Skagos

[Lost Melnibonean]

Although Skagos is identified in the original map of the North in Game, the first time we hear any mention of Skagos is in Tyrion II, Clash 8...

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Janos Slynt's face had gone from red to white. "Wh-what . . . what do you . . . ?" His jowls were quivering like mounds of suet.

"What do I mean to do with you?" Tyrion let the oaf tremble for a moment before he answered. "The carrack Summer's Dream sails on the morning tide. Her master tells me she will call at Gulltown, the Three Sisters, the isle of Skagos, and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. When you see Lord Commander Mormont, give him my fond regards, and tell him that I have not forgotten the needs of the Night's Watch. I wish you long life and good service, my lord."

This tells us two things: 1) Skagos is an island near Eastwatch, and 2) trading ships stop at its port.

The next time we hear mention of Skagos, Ygritte is schooling Jon...

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“The Stark in Winterfell wanted Bael's head, but never could take him, and the taste o' failure galled him. One day in his bitterness he called Bael a craven who preyed only on the weak. When word o' that got back, Bael vowed to teach the lord a lesson. So he scaled the Wall, skipped down the kingsroad, and walked into Winterfell one winter's night with harp in hand, naming himself Sygerrik of Skagos. Sygerrik means ‘deceiver' in the Old Tongue, that the First Men spoke, and the giants still speak.”

Jon VI, Clash 51

This suggests that the Old Tongue was spoken on Skagos long after the Common Tongue became widespread in the North. Notice that Ygritte’s tale about Bael the Bard is 1) a hint that Bran is alive and hiding in the crypts at Winterfell, and 2) also a foreshadowing of the Mance’s Able ploy. It also suggests that the Mance--the deceiver--might yet be alive, notwithstanding the apparent dire situation he was in as Theon escaped Winterfell, and the contents of Ramsay’s letter to Jon the Bastard.

When Jon returns to Castle Black after his sojourn beyond the Wall, we get another little nugget about Skagos...

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"The Magnar's a lord on Skagos," Noye said. "There were Skagossons at Eastwatch when I first came to the Wall, I remember hearing them talk of him."

"Jon was using the word in its older sense, I think," Maester Aemon said, "not as a family name but as a title. It derives from the Old Tongue."

"It means lord," Jon agreed. "Styr is the Magnar of some place called Thenn, in the far north of the Frostfangs. He has a hundred of his own men, and a score of raiders who know the Gift almost as well as we do. Mance never found the horn, though, that's something. The Horn of Winter, that's what he was digging for up along the Milkwater."

Jon VI, Storm 48

So, should we assume that the Skagossons at Eastwatch were men of the Watch, or that they were just trading?

In Bran IV, Storm 56, we learn that a Magnar of Skagos was one of several thought to have been the Night’s King. Since the Night’s King was a man of the Night’s Watch, we can assume that Skagossons have served on the Wall.

Finally, in Feast, we learn a bit about the mysterious Skagos...

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The island sat at the mouth of the Bay of Seals, massive and mountainous, a stark and forbidding land peopled by savages. They lived in caves and grim mountain fastnesses, Sam had read, and rode great shaggy unicorns to war. Skagos meant "stone" in the Old Tongue. The Skagosi named themselves the stoneborn, but their fellow northmen called them Skaggs and liked them little. Only a hundred years ago Skagos had risen in rebellion. Their revolt had taken years to quell and claimed the life of the Lord of Winterfell and hundreds of his sworn swords. Some songs said the Skaggs were cannibals; supposedly their warriors ate the hearts and livers of the men they slew. In ancient days, the Skagosi had sailed to the nearby isle of Skane, seized its women, slaughtered its men, and ate them on a pebbled beach in a feast that lasted for a fortnight. Skane remained unpeopled to this day.

...

The sails went up, the sails came down, and one ripped free of the mast and flew away like a great grey bird. As Blackbird rounded the south coast of Skagos, they spotted the wreckage of a galley on the rocks. Some of her crew had washed up on the shore, and the rooks and crabs had gathered to pay them homage. "Too bloody close," grumbled Old Tattersalt when he saw. "One good blow, and we'll be breaking up aside them." Exhausted as they were, his rowers bent to their oars again, and the ship clawed south toward the narrow sea, till Skagos dwindled to no more than a few dark shapes in the sky that might have been thunderheads, or the tops of tall black mountains, or both. After that, they had eight days and seven nights of clear, smooth sailing.

Samwell II, Feast 15

The first two lines suggest that Skagossons are akin to the Freefolk, the Clans of the Mountains of the Moon, and the Mountain Clans of the North. Whereas in Game through Storm, we were given the impression that Skagossons traded at Eastwatch, at least, and that trading vessels stopped at Skagos; this passage in Feast suggests that Skagossons are much more isolated, and bear a sinister reputation, which is reinforced later in Reek III, Dance 32, when Roose says, “[O]nly heart trees ever see half of what they do on Skagos.” The bit about Skagos meaning "stone" seems to tie into the great stone beast vision from the House of the Undying Ones. Coupled with the relatively recent history of conflict between Skagos and Winterfell, it led to speculation that Jon might be the “great stone beast,” assuming he is Rhaegar’s heir, and assuming a Stark ancestor had wed a Skagosson to settle the conflict. That theory was undermined, though, with the Stark family tree in The World of Ice and Fire. Still, we have to wonder if there is a connection between Skagos and the great stone beast or, perhaps, Melisandre’s stone dragon. And one wonders whether the line, “The sails went up, the sails came down, and one ripped free of the mast and flew away like a great grey bird,” might be related.

The bit about the wreckage of the galley on the rocks appears to tie in with this next passage...

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Nine-and-twenty ships had set sail from the Wall. If half of them were still afloat, Davos would be shocked. Black skies, bitter winds, and lashing rains had hounded them all the way down the coast. The galleys Oledo and Old Mother's Son had been driven onto the rocks of Skagos, the isle of unicorns and cannibals where even the Blind Bastard had feared to land; the great cog Saathos Saan had foundered off the Grey Cliffs. "Stannis will be paying for them," Salladhor Saan had fumed. "He will be paying for them with good gold, every one." It was as if some angry god was exacting payment for their easy voyage north, when they had ridden a steady southerly from Dragonstone to the Wall.

Davos I, Dance 9

Salladhor’s suggestion that Stannis would pay for the wrecks and the image of rooks (related to crows and ravens) and crabs feasting on the bodies of the dead sailors suggest that Stannis will meet a similar fate. Also, notice that the associations with cannibalism and unicorns are reinforced here. The treasures that Euron used to seduce the Ironmen at the kingsmoot included unicorn horns. Were they fake? Has Euron been to Skagos? Did Euron acquire the horns somewhere else? Leaf tells us that unicorