construction of architectural feats across the entire continent from Oldtown until the Wall seems a fair one. But it is a magical world with greenseers able to communicate via ravens and trees (and people with broken minds, such as Hodor). And it is a magical world where greenseers of the North (the cold preserves) and linked with weirwood trees could live far longer than a normal human being can. So, yes, a greenseer could be partially responsible in relaying what needs to be built to serve a protective purpose against the elements and threats of a certain location.

Of interest with Storm’s End is the claim that Brandon the Builder helped out as an anonymous boy who only later in life came to be known as Brandon the Builder. If Brandon the Builder helped out Durran as a greenseeing boy using the weirnet and ravens to communicate and help with the construction of Storm’s End, this means he already had been trained by children of the forest. It also means Brandon the Builder went in search of the CotF when he was a boy, exactly like Bran Stark, whose arduous journey in search of the three-eyed-crow also has commonalities with the last hero’s journey. This further suggests that Brandon the Builder indeed was the last hero, who was a boy journeying in search of the CotF.

Readers and theorists have the habit of writing the identifier to the last hero with capitals, as Last Hero. But George does not. He writes it as “the last hero” both in asoiaf and the World Book. With the capital use, readers are prone to equate him to having committed feats like Azor Ahai’s or a warrior hero such Serwyn. Why else would someone be called a hero, hmmm? The answer is simple: the last hero is an anonymous figure born towards the end of the Age of Heroes. His story about seeking the children of the forest does not even involve warrior feats or even that he was physically present at the Battle for the Dawn. Sure, he had a sword and a horse and a dog and companions. So does Bran on a similar journey, but we never see him doing any sword fighting aside from beating Tommen up before his fall at Winterfell.

There is no explicit name for the era between the Long Night and the coming of the Andals. Still, the era before the Long Night and after is markedly different. Before there are mainly small petty kingdoms with people at best living in wooden ringforts. The archeological legacy is scant, so that the events of those times can only come down to the current timeline via legends and songs. After the Long Night, the kingdoms grow bigger as feuds between petty kingdoms are settled and the First Men settle in more permanent stone constructions. The archeological legacy is tangible and still visible to people of the current timeline in sections of castles and runes. And it has intervals of cooperation beyond peace between First Men and CotF, including against the Andal invasion. There is no in-world name for this era, but I think of it as the Age of Construction. Brandon the Builder is the hero who bridges both eras. He is the first and only man linked in name to “after the Long Night” via the permanent construction of Winterfell, and yet he is explicitly said to be of the Age of Heroes, which makes him the ideal hero to be referred to as the last one.

Storm’s End has commonalities with the Wall. Melisandre explains to Davos why he needs to smuggle her into the underground seaside passage of the castle: there are ancient magical wards that prevent a shadow from passing.

Melisandre: “There are spells woven into the stones. Dark walls that no shadow can pass—ancient, forgotten, yet still in place.” (aCoK, Davos II)

Maester Yandel does not know about these warding spells in the stones of Storm’s End, and if he did would never recognize to be true. It therefore does not matter whether he argues that the ingenious curtain wall of Storm’s End dates from the Andal period. It are the ancient spells in the stones that prevent any sorceress from sending murderous shadows through its walls to kill whomever huddles behind them. The exact same thing was done with the Wall.

Melisandre: “Great was the lore that raised it, and great the spells locked beneath its ice.” (aDwD, Jon I)

“The Wall is more than just ice and stone, he said. There are spells woven into it . . . old ones, and strong. [Coldhands] cannot pass beyond the Wall.” […] Beyond the gates the monsters live, and the giants and the ghouls, he remembered Old Nan saying, but they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong.  (aSoS, Bran IV)

The same type of magic was used for both structures, and supports the claim that Bran the Builder was involved. It is also eyebrow raising that George has managed to keep Storm’s End out of any type of plot-attempt to attack it with dragons. While dragonriders have visited, lived and recuperated there, any mention of dragons fighting is done outside or away from Storm’s End. If the wards in the stones of Storm’s End have a similar effect on dragons as what Queen Alysanne experienced with Silverwing at the Wall – she refused thrice to fly across the Wall – then Argilac the Arrogant made a fatal mistake not putting his castle to the test against the Conquerer and his three sisters. Perhaps Storm’s End may be put to the test in aDoS, once Dany arrives in Westeros with her dragons? 

I would not be surprised if we learn in tWoW that the Hightower in Oldtown also has similar magical wards, especially since Lord Leyton Hightower is said to be looking for spells to protect Oldtown against Euron Greyjoy. 

With so many parallels and overlapping of stories, it seems that the last hero was a boy Brandon before he became known as the Builder. Since he went looking for the children of the forest while building of the Wall had commenced, this means this work started towards the end of the Long Night, with earth and stone, likely inspired by a reasonable success at the Fist to give the First Men cover long enough to retreat.

It may be that its earliest foundations were of stone—the maesters differ in this—but now all that can be seen for a distance of a hundred leagues is ice. (tWoIaF – The Wall and Beyond: The Night’s Watch)

Here, though the top of the Wall loomed eight hundred feet above the forest floor, a good third of that height was earth and stone rather than ice; the slope was too steep for their horses, almost as difficult a scramble as the Fist of the First Men, but still vastly easier to ascend than the sheer vertical face of the Wall itself. (aSoS, Jon IV)

It seems logical that the First Men would have commenced in throwing up defense walls against the Others to keep them from going south any further at various locations, after most of the surviving First Men fled back south from the Lands of Always Winter. There is further evidence for this when it comes to other claims about who helped to build the Wall and we consider the main material used for it.

Whether the legends are true or not, it is plain that the First Men and the children of the forest (and even the giants, if we take the word of the singers) feared something enough that it drove them to begin raising the Wall. […] Nearby lakes provided the material, which the First Men cut into huge blocks and hauled upon sledges to the Wall, and worked into place one by one. […] Legend has it that the giants helped raise the Wall, using their great strength to wrestle the blocks of ice into place. […] These same legends also say that the children of the forest—who did not themselves build walls of either ice or stone—would contribute their magic to the construction. (tWoIaF – The Wall and Beyond: The Night’s Watch)

The Wall of ice was built by an alliance of First Men, children of the forest and the giants, while under existential fear. This coming together of these races/species implies the building began in earnest towards the end of the Long Night. There was no such alliance before or during most of the Long Night.

Brandon the Builder had laid his huge foundation blocks along the heights wherever feasible, and hereabouts the hills rose wild and rugged. (aSoS, Jon IV)

The main construction material – ice blocks cut from nearby lakes – implies the raising of the ice Wall started before the generation-long winter was broken. In the current timeline of Westeros, only the lakes that Bran Stark traverses in aDwD and where Stannis camps are solid enough to carry large weights without cracking.

They came upon the promised lake not long after, and turned north as the ranger had bid them. That was the easy part. The water was frozen, and the snow had been falling for so long that Bran had lost count of the days, turning the lake into a vast white wilderness. […] The elk went where he would, regardless of the wishes of Meera and Jojen on his back. Mostly he stayed beneath the trees, but where the shore curved away westward he would take the more direct path across the frozen lake, shouldering through snowdrifts taller than Bran as the ice crackled underneath his hooves. (aDwD, Bran I)

The wind was swirling from the west, driving still more snow across the frozen surface of the lakes. […] They had spent most of it out on the ice, shivering beside a pair of holes they’d cut in the smaller of the frozen lakes, with fishing lines clutched in mitten-clumsy hands. (aDwD, The Sacrifice)

This is the state of lakes north and south of the Wall a few months at most before the maesters of Oldtown sent the ravens to declare winter officially started: frozen surfaces, but south of the Wall nowhere near the thickness to cut out large solid huge blocks of ice that you need sleighs and giants for to build an ice Wall. Meanwhile Long Lake, south of the Wall, has only a thin layer of ice in Melisandre’s vision when Alys Karstark flees towards Castle Black for Jon Snow’s protection.

I saw water. Deep and blue and still, with a thin coat of ice just forming on it.” (aDwD, Melisandre I)

So, in order for the First Men to start cutting whole blocks of ice and use them to build the base of the ice wall as solid as a glacier, it still needed to be winter and early spring. Presumably that would be before the Battle for the Dawn and for a while yet after that battle, as the thawing would require a while before setting in. Once the Wall is thick enough with ice, the Wall might weep but not completely melt anymore, and the Night’s Watch could start adding height during summers.

Lord Commander Jeor Mormont: “Once the Watch spent its summers building, and each Lord Commander raised the Wall higher than he found it.” (aGoT, Tyrion III)

We can now adjust the prior timeline to the following.

  • (8000 or 6000 years ago) A generation-lasting Long Night
    • First Men who live as far as the Fist at least retreat more south
    • Warriors and guardsman form units to protect ringforts: a proto Night’s Watch;
    • In the North people seek protection from Others in an area peppered with hot springs ;
    • The separated proto Night’s Watch of each northern petty kingdom begin to throw up defenses with earth and stone;
    • A young boy with greenseer abilities who lives in the hot spring area sets out with horse, dog, sword and dozen companions in search of the children of the forest. The journey is arduous and dangerous and he loses all his companions and animals by abandonment and death. Only he survives encounters with (wighted?) giants, wights and Others and reaches the children of the forest who take him into a secret cave, where he learns their speech, trains his skinchanging skills and greenseeing via weirwood trees. This young boy is Brandon Stark, who later is either referred to as the last hero of the Age of Heroes or as Brandon the Builder.
    • An alliance forms between First Men, CotF and giants, both for the building and warding of an ice Wall construction as well as the CotF gifting the now first men of the Night’s Watch with dragonglass.
    • The Battle for the Dawn happens and work on the Wall continues. The generation long winter is over and spring is around the corner.
  • (after the Long Night) The boy returns “home” a hero. He builds Winterfell at the hot spring location in stone, ensuring a stone and warded protection if the Others ever decide to attack again and manage to get south of the Wall. The Night’s Watch is gifted lands as far as twenty five leagues south of the Wall, known as Brandon’s Gift. Brandon’s descendants declare themselves kings as do other houses, and feuds begin to arise once more. First Men who do not wish to live under these kings and consider the Others defeated climb the Wall, take boats or journey via the bridge of skulls to the northern side of the Wall to explore and form new non-stone settlements, together with the survivors who never retreated south. They refer to themselves as the Free Folk.
  • It takes hundreds of years to complete the Wall, and thousands to reach the current height, according to George himself:  So Spake Martin, September 10 2010, The Wall
Brandon the Builder’s Works

I also have a very speculative timeline proposal for the order in which Brandon’s architectural feats were accomplished. His first feat is Storm’s End, not the Wall. When he helped Durran of the Age of Heros, Brandon was an anonymous boy, just learning and testing his skills in the secret cave of the children of the forest. I suspect that as a greenseer he may have seen Mel’s shadow killing the future Cortnay Penrose, and this prompted Brandon the Builder to get the local CotF to ward the castle against shadows. Ravens, skinchanging willing minds (even human) and weirwoods were used to communicate the “building” to Durran.

The success of Storm’s End and finally having convinced the CotF helps to forge the alliance between the proto Night’s Watch, CotF and giants. Brandon convinces this early Night’s Watch to use ice to build a far more ambitious wall. The material is freely available and in abundance. Giants help carry and place it. But his true motivation have been once again a glimpse of the future, including dragons that can melt stone, but hate the cold of ice during Alyssane’s visit of the Wall. Spells are used as they were in Storm’s End to prevent the Others, white shadows, and their magic (wights) from passing the Wall. Originally only one gate is built, the Black Gate, beneath the wall, with a magical weirwood door that can only be opened by a man who can recite the creed of the Night’s Watch. I suspect the deal between CotF, giants and the Night’s Watch is that the Night’s Watch will open the Black Gate for them when in need in return for the labor of the giants on the Wall and the CotF gifting mined and worked dragonglass tools.

Brandon returns home and intends to build a permanent stone castle, having a similar purpose as Storm’s End, but as a protection against the cold and Others instead of stormwinds. He has no funding for the stone that needs to be quarried and taken up river, however. He learns that Uthor Hightower is looking for someone to build a permanent stone tower with living quarters instead of a wooden beacon at Oldtown. He contacts Uthor via raven, claiming he was the boy who helped Durran build Storm’s End and who helped raise the Wall. In return for economical support, he will help Uthor with his Hightower. And as with the Wall and Storm’s End he may have seen a glimpse of the future that involves Euron attacking Oldtown that may have motivated him to also install wards for the tower as well and ensuring its beacon cannot be doused. tWoW should shed more light on that (wink). Uthor is pleased and pays up, after which Brandon raises Winterfell, and Durran or his son learn of the identity of the boy wonder who helped him build a castle so many years ago during the Long Night.

The Night’s King Timeline

As you notice, nothing of this time in history fits with the Night’s King tale. Wildlings or Free Folk do not yet exist as a concept in the tales of either Brandon the Builder, last hero, Long Night or the building of the Wall. Kings are hardly a common concept either. And clearly Winterfell does not yet exist during the Long Night as a king’s seat nor the lands called Brandon’s Gift. Whereas all of these concepts, titles, castles, the Wall and land are crucial to the era of the Night’s King legend.

It requires quite a few generations after living in the lands beyond the Wall, for Free folk to unite behind a king-beyond-the-wall: they migrated to be free from petty kings in the first place. It takes envy for what the people have south of the Wall to want the Wall to come down and thus serious disparity between the civilizations north and south of the Wall and thus time counted in generations. It takes generations for the Free Folk to forget why it was ever built in the first place or not fear it anymore, and to assume that giants whose ancestors allegedly helped build it would want to tear it down.

The same goes for the Stark side. It took allegedly over a decade for a King of Winter to want to intervene. King of Winter is the most ancient title that Stark Kings styled themselves after: when the Starks but were one of the many petty kings north of the Neck. They only claim to be King in the North once all of the North between the Neck and Brandon’s gift is ruled by them, rebellions by Boltons and Skagosi notwithstanding. This means that Brandon the Breaker, a King of Winter, lived after the Long Night, but in the centuries before House Stark dominated all of the North. He had wars to fight with rivaling petty kings and was unlikely to muster an army as big as the Night’s Watch itself. This was no doubt one of the main reasons he had to form an alliance with Joramun, the king-beyond-the-Wall, once he decided to stamp out Night’s King reign.

The lag in response, however, implies an other issue. If Brandon the Breaker would have had direct weirnet and greenseer raven reports on the doings of the Night’s King, he would have attempted to form alliances far sooner. The fact that it took thirteen years suggest he had little else to go by other than rumors and therefore easily dismissed them, especially if the Night’s King was kin of Brandon the Breaker indeed. Reliance on rumors, however, implies an era where communication with children of the forest and greenseeing had broken down for House Stark. In fact there are several events where some Stark king – we do not know who as of yet – chased off giants or warred a warg king and children of the forest, killing greenseers in the process.

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. […] 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 and 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. (tWoIaF – The North: Kings of Winter)

Who these Kings of Winter were, we do not know. There are many more rival petty kings that were put to the sword or forced to bend the knee than those I picked as quotes. But these especially paint a specific picture of Kings of Winter gradually destroying the alliance they had with giants and children of the forest, brokered by Brandon the Builder. Surely, Brandon the Breaker’s name implies he was one of those kings who broke with the children of the forest. I would not be surprised at all if we learn that Brandon the Breaker was the King of Winter who killed the warg king, his greenseers and allied children of the forest. I certainly would not be surprised whatsoever that he did this after listening too much to a grey maester from Oldtown in his household who would also dismiss out of hand any tales about an Other ruling in the Nightfort. And again, the argument remains that it would take several generations and centuries for a King of Winter undoing almost all what Brandon the Builder as last hero had accomplished.

