Why are the free folk north of the wall

[Salagia369]

This may be a stupid question but why are the free folk north of the wall. Allegedly the wall was built 8000 years ago after the long night ended. At this point in time the stories of the others and the white walkers would be well known people wouldn't think they were just legends or fairy tales as they do currently. so why didn't the free folk move south after the long night. The wall is 700 feet tall it had to take centuries or at least decades to build. So its not as if the free folk just woke up one morning like " oh shit. Where did the wall come from?" When they noticed the Nights Watch or whomever building the wall why didn't they get the fuck out of there?

[Jak Scaletongue]

Because if they migrated south of the Wall they would have to kneel, and therefore no longer be "free" folk.  There were probably some people throughout that did move south and kneel, but they would have been integrated into Westeros culture and would cease to be "free folk."

[John Suburbs]

I don't think we need to assume it took centuries to build. I can't imagine a structure like that being built without some kind of magic, so it is very likely that seawater was caused to rise (the CotF perhaps?) and then the whole thing was frozen (the Others? an Ice Dragon?). It could have taken a matter of days, or even hours.

 

The First Men left north of the wall were never "civilized" by the Andals with their steel and written language, and the Others retreated to the Land of Always Winter where the wildlings could not follow. Now, something is pushing the Others south again, leading to inevitable conflict.

[Corsair_Caruso]

Let's also keep in mind it likely wasn't as tall then as it is now. Commander Mormont stated that every Lord Commander of the Night's Watch before him had left the Wall higher than his predecessor.

That being said, the wall was probably still pretty damn high to begin with, and I agree with the assertions above that it's construction was both magical and (likely) magically fast.

[Dorian Martell]

the Thenns stayed in their ancestral homeland that was now beyond the wall. Why not anyone else?

[Criston of House Shapper]

There's people living all over our world, no matter how ghastly the environment is, so why would it be any different in Planetos? Even if people had abandoned the area north of the Wall 8000 years ago, there's clans in the mountains and it's easily imaginable that those clans migrated ever further north and eventually into the Frostfangs and from there into the Haunted Forest and they just spread everywhere.

[Adam Targaryen]

I've thought about this as well and was actually thinking about doing a post of my own on the topic. I can understand if the wildlings want to live there nowadays because Westeros south of the Wall is a feudal and civilized society where they'd have to kneel but that wasn't the case 8000 years ago. The people south of the Wall back then were pretty much like them, primitive First Men. They could of course have decided to stay there because it was their home already and they didn't want to move, but it seems like the wildlings have been trying to get south of the wall for a long time. Think about the Kings-beyond-the-Wall, for example. The thing about this, the wildlings constantly trying to get south of the wall, that becomes weird when you think about it is the fact that it shouldn't be super hard. Especially if you've had several millenia to do it. They could've just just built lots of boats and sailed past it, or scaled it again and again. Weird that a group of people have been trying to get south of a wall for thousands of years and never succeeded.

[The Dragon has three heads]

It's only weird if you assume that they're not supposed to be north of the wall as food or fodder for the others due to their unadulterated FM blood...

honestly, the maesters can't be trusted, which means the story of the pact and the long night and all written history therefor cannot be trusted which means everything every character thinks about the past can't be trusted either.

This is classic GRRM misdirection, what you think you know is wrong so the twist is bigger and hits harder.

I highly doubt 'magic' is the cause of anything, no story GRRM has ever written has had magic in it.i believe his magnum opus, his most important work, would not diverge from his previous catalogue so violently.

Advanced technology, yep, religious zealots using tech to masquerading as wizards to gain power, yep, genetic engineering and mutation of closed communities due to doomsday events(eg wildings) yep...open your eyes my friends, this is NOT fantasy.  It's most probably science fiction. 