Finally, we focus on the timeline implications on the Night’s King himself. The fact that he declared himself king not only shows what potential personality issues he had, but that he had resources to feel that entitled:

  • a united army big enough to take any threat from the south: the Night’s Watch (even if he had southern walls)
  • strong stone fortifications: the stone Nightfort and others
  • and lands: Brandon’s Gift

None of that fits with the era of the Long Night, but very much with the era afterwards while the North is divided and warring over who is the true King in the North. It also shows he did not fear an alliance of First Men with CotF and giants such as existed at the end of the Long Night. Now, while some of you may argue that the absence of CotF and giants in the Night’s King story matches their absence for most of the Long Night and therefore might be evidence that the Night’s King legend occurred during the Long Night, it ignores all the evidence of the Wall, the united Night’s Watch and complex stone architecture belonging to the era after the Long Night, after the Age of Heroes, instead of ringforts, Starks as Kings of Winter, etc. My reply is that alliances with CotF and greenseers (and giants) have been formed, broken, reformed, and broken again over and over. Society can have similar issues repeatedly, centuries later, despite evolved technology, titles and remapping of borders.

Another timeline detail are the thirteen years and how it relates to George’s description of the Long Night as being generation-long. The term generation is used in various ways:

  • people who are born around the same time: in our society we have boomers, gen-X, gen-Y, millennials, …
  • the average period for people to be born and grow up into adulthood and have children of their own,
  • or all the people of various ages that collectively experienced the same significant event

The first meaning barely applies on Planetos, since social and technological evolution is minimal at best. Across a timeline of ten thousand years we can at best divide uncountable generations into Dawn Age First Men, Age of heroes, post Long Night First Men, Andalised and Conquered by Targaryens.

The second meaning is applicable in George’s Planetos, because he often has children as young as thirteen get wedded, bedded and pregnant. So, the thirteen year reign of the Night’s King can be considered to count as one generation in the second meaning. Though officially no one is considered to be an adult until sixteen. Through maester Yandel, GRRM explicitly clarifies, however, to regard the Long Night in the third meaning: we are told it lasted a lifetime, as people were born and died without ever knowing spring. So, the duration of the Long Night was longer than thirteen years.

Finally, we get the information both from Old Nan as well as measter Yandel that the Night’s King was the thirteenth Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. You may be suspicious of course of the number thirteen here. No doubt, George had symbolical reasons to pick this number. There are a manifold of superstitions about the number: unlucky and Friday the 13th. Judas Escariot was one of the thirteen at the Last Supper who betrayed Jesus Christ. The 13th baktun signifies the end of the Mayan calendar and is regarded as the harbinger of an apocalypse. All of this is reflected in the Night’s King: a traitor, aiding an Other to bring a new apocalypse to Westeros. There is even a link to femininity with the Corpse Queen, for a year includes thirteen moon times. So, you are free to doubt whether the Lord Commander was actually the thirteenth Lord Commander or not. However, the superstition of the number thirteen does not seem to be a thing in Westerosi culture. With that I mean that in-world the number thirteen is not used to demonize a person or event, beyond the Night’s King legend. After all, in the legend of the last hero, the last hero has twelve companions, and so also makes for a total of thirteen. It therefore is quite possible that the Night’s King was indeed the thirteenth Lord Commander.

If so, we can thus wonder how long after the Long Night he would have lived. Some Lord Commanders would have served in that position but a few years, others may have led the Night’s Watch for six decades (such as Osric Stark, who was chosen to be Lord Commander at ten, but served sixty years in that position). So, we cannot use an average of years of life or years of being Lord Commander here. We can however use the number of Targaryen kings and Stark Lords to have a vague idea. For example, in the World Book we get a part of the Stark lineage. It starts with Lord Benjen Stark, who was born in 84 AC and was Lord Stark during the reign of Viserys I (yes the Targaryen king you can now see in the HBO show House of the Dragon). We do not know when exactly Benjen Stark became Lord of Winterfell, but we do know when Viserys I became king: 101 AC. If you then count the number of Lords Stark, including Lord Benjen Stark, until you get to Robb Stark, we have twelve Starks ruling the North. Robb Stark died in 299 AC. So, it takes about 200 years for there to be a thirteenth Stark of Winterfell since Lord Benjen Stark, and likely longer given that we should suspect Brandon the Builder to have been a greenseer with an extra long life.

We can do something similar with the Targaryen kings. We start with Aegon I whose reign began in 1 AC. And the twelfth king was Daeron II the Good, who died in 209 AC. So, we have 208 years precisely before the thirteenth king Aerys I becomes King of the Iron Throne. Note that I counted Rhaenyra and Aegon II  as one timeline monarch for this exercise. A Lord Commander serves for life. He cannot be chased off, voted out and then reinstated again. A succession war between several claimants has different counting results as a mutiny does at the Night’s Watch.

Finally, we can also count backwards. Because of the war of five kings I will use the same tactic as I did between Rhaenyra and Aegon II for Joffrey, Tommen and Stannis. Stannis outlived Joffrey, but we do not yet know whether Stannis will outlive Tommen. So, I start counting backwards with Robert Baratheon as the twelfth, who died in 298 AC. The first of these twelve monarchs would be Aegon III the Unlucky. His reign started in 131 AC. Then we have 167 years, before the thirteenth can be seen as a victorious Baratheon.

Now, it is doubtful that it is coincidence that twice George worked out two different lineages in the World Book that cover both around 200 years. I do suspect that George was going for two hundred years, because he made a point of having twelve Starks in the World Book lineage. But give or take the Night’s King would have become the thirteenth Lord Commander some 170 to 210 years after the Long Night. And we can understand how much people can forget a threat in that little time, just by considering the impact the Dance of the Dragons had on the realm. Roughly one hundred thirty years after conquering Westeros with dragons, the Targaryens lose all of their dragons, emboldening Lords across the realm to support Blackfyre rebellions little over sixty years later, until a rebellion finally succeeds one hundred fifty years after the Dance, in 283 AC. By 300 AC the tales about a Targaryen with three dragons in Essos are dismissed as rumors, rather than taken into account as an actual potential threat.

Cycles of three

The final argument for the Long Night and the Night’s King to be regarded as separate events is a literary one – George’s habit of writing in cycles of three. The Long Night was the first confrontation between humanity and the Others. The Night’s King was a second effort by the Others to go against humanity in Westeros. The current timeline events depict their third known effort.

Synopsis (tl;tr)

George wrote the history of the Long Night and the Night’s King to fit his rhythm and storytelling of three: thrice the Others attempt to conquer Westeros over everything that lives there. First there was the Long Night, and circa 170-200 years later after the Battle of the Dawn there is a second attempt with the help of the Night’s King.

Neither the Night’s Watch or the Wall have a clear cut beginning, but we do know the foundations and proto version of it were formed in response to the threat of the Others during the Long Night. The same is true for the stories about Brandon the Builder, who in some stories is a boy aiding a Durrandon, one of the heroes of the Age of Heroes in building Storm’s End, but is also known to have been the founder of the dynasty of the Starks as Kings of Winter and built Winterfell after the Long Night, but also helped build the Wall, bringing in the help of giants and children of the forest. Furthermore, Brandon the Builder (or Bran) has an arc that matches with Bran Stark of 300 AC, who is also a boy looking for the children of the forest to get their aid and learns their language by becoming a greenseer. And since the story of the last hero also matches with Bran Stark’s projected arc where he will lose his companions, we also have a connection between Brandon the Builder as last hero, an overarching figure between the Age of Heroes and the unnamed era of construction. In other words, Brandon the Builder is the last hero.

The claim that Brandon the Builder (and the CotF) was responsible for building Storm’s End, the Wall, the Hightower and Winterfell may seem absurd at first glance, but becomes less absurd considering he must have been a greenseer to learn the language of the CotF: not only would he have had a longer lifespan like Bloodraven does, he could have communicated remotely in various ways with King Durrandon of Storm’s End and the Hightowers at Oldtown, never needing to travel there even. We can even come up with a logical timeline for when these were built. He begins in Storm’s End when he was still a boy and hiding with the CotF, then puts what he learned from that place into practice at the Wall. Then after the ending of the Long Night, he wishes to build Winterfell, but lacking funds he offers his help to build the stone Hightower in exchange for his material needs for Winterfell. The Hightower is a success and he finally raises Winterfell.

It is perfectly fine if you disbelieve this to have been the truth, but George has a reason to link all these constructions to Bran the Builder. He uses these constructions and especially their warding spells in the current timeline and the past to story arcs that either involve the historical Night’s King (the Wall) or present characters featuring aspects of the Night’s King and his corpse queen: Mel with her shadow baby at Storm’s End and whatever she will do to the Wall in tWoW, and Euron heading for Oldtown. By alleging they were all built by the one and the same greenseer to prevent shadows from passing through walls, George effectively gives us links to better understand the present as well as the past interchangeably.

Winterfell and the North as Underworld

So far, the Chthonic voyage into the Crypts gave us the insight how Lyanna fits the profile of Persephone, and how as Queen of the Underworld she haunts and curses Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon, making both of them tragic heroes. Ned’s voyage from Crypts to Dungeons suggests the Starks may have a deep connection with the underworld and that it might actually be their source of power. We also deduced out of this exploration a chthonic lexicon that George RR Martin uses for further reference in other scenes, point of views and chapters.

With this essay we investigate whether the underworld extends beyond the crypts – Winterfell castle, the godswood and the North in general.

The godswood of Winterfell

As we leaf from Ned’s crypt chapter to Catelyn’s first chapter, we enter the godswood with her, meet the heart tree, and Ned Stark through her eyes. The very first thing we learn and read in her chapter is that she never liked Winterfell’s godswood.

Catelyn had never liked this godswood.
She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers.
The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshapen roots wrestled beneath the soil. This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no names.
But she knew she would find her husband here tonight. Whenever he took a man’s life, afterward he would seek the quiet of the godswood. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Right at the start of Catelyn’s first chapter, George contrasts Riverrun and its godswood that was Catelyn’s home when she was still a maiden with that of Winterfell’s. Like Robert’s speech that symbolizes life, the same is true for Riverrun’s godswood. Riverrun is far to the south. Its godswood is bright and thus full of light. Streams and birds make sound and are changeable. And the air smells of spices and flowers. The paragraph evokes the senses, a garden where one can see, hear and smell.

But the godswood of Winterfall is dark, untouched, moist, decaying. It is earthy, twisted, misshapen, black, brooding and deeply silent. It is has been ever-present, as old as time itself almost. It is stubborn, has needles, weaves, and with an overhead canopy it blocks the sky and it is as if you  are in an underworld. The names of those who dwell there are eventually forgotten – nameless. With so many chthonic lexicon words used for the godswood, and one even for the castle, this already suggests Winterfell and its godwood represent the underworld.

“How can that be?” you may ask. Crypts and dungeons as underworld setting where the dead ar buried or the imprisoned are left to die and be forgotten is not that odd. But the godswood and the castle where living characters work, play and dwell might seem a contradiction to being dead. But in mythology, the underworld is a world all by itself, with different regions, places and levels. It only takes a crossing from one bank to the other with the help of the ferryman Charon as long as you pay him an obol, or a sea voyage west to the edge of the living world where the sun sets, or a journey passing several gates. And once you are in the underworld there are castles, islands, rivers, mountains, meadows and hellish nether regions, including characters that work, play and dwell. In fact, in ancient mythology, the underworld is not that much different from earth. It is a second world. And George actually refers to this concept in Theon’s chapter during the wedding of Ramsay to Jeyne Poole in Winterfell’s godswood.

The mists were so thick that only the nearest trees were visible; beyond them stood tall shadows and faint lights. Candles flickered beside the wandering path and back amongst the trees, pale fireflies floating in a warm grey soup. It felt like some strange underworld, some timeless place between the worlds, where the damned wandered mournfully for a time before finding their way down to whatever hell their sins had earned them. Are we all dead, then? Did Stannis come and kill us in our sleep? Is the battle yet to come, or has it been fought and lost? (aDwD, Prince of Winterfell, courtesy Blackfyre Bastard)

The life-death contrast continues when Catelyn’s Faith of the Seven is set against that of the First Men, against her husband’s worship. The Faith uses smell, song, color and light. The gods have faces and names.

Catelyn had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the rainbow of light that filled the sept of Riverrun. She was of the Faith, like her father and grandfather and his father before him. Her gods had names, and their faces were as familiar as the faces of her parents. Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a seven-sided crystal alive with light, voices raised in song. The Tullys kept a godswood, as all the great houses did, but it was only a place to walk or read or lie in the sun. Worship was for the sept.
For her sake, Ned had built a small sept where she might sing to the seven faces of god, but the blood of the First Men still flowed in the veins of the Starks, and his own gods were the old ones, the nameless, faceless gods of the greenwood they shared with the vanished children of the forest.

The Faith of the Seven is a faith that focuses on life, celebrates life. While they acknowledge death itself with the Stranger aspect, barely anyone worships the Stranger. The Song of the Seven does not even contain a stanza for the Stranger. And while the Stranger can be regarded as a name, it is faceless, masked or hidden behind a shroud, Unseen. Not even the gender is definable.

And the seventh face . . . the Stranger was neither male nor female, yet both, ever the outcast, the wanderer from far places, less and more than human, unknown and unknowable. Here the face was a black oval, a shadow with stars for eyes. It made Catelyn uneasy. She would get scant comfort there.(aCoK, Catelyn IV)

George stresses the facelesness and namelesness of death in Catelyn’s thoughts. Unless we use modern reconstructive software, DNA testing and forenisch research, the dead lose their identity as they decay and only bones are left. Skeletons look alike, stripped from rank, status, gender,  faces, and thus also their names. This concept is still reflected in our modern day usage of John and Jane Doe – the name for a dead person whose identity is unknown.

The Old Gods of course are not actual gods – they are greenseers living under the ground, tapping into the roots of the weirnet to see the past and the future, and able to prolong their lifetime by merging with the roots of weirtrees, beyond the time given to the family and friends who once knew the greenseer. Later generations would forget his or her name.

Meera’s gloved hand tightened around the shaft of her frog spear. “Who sent you? Who is this three-eyed crow?”
“A friend. Dreamer, wizard, call him what you will. The last greenseer.” (aDwD, Bran II)

When Meera Reed had asked him his true name, he made a ghastly sound that might have been a chuckle. “I wore many names when I was quick, but even I once had a mother, and the name she gave me at her breast was Brynden.”
“I have an uncle Brynden,” Bran said. “He’s my mother’s uncle, really. Brynden Blackfish, he’s called.”
“Your uncle may have been named for me. Some are, still. Not so many as before. Men forget. Only the trees remember.” (aDwD, Bran III)

The only names and identities that are remembered are the Lords of Winterfell who get a statue of their likenness in the crypts. The other Stark bones are normally buried without a face and without a name in the tombs.

So, we have the unidentifiable Stranger as personification of death, and so are pretty much the greenseers. Meanwhile the rulers of Winterfell, both in the crypts and in the godswood cleaning the blood of their execution sword have names and faces. And this difference is significant. In mythologies the personification of death is not always the ruler of the underworld. The ruler is often not even dead. This seems to apply in aSoIaF when we consider Winterfell as a whole as an underworld, and not just the crypts.