(And if it isn't I'd be super bummed, as if we need ANOTHER Harry Potter or LOTR)

 

[Lordsteve666]

I'm guessing that the people that far north had the option of coming south or being cut off when The Wall went up. They chose to remain and thus were trapped north of The Wall. 
North of The Wall is no different to northern Scandinavia or Canada, maybe Siberia and those areas have plenty of people living there in rural settlements. So it's not like they were in anything more harsh than we see in real life. 
I imagine the tribes up there were happy to stay in their ancestral homelands now that the Others were defeated and thought to be destroyed. Plus they had only a few options really after the Long Night, move south and bow to a feudal system, or stay north and control their own destiny.
Staying north doesn't mean they can't raid south of the thing though.

Guessing they realised once the Others started appearing things were going to get pretty nasty and then it becomes a matter of live and (un)death if they stay or move south.
I think Mance's massive army and all it's entourage wasn't any invasion force, I think they were running for their lives the only direction they knew. Once they reached The Wall they were either going to have to fight past it or die and its base, trapped against the coming wights and Others. 
There's a big difference between Mance's mass migration tactic and the raiding that undoubtedly has been going on for millenia.

[Lord Hanna]

On 5/14/2016 at 9:08 PM, The Dragon has three heads said:

On 5/14/2016 at 9:08 PM, The Dragon has three heads said:

It's only weird if you assume that they're not supposed to be north of the wall as food or fodder for the others due to their unadulterated FM blood...

honestly, the maesters can't be trusted, which means the story of the pact and the long night and all written history therefor cannot be trusted which means everything every character thinks about the past can't be trusted either.

This is classic GRRM misdirection, what you think you know is wrong so the twist is bigger and hits harder.

I highly doubt 'magic' is the cause of anything, no story GRRM has ever written has had magic in it.i believe his magnum opus, his most important work, would not diverge from his previous catalogue so violently.

Advanced technology, yep, religious zealots using tech to masquerading as wizards to gain power, yep, genetic engineering and mutation of closed communities due to doomsday events(eg wildings) yep...open your eyes my friends, this is NOT fantasy.  It's most probably science fiction. 

(And if it isn't I'd be super bummed, as if we need ANOTHER Harry Potter or LOTR)

 

And if it's sci-fi, we have yet another sci-fi property. Not sure how that's any different considering the amount of sci-fi in movies and tv. 

 

[The Dragon has three heads]

"Because it's magic" is the worst cop out answer ever haha

[Guest jasonothegreat]

@Salagia369

 

Well there aren't exactly a lot of Freefolk. The Lazy-Asses who didn't want to go. And I'd imagine the first few thousand years of the Nights Watch had better relations with the Freefolk

[joluoto2]

Because Lord Stark didn't want them so he built a wall and had them pay for it.

[Maester Vargo]

I think it's pretty simple yet convoluted why the free folk are north of the wall.  It probably depends on each individual group of free folk.  The free folk are often treated as though they are a single culture or monolithic entity, but they're not.  They are disparate groups with disparate cultures, some who speak different languages (though this seems to be generally simplified as the common tongue and the old tongue, if memory serves, but in a more realistic worldview, there probably would be a ton of languages both north and south of the wall, not just 2).  There's a reason it took Mance decades to unite the free folk to go south of the wall.  First, he had to convince them of the danger the Others posed.  Then he had to convince them that their best hope for survival was to get south of the wall.  Then he had to convince them that they'd somehow be able to retain their cultural identities. Then he had to convince them to put aside all their grudges against other clans.  Yeesh.  And he had to do this over and over and over again.  And he probably had to convince a lot of groups multiple times.

Groups like the Thenns and the Ice River clans (cannibals) probably returned to their homelands after the long night, not wanting to give up their way of life.  Other groups may have settled in the north after the Wall was built - could be shipwreck survivors who wash up north of the Wall and have to survive.  Others could be descended from NW deserters.  Others could be people from South of the Wall who wanted to seek out adventure North of the Wall and found passage there - more likely before Hardhome was abandoned, I'd say, and ended up settling.  Others could be people originally from Skagos who were forced to flee for one reason or another.  Survivors of the invasion and destruction of Skane could have also made for the mainland north of the wall. 