Underground Pools and Rivers

At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the waters were black and cold. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Above is the first description in the series of a weirwood tree, a heart tree in a godswood, and the small pool. In several mythologies specific pools, wells or rivers are an important feature of the underworld. For example, Hades has five rivers. Two of these have a significant underworld function. The newly dead are ferried across the Acheron (river of sorrow, or woe) by Charon if they pay him an obol, from earth to the underworld. When the shades of the dead have crossed they are to drink from the Lethe (river of oblivion) – which can be a river, pool or well – so that they forget their life and can reincarnate. Thus the Lethe relates to the concept of loss of names and faces, of identity. Meanwhile, some mystic schools speak of the Lethe having a secret counterpart – the Mnemosyne (memory). The initiates were advized to drink from the Mnemosyne instead of the Lethe when they died to gain omniscience and remember everything.

Could the cold, black pool in the godswood be a reference to the Grecian Lethe? Might it even have a similar power? At the moment these questions cannot be answered with certainty without further information.

Ovid claimed the Lethe passed through the cave of Hypnos (god of sleep), and its murmur would bring drowsiness to the listener. While sleep is not death, the state of oblivion in sleep is often philosophically compared to that of death.1 Hence, Hypnos’ cave was located in Hades. Though it is purely speculative, several readers have wondered whether the underground river in Bloodraven’s cave might travel all the way under the Wall and is connected to the godswood pool. So, let us examine a few quotes from Bran’s chapters in a Dance with Dragons from the cave.

The last part of their dark journey was the steepest. Hodor made the final descent on his arse, bumping and sliding downward in a clatter of broken bones, loose dirt, and pebbles. The girl child was waiting for them, standing on one end of a natural bridge above a yawning chasm. Down below in the darkness, Bran heard the sound of rushing water. An underground river.
“Do we have to cross?” Bran asked, as the Reeds came sliding down behind him. The prospect frightened him. If Hodor slipped on that narrow bridge, they would fall and fall.
No, boy,” the child said. “Behind you.” She lifted her torch higher, and the light seemed to shift and change. One moment the flames burned orange and yellow, filling the cavern with a ruddy glow; then all the colors faded, leaving only black and white. Behind them Meera gasped. Hodor turned.
Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sat dreaming in a tangled nest of roots, a woven weirwood throne that embraced his withered limbs as a mother does a child.
…[snip]…
The chamber echoed to the sound of the black river. (aDwD, Bran II)

We have a cave setting and a river running through it. And in the hall beside the chasm where the river runs at the bottom of it, Bloodraven is dreaming. Instead of writing a gaping chasm, George used yawning, which of course has the double entendre of the yawning we do when we are sleepy. So, we do actually seem to have references here of Lethe passing through Hypnos’ cave. On top of that, we also get a river crossing reference, and how Bran fears it might be the death of them if they do try to cross. This brings the Acheron to mind. Leaf’s answer implies this river is not to be confused with the Acheron. So, in a smart and neat way, George includes references to several rivers of Hades, without conflating them into one. Further interpretation and implication of this for Bran I will leave for a later chthonic essay on Bran, but at least we do seem to have the appropriate references of a Lethe-like underground river running through a dreaming cave situated in the underworld.

George ends the environment description with a black river mention. It is possible GRRM simply used black as a general reference where light is absent, but he usually tends to write dark instead of black then, while he tends to preserve black for the color description. In fact, dark is what you would actually expect here, because the river is not actually visible, just as you would have expected him to write dark water for the pool. So, there is a good chance we are meant to associate the river in the cave with the pool in Winterfell’s godswood.

Bran’s third chapter in aDwD has more of these dream-cave references and how the river sings a song. The chapter is even written in a manner as if several months went by like in a dream. Very noteworthy is this passage.

No sunlight ever reached the caves beneath the hill. No moonlight ever touched those stony halls. Even the stars were strangers there.  (aDwD, Bran III)

And that is pretty much how Hypnos’ cave is described: to never see the rise or setting of the sun, just as it does not witness noon.

If  indeed the cold, black pool of Winterfell’s godswood is connected to the underground river in Bloodraven’s cave, then several phrases and descriptions about it in the cave fit the Lethe. What is the relevance? It may have plot impact as a way for anyone in the cave to get back to Winterfell. It may have a magical forgetfulness impact if someone drinks from either the underground river or the pool. Or it may have no more significance than to serve as an environmental element to help us consider Winterfell, the North and the area beyond the Wall as an underworld on a meta-level.

The cold, black pool near the heart tree is not the sole pool in the godswood. Three other ponds are fed by an underground hot spring. Since these ponds are described as being murky green, they do not seem to be linked with the underground river of Bloodraven’s cave.

Across the godswood, beneath the windows of the Guest House, an underground hot spring fed three small ponds. Steam rose from the water day and night, and the wall that loomed above was thick with moss. Hodor hated cold water, and would fight like a treed wildcat when threatened with soap, but he would happily immerse himself in the hottest pool and sit for hours, giving a loud burp to echo the spring whenever a bubble rose from the murky green depths to break upon the surface. (aGoT, Bran VI)

Two Hades rivers might be of interest here. The Phlegethon means the flaming river, which sounds more like a lava current, than one of water. The Styx (hate) was the river where Achilles’s mother dipped him in as a child to make him invincible, except for his heel. In Greek mythology rivers or locations tend to have a deity or nymph of the same name, just as the realm Hades is ruled by Hades. So, there is a deity Phlegethon as well as a goddess Styx. Though married, Styx supposedly desired Phlegethon and was consumed by his flame. When Hades allowed her to run her course through or close the Phelegethon they were reunited. Water flowing parallel or close to a lava current would end up being heated. Such a combination could result in hot springs or ponds with steaming hot water to relax in.

Below, I give you Plato’s description of both rivers. Notice here how the Phlegethon is described as being muddy and turbid, and boiling, and how it fits George’s description of Winterfell’s bubble making, murky green hot pools.

The third river [the Pyriphlegethon] flows out between [Okeanos and Acheron], and near the place whence it issues it falls into a vast region burning with a great fire and makes a lake larger than our Mediterranean sea, boiling with water and mud. Thence it flows in a circle, turbid and muddy, and comes in its winding course, among other places, to the edge of the Akherousian lake, but does not mingle with its water. Then, after winding about many times underground, it flows into Tartaros at a lower level. This is the river which is called Pyriphlegethon, and the streams of lava which spout up at various places on earth are offshoots from it. Opposite this the fourth river issues [the Styx] . . . it passes under the earth and, circling round in the direction opposed to that of Pyriphlegethon, it meets it coming from the other way in the Akherousian lake. (Plato, Phaedo 112e ff)

The Heart Tree

The weirwood heart tree is the most obvious feature of Winterfell’s godswood.

“The heart tree,” Ned called it. The weirwood‘s bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle‘s granite walls rise around them. It was said that the children of the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow sea. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Obviously, the cut faces in the bark bring the religious practice of tree worship to mind, something the Celts were famously known to do. Their most sacred tree was the oak and specifically tied to druid practice. Overall, the oak is the most sacred in any Indo-European mythology and associated with a thunder deity – the Greek Zeus, Norse Thor, Germanic Donar, Balthic Perkon, Celtic Taranis, and Slavic Perun. The likely reason for this thunder deity connection is the fact that oak trees have a higher chance of being struck by lightning than any other tree of the same height.

In Zeus’s 4000 year old oracle, Dodona in Epirus, the oak tree stood in the heart of the precinct. And the priests and priestesses interpreted the rustling of the leaves as the counsel given by Zeus. He was worshipped there as Zeus Naios, meaning “god of the spring below the oak“. In Homer’s Illiad, Achilles prays to Zeus, “Lord of Dodona, Pelasgian, living afar off, brooding over wintry Dodona.”According to Herodotus the Peleiades were the sacred women of the grove of Dodona. Peleiades means a flock of doves and is not to be confused with the Pleiades (seven nymphs that were sisters). According to legend the oracle of Zeus was founded there, because a black dove who spoke human language instructed people to do so.

The weirwood tree obviously is not an oak and the existence of oaks in Westeros sets the two tree genera apart. Nor does Ned Stark have much in common with Zeus or any thunder god. Still, a lot of the Greek oak worship fits the introduction of the heart tree of Winterfell’s godswood:

  • The weirwood tree is a heart tree, the heart of the godswood. And in King’s Landing where Robert is king – who has plenty of thunder stormgod references – the heart tree is an oak.
  • Catelyn described the heart tree as brooding. Meanwhile that brooding heart tree stands in wintry Winterfell, that lies far off [from the rest of Westeros]. This fits Homer’s reference in the Illiad.
  • Ned Stark sits under the heart tree beside the pool/spring, and could be called Ned Naios.
  • Murders of ravens tend to gather in the branches of weirwood trees: in Winterfell after it is burned, at Raventree, in the wildling village where Sam and Gilly are attacked by wights before meeting Coldhands, at the Citadel’s weirwood in Oldtown. Ravens are not doves, but in Westeros they have our earthly role of messenger birds (doves). Meanwhile black doves seem as rare as white ravens of the Citadel. And finally, the ravens once spoke their message instead of carrying it. Some ravens still oracle and instruct with human speech.
  • Osha tells Bran how the Old Gods speak via the rustling of the leaves.

Fair.” The raven landed on his shoulder. “Fair, far, fear.” It flapped its wings, and screamed along with Gilly. The wights were almost on her. He heard the dark red leaves of the weirwood rustling, whispering to one another in a tongue he did not know. The starlight itself seemed to stir, and all around them the trees groaned and creaked. Sam Tarly turned the color of curdled milk, and his eyes went wide as plates. Ravens! They were in the weirwood, hundreds of them, thousands, perched on the bone-white branches, peering between the leaves. He saw their beaks open as they screamed, saw them spread their black wings. Shrieking, flapping, they descended on the wights in angry clouds. They swarmed round Chett’s face and pecked at his blue eyes, they covered the Sisterman like flies, they plucked gobbets from inside Hake’s shattered head. There were so many that when Sam looked up, he could not see the moon.
“Go,” said the bird on his shoulder. “Go, go, go.” (aSoS, Samwell III)

A faint wind sighed through the godswood and the red leaves stirred and whispered. Summer bared his teeth. “You hear them, boy?” a voice asked.
Bran lifted his head. Osha stood across the pool, beneath an ancient oak, her face shadowed by leaves.
…[snip]…
Bran commanded her. “Tell me what you meant, about hearing the gods.”
Osha studied him. “You asked them and they’re answering. Open your ears, listen, you’ll hear.”
Bran listened. “It’s only the wind,” he said after a moment, uncertain. “The leaves are rustling.”
Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?” …[snip]… “They see you, boy. They hear you talking. That rustling, that’s them talking back.” (aGoT, Bran VI)

When Samwell and Gilly are attacked by wights on their way tot he Wall, having escaped the mutiny at Craster’s, they cry out how it’s “not fair”. But it’s rather the other way around. Life is unfair, and death is fair, since everybody is to die. The raven on Samwell’s shoulder instantly corrects him: “Fair, far, fear,” he says. Or in other words: death is fair, far, and feared. The raven speaks as oracle. Though ravens are chthonic messengers, aka psychopomps, in this scene they act like guardians and are ready to feast on the dead – the wights. They are carrion eaters after all. And in doing that they save Sam and Gilly and prevent the wights to escape or wreak any more havoc. Finally, the raven instructs Samwell to go.

In the second quoted scene, there are no ravens, but Osha explains how the Old Gods speak to him by rustling the leaves with wind. Notice too, how Osha here stands “across” the (cold, black) pool, beneath an oak (the tree worshipped by the Greeks), and stands in the shaodw. Both her position at the other side of a body of water and the shadow identify Osha as a chthonic charachter. She is like a dead person advizing Bran from the other side. She also proceeds to oracle to Bran, telling him that Robb is taking his bannermen the wrong way, to South of the Neck, and ought to take them North of the Wall.

The World Tree and the Well of Fate

There are some aspects of the heart tree that possibly cannot refer to Greek mythology since the Greeks had no world tree concept. A world tree is a collossal tree that supports creation, reaches into the heavens with its branches, while its roots make up the underworld and the trunk is like the earth’s axis. This motif can be found in Scandinavian, Slavic, Siberian, North and Meso-American mythology.² One of the best known world trees is the Scandinavian Yggdrasil of Norse mythology – an immense evergreen ash tree with three far reaching roots, each ending at a well, pool or lake with different purposes at distinct locations/worlds.

31. Three roots there are | that three ways run
‘Neath the ash-tree Yggdrasil;
‘Neath the first lives Hel, | ‘neath the second the frost-giants,
‘Neath the last are the lands of men. (Poetic Edda, Grimnismol)

yggdrasils-roots

I will show that George RR Martin also puts weirwoods in different worlds and locations, as distinct in function as Norse mythology in does.

  1. Winterfell’s godswood and heart tree beside a pool with the crypts nearby.
  2. Bloodraven’s cave with an underground river rushing through a yawning chasm in a cold winterland where giants still roam.
  3. Hollow Hill in the Riverlands that does not feature a pool explicitly but is in the heart of the Riverlands with undead humans ruling.
  4. The Isle of Faces, an island, in the middle of a lake called the Gods Eye, in the Riverlands where greenmen guard a large grove of weirwood trees.
  5. A twisted, angry looking weirwood tree at Harrenhall.
  6. A weirwood tree in the Rock’s godswood that grew queer and twisted with tangled roots that have all but filled the cave where it stands, choking out all other growth.
  7. Three weirwood trees, known as the Three Singers, in Higharden’s lush green godswood whose branches have grown so entangled that they appear almost as a single tree with three trunks. Here too its branches reach over a tranquil pool.

The two main sources for Norse mythology both confirm and contradict each other about info on Yggdrasil’s roots. In the Ballad of Grimnir (Grimnismol) of the Poetic Edda – poems gathered in the 13th century from 10th century traditional sources, pre-dating the Christianization – it is said that underneath the three roots are the following worlds: Hel which lies in Niflheim, Jötunheimr (land of the frost-giants), and Midgard (world of men). The Prose Edda – written in the 13th century with the author Snorri Sturluson a Christian – agrees with Hel and Jötunheimr, but claims the third root to end in Asgard (land of the AEsir,  the gods), instead of Midgard. For the mythological connections in aSoIaF the disctinction matters less, because all locations are part of Westeros on Planetos, with mortal men. And regardless of their differences, both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda identify the same well or lake at either the Midgard or Asgard root: the Urdarbrunnr.

19. An ash I know, | Yggdrasil its name,
With water white | is the great tree wet;
Thence come the dews | that fall in the dales,
Green by Urth’s well | does it ever grow.

20. Thence come the maidens | mighty in wisdom,
Three from the lake | down ‘neath the tree;
Urth is one named, | Verthandi the next,–
On the wood they scored,– | and Skuld the third.
Laws they made there, and life allotted
To the sons of men, and set their fates. (Poetic Edda, Völuspá)

Three women reside at the Urdarbrunnr. They are Norns, the Germanic concept of the three Greek Fates. Norse mythology has more than three Norns, but only three live at the well – Urdr (fate), Verdandi (happening or present) and Skuld (debt or future). They spin threads of life, cut prphetic runes into wooden poles and measure the destinies of people and gods. Obviously their names make them the respresenatives of the past, present and future.

For this essay, especially Winterfell’s weirwood and pond location in relation to Norse mythology is of particular interest. Niflheim with Hel is the equivalent of the Greek Hades. It is a world of primordial ice and cold. That would seem to fit the North and Winterfell at a first glance. Niflheim means “mist world” or “mist home”, however, and  features nine rivers. On top of that it is ruled by a woman called Hel, nor does she have a consort. In short, there are a few too many references that do not make Winterfell match with Niflheim.