Basically, I'm saying there are any number of reasons for people to be north of the Wall.  Mostly, I'd say the whole not wanting to kneel thing is more of a matter of pride than a reason to be north of the wall.  If you're a farmer in some wide open expanse south of the wall probably isn't much different than being north of the Wall.  Going over the Wall is generally for the purposes of raiding and carrying off women (this would be especially important for groups of recent, disproportionately male settlers, or for cultures that allow for polygamy). 

[Maester Vargo]

On ‎5‎/‎17‎/‎2016 at 5:47 AM, Lordsteve666 said:

Guessing they realised once the Others started appearing things were going to get pretty nasty and then it becomes a matter of live and (un)death if they stay or move south.
I think Mance's massive army and all it's entourage wasn't any invasion force, I think they were running for their lives the only direction they knew. Once they reached The Wall they were either going to have to fight past it or die and its base, trapped against the coming wights and Others. 
There's a big difference between Mance's mass migration tactic and the raiding that undoubtedly has been going on for millenia.

It was definitely not an invasion force so far as the Free Folk were concerned.  To those below the wall, a quarter of a million Free Folk are an invasion force, and would definitely have an impact on life south of the wall, even if only 1/4th of the Free Folk are 'fighters'.  Mance only organized them to go at the same time, which maximized their chances of success, instead of once clan throwing itself at the wall and dying, then another, then another. 

A lot of historic 'barbarian' invasions of Europe and the Middle East weren't really invasions, they were migrations.  Population pressures cause a group to leave the Central Asian Steppe or Mongolia to find a better, more peaceful place to live.  They are displaced.  They then displace another group, which displaces another group, and it ends in Europe with conflict between the new group and the existing Europeans.  To the 'barbarians', they're just looking for a safe place to live.  To the Europeans, they're an invading force that will change their way of life, or end their existence. 

[NimbleDickCrabb66]

I think the Free Folk are north of the wall because that is where some of the First men settled. It says in the world book that the first men inhabited from the shores of dorne to the lands of always winter. So its just like Maester Vargo says, we don't really know, but I think the most likely reason that the wildlings are north of the wall is because that is where they originally settled. The wildlings viewed the true north as a place they would be safe and unbothered, because the land isn't really all the inhabitable and likely wouldn't see too much pressure from other people wanting to take/inhabit the wildling settlements.

I also think that the wildlings in a way are the thralls of the others. The wildlings only try to move south for fear of the others, and I think the others are most likely a 1st men tribe that learned the secrets of immortality through warging into wildling babies with first man blood. Without access to first men blood, how would the others procreate? I think about how asshai has no children (can't procreate), and the book hints at it with craster's children, and the show has the scene where the Other's turn one of craster's child into what is most likely an Other, so I'm assuming the other's can procreate just like asshai cannot procreate. Melsiandre is said to be around 400 years old, doesn't need to eat and doesn't get cold in the north. The others probably cannot procreate and do so through some unknown ability of transferring their minds into children with first man blood. I think we're also going to find out that the location of the land of always winter is significant to perform their magic, just like the 14 flames were integral to the creation of dragon's (dragonstone also). If you can buy all that, the wildlings could basically be like valyrian slaves who were mined for their blood to use in magical spells/bio-engineering to procreate. There are a lot of cool threads out there about these ideas, and if you can by the others as 1st men tribe that learned magical abilities, perhaps the wildlings were part of the peace deal worked out after the long night.  

[Blackphillip]

On 7/20/2015 at 11:09 AM, John Suburbs said:

I don't think we need to assume it took centuries to build. I can't imagine a structure like that being built without some kind of magic, so it is very likely that seawater was caused to rise (the CotF perhaps?) and then the whole thing was frozen (the Others? an Ice Dragon?). It could have taken a matter of days, or even hours.

 

The First Men left north of the wall were never "civilized" by the Andals with their steel and written language, and the Others retreated to the Land of Always Winter where the wildlings could not follow. Now, something is pushing the Others south again, leading to inevitable conflict.

"...something pushing the Others south again...". One wonders what " something" could push the Others south.