There are also too many inconsistencies for Winterfell to be located in Jötunheimr, where the frost giants live and the primordial Giinungagap (gaping chasm or yawning void) is located. The well at that root is is one of wisdom, and only a very few can drink from it in payment of a self-sacrifice. A barrier separates Jötunheimr from Asgard in order to keep the frost giants out. Westeros has a far better candidate than Winterfell to match with the root and well in Jötunheimr – namely Bloodraven’s cave.

This leaves only Midgard or Asgard at the Urdarbrunnr as a possible match for Winterfell. The Norse creation story claims there were only two worlds in the beginning – a world of ice (Niflheim) and a world of fire (Muspelheim). Where the two worlds met a creation steam formed, and all the other seven worlds were born from it. The unique hot springs of Winterfell and the name – winter fell – suggest Winterfell is the middle, rather than the extreme north. From that perspective it would match Midgard as a root location much better. After all, the Stark family and Winterfell are arguably also the main story (aside from Daenarys and Tyrion).

Meanwhile, the crypts and statues of Kings of Winter and Lords of Winterfell with swords in their laps can be said to resemble slain heroes in Valhalla of Asgard (hall of the slain/the fallen). Theon’s dream of the feast of the dead in Winterfell’s hall would add to that impression. The large Winterfell hall is full of noble guests, filled with music and laughter with wine and roast served by girls. In Valhalla the warriors drink mead, eat undefined meat dish³ and Valkyries serve it all.

That night he dreamed of the feast Ned Stark had thrown when King Robert came to Winterfell. The hall rang with music and laughter, though the cold winds were rising outside. At first it was all wine and roast meat, and Theon was making japes and eyeing the serving girls and having himself a fine time . . . (aCoK, Theon V)

Next, Theon notices the whole atmosphere growing dark and realizes he is feasting with the dead instead of the living. As in Hades, the dead still have their mortal wounds, the majority having died violently: Robert with his guts spilling out, a headless Eddard, decaying corpses, … The dead are described in a certain order related to time: first the present (from aGoT to aCoK), then the past (pre-aGoT) and finally the future (post-aCoK).

until he noticed that the room was growing darker. The music did not seem so jolly then; he heard discords and strange silences, and notes that hung in the air bleeding. Suddenly the wine turned bitter in his mouth, and when he looked up from his cup he saw that he was dining with the dead.

King Robert sat with his guts spilling out on the table from the great gash in his belly, and Lord Eddard was headless beside him. Corpses lined the benches below, grey-brown flesh sloughing off their bones as they raised their cups to toast, worms crawling in and out of the holes that were their eyes. He knew them, every one; … [snip]… and all the others who had ridden south to King’s Landing never to return. Mikken and Chayle sat together, one dripping blood and the other water…[snip]… even the wildling Theon had killed in the wolfswood the day he had saved Bran’s life.

But there were others with faces he had never known in life, faces he had seen only in stone. The slim, sad girl who wore a crown of pale blue roses and a white gown spattered with gore could only be Lyanna. Her brother Brandon stood beside her, and their father Lord Rickard just behind. Along the walls figures half-seen moved through the shadows, pale shades with long grim faces. The sight of them sent fear shivering through Theon sharp as a knife.

And finally Robb and Grey Wind enter the hall. When Theon has his dream, Robb is still in the Westerlands, most likely having just married Jeyne Westerling. Robb married her after taking her maidenhood when he had comfort-sex with her, grieving of the news that Theon had killed Bran and Rickon.

And then the tall doors opened with a crash, and a freezing gale blew down the hall, and Robb came walking out of the night. Grey Wind stalked beside, eyes burning, and man and wolf alike bled from half a hundred savage wounds. (aCoK, Theon V)

So we have the fallen and the slain feasting in a hall, heroes and heroines of the past, the present as well as arrivals of the future, which combines the concept of Valhalla with the three Fates, and thus the Yggdrasil root (underworld) location of the Urdarbrunnr at Asgard.

Alternatively, Highgarden’s godswood may fit the model too. The Reach seems pretty much the land of milk and honey, rich in food, drink and money. The name Highgarden would seem like a good alternative to a heavenly garden of the gods such as Asgard (garden of the gods). Its godswood too is said to have a pool, and the three weirwoods are called the Three Singers. This seems an allusion to Shakespeare’s Macbeth which includes Three Witches who prophesy Macbeth’s rise to power but also his downfall. They are alternatively known as the Weird Sisters. Many editions include a footnote to explain that at Shakespeare’s time the word weird was a different spelling of the Old English wyrd, but carried the same meaning – fate.

Consider the PIE root *wert- (to turn, rotate) and its different variations in European languages in the table below.

PIE root Old Norse Old English Old Saxon English Common Gemanic Old High German Dutch German
*wert- urdr wyrd wurd weird *wurdíz wurt worden werden

All these words encompass the meaning of “to come to pass, to become, to be due” and were used for the concept of fate. The Old English wyrd (fate) eventually developed into the modern English adjective weird. Its use develops in the 15th century to mean “having power to control fate”, for example in the name of the Weird Sister. The modern meaning as “odd, strange” is only first attested in 1815, but its usage is then still tied to the supernatural or portentious. It is not until the early 20th century that it is increasingly applied to everyday situations, although in fantasy literature and Frank Herbert’s Dune words such as wyrd and weird are often again associated with the supernatural and with divination powers.

Now, weird- or wyrd- is not exactly the same as weir- and a weir is a pre-existing word that is used to indicate either a type of dam or fishing trap, and anologies can be made how the weirwood trees trap Children of the Forest, Bloodraven, … But I think it is most likely that George derived weir- from weird. One reason is that weirdwood does not flow as easily in pronunciation as weirwood, and since George is not a linguist as Tolkien was, he simply dropped the consontant ‘d’. Let us not ignore that George Martin’s weirwood tree harks back to the fate concept in how it is used to watch events in Westeros from the past, the present and even the future. It is after all a ‘fate tree’.

“Once you have mastered your gifts, you may look where you will and see what the trees have seen, be it yesterday or last year or a thousand ages past. Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth’s wing, and past, present, and future are one…” (aDwD, Bran III)

In a way, any weirwood tree is a well to derive the fate of a person from, but in combination with a pool and three singers, that are weird wood, in a High Garden and fields of plenty we get the most evocative representations of Yggdrasil’s root at the Urdarbrunnr. The extra connection to a weir is a bonus.

It is quite possible that both Winterfell and Highgarden are Asgard root locations equally, as each other’s counterparts. This would fit the many other times Highgarden is set against Winterfell – Robert’s life speech, the roses, Renly thinking Margaery might look like Lyanna, Loras basically re-enacting joust mummery with his grey mare and blue forget-me-nots as stand-in for Lyanna. It is as if Highgarden and Winterfell are two sides of the thematical same coin.

Aside from the three Norns, the Urdarbrunnr is of significance in relation to the color of Yggdrasil’s bark and consequentionally to the weirwood tree. Yggdrasil’s bark is said to be white, as are weirwoods. But Yggdrasil is an ash tree and ash trees don’t have white stems. Norse mythology solved the issue by claiming that Yggdrasil was daily washed white with the white water and clay/lime of the Urdarbrunnr.

It is further said that these Norns who dwell by the Well of Urdr take water of the well every day, and with it that clay which lies about the well, and sprinkle it over the Ash, to the end that its limbs shall not wither nor rot; for that water is so holy that all things which come there into the well become as white as the film which lies within the egg-shell (Prose Edda, Gylfaginning, chapter XVI)

Basically Yggdrasil is treated daily with a whitewash – a technique where wet lime is spread across house walls made of wattle mats to help isolate the dwelling. The three Norns throwing a mix of white water and clay across Yggdrasil’s stem refers to this technique of protection.

“Hold on a minute!” I hear you think. “The water of Winterfell’s pool is described as BLACK, not white.” Correct. The pool has the opposite color. But what is Ned doing under the wierwood tree, near the pool? He is washing the greatsword Ice with and in the water of the pool.

Catelyn found her husband beneath the weirwood, seated on a moss-covered stone. The greatsword Ice was across his lap, and he was cleaning the blade in those waters black as night. A thousand years of humus lay thick upon the godswood floor, swallowing the sound of her feet, but the red eyes of the weirwood seemed to follow her as she came. “Ned,” she called softly. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

So, why would George not make the pool white colored? After all, the color white belongs to the chthonic lexicon as the color of bone and snow. The issue though would have been the double meaning of whitewashing: suppressing negative information or impression to make an act, person or group of people appear better than they are. By having Ned wash Ice in black water George avoids the visual metaphor of that meaning of whitewashing.

Finally you may wonder how I can reconcile Winterfell being both an underworld (especially Greek Hades) and the Norse Asgard and/or Midgard, especially when Niflheim is the Norse underworld of the dead and yet I rejected it as the possible referenced location for Winterfell. At a first glance the Norse division of realms gives the impression that only Niflheim is the Norse Underworld, as it is the place where the dead go, including dead gods like Baldr. But a treeroot is also chthonic in nature, and Yggdrasil’s roots end up in three different realms. At least one root locale does not compare to the classic idea of an “underworld” – namely the celestial Asgard. And yet it serves as a realm for the dead, since Freyja’s palace and Odin’s palace (Walhalla) at Asgard are the final destinations of dead warriors. The fact that the three Norse wells of the three different realms are found beneath the treeroots make them chthonic, regardless whether one root ends in the heavens and the other in a nether world.

As I mentioned, there are two more locations and roots with the Yggdrasil tree that can be strongly identified with the aforementioned godswoods or weirwood root locations. I will not go into these for the moment, however. I wish to save the most of Bloodraven’s cave for Bran’s Chthonic essay, and the Riverlands and Hollow Hill for Cat’s Chthonic voyage, so I will come back to it then.

Implication

If  Winterfell, the castle and the godswood, are features of aSoIaF’s symbolical underworld, then this has narrative implications – we actually start the books in the underworld already. The crypts acted as a portal to have underworld characters cross back into the realm of the living.

  • The Prologue: introduction to the Others on the prowl and how they defy the laws of nature by raising people from death as wights; basically wights and Others represent dead shades wishing to escape from the underworld.
  • Bran’s first chapter: introduction to the ruler of the underworld Ned Stark through the eyes of his son as he judges a deserter strictly by the letter of the law and dutifully executes his judgement himself without taking pleasure in it.
  • Cat’s first chapter: introduction to the wife of the ruler of the underworld, Catelyn Stark, and how she experiences living in the underworld, not being a native to it.
  • Ned’s first chapter: festive welcoming of visitors to the underworld, and a voyage into the portal crypts where the ruler of the underworld is invited to cross to the realm of the living by the king.

Conclusion (tl;tr)

In this essay I have shown that the godswood and Winterfell are described in a manner that we can identify them as being part of an underworld as much as the crypts are by using the chthonic lexicon that I started to build with the quotes of the previous two essays. We should regard Winterfell as a whole as an underworld.

Aside from the in-world preliminary lexicon, comparison to Greek and Norse chthonic mythology yields a ton of references for Winterfell’s godwood and Bloodraven’s cave. We find surprisingly accurate references in the books to several rivers of Hades: the black, cold pool and underground river of Bloodraven’s cave with the Lethe, and the hot springs with the Phlegethon and Styx. This makes Bloodraven’s cave the equivalent to the cave of the god of sleep, Hypnos. Likewise, we also find references to link Winterfell and its pool near the weirwood tree with the Norse Urdarbrunnr  (Ned Stark washing off blood from Ice) and Valhalla (Theon’s nightmare of the feasting dead of the past, present and future). These references underline how the North and region beyond the Wall are identifiable as a chthonic realm.

I also explored several features regarding the weirwood tree in relation to the Norse world tree Yggdrasil as well as, surprisingly, the Greek oak oracle at Dodona. I say, surprisingly, because the Greeks did not have a world tree concept nor ar they renowned for tree worship as the Celts were. But Osha’s belief  on how the Old Gods communicate, the ravens that flock to weirwoods and advize Samwell, together with the Illiad’s geographical reference of the Oracle of Dodona show that Greek mythology has been a major source contributing to George’s world building, along with the Germanic and Celtic idea of the three fates, the wyrd sisters.

Summary of chthonic locations

Mythological locations or features Function aSoIaF characters
Cave of Hypnos in Hades Home of the god of sleep Bloodraven’s cave
Lethe River or pool of forgetfulness in Hades, the dead drink of it to forget their life before death in order to be allowed to reincarnate, runs along Hypnos’ cave, creates drowsiness with its murmur Cold black pool of Winterfell’s godswood, underground river in Bloodraven’s cave
Phlegethon Lava stream (river of fire) in Hades. Joins with the Styx Underground cause of the hot springs at Winterfell
Styx Murky river of hatred on which the gods vow and do not break their word. Joins with the Phlegethon. Three hot pools of Winterfell
Oracle of Dodona A sacred grove in wintry Northern Greece, where priestesses, the Peleiades (‘flock of doves’), interpreted the rustling of the leaves of a sacred oak in the heart of the grove. Legend claims a black dove flew to Dodona and instructed people in human speech to build an oracle there. Weirwood heart tree in Winterfell’s godswood, heart tree in godswood of King’s Landing (oak).
Yggdrasil World tree in Norse myth. It is an evergreen ash tree, whitened by the daily whitewash applied from the Urdarbrunnr Weirnet, weirwood trees
Valhalla One of Odin’s halls where the selected slain feast and prepare for Ragnarok.The slain are those picked by Valkyries in battle. Winterfell’s hall and crypts per Theon’s nigthmare
Urdarbrunnr The well, pool or lake of the three main Norns covering past, present and future and determining the fate of men. One of Yggdrasil’s roots ends at the Urdarbrunnr. The three Norns are otherwise known as the weird or wyrd sisters in the English tradition. They pour water and lime from the well each day over the world tree, from which it gets it white color. Two different sources locate it either in Midgard or Asgard. A hall where the gods gather is built nearby. Cold, black pool in Winterfell’s godswood, beside the weirwood, in which Ned Stark cleans his greatsword Ice. The pool beside the Three Singers (three tangled weirwood trees) in Highgarden’s godswood.
Jötunheimr Realm of the frost giants Land North of the Wall, where the giants still live
Ginnungagap The ‘yawning void’ or ‘gaping abyss’ is a primordial void from which the Norse cosmos was born and that is located in Jötunheimr The ‘yawning chasm’ in Bloodraven’s cave where the underground river runs through in the darkness.
Mimisbrunnr Well of knowledge that lies beneath one of the three roots of Yggdrasil, for which the seeker must make a sacrifice in order to be allowed to drink from it. Located in Jötunheimr. Weirnet connected to weirwood grove at Bloodraven’s cave.

Notes

  1. Not only the Greeks thought the experience of being dead is like sleeping (and dreaming), but Alan Watts refers to this belief as well in one of his 20th century speeches.
  2. It is such a popular concept in early religions and mythologies that scholars proposed an evolutionary hypothesis to explain its origin. Primates originate from ancestors who lived in trees, and the majority of them still spend a large part of their lives in trees. Thus the idea of a vast tree being our whole world might still be present in our Jungian collective subconscious as either an instinct or archetype, just as much as it is a source of survival and wisdom as a tree of life.
  3. It sometimes is translated as boar meat, but the Old Norse words Sæhrímnir is difficult to translate. Some scholars make it out to be some soothy sea-animal dish. The beast’s name though is listed by Snorri in an appendix as a boar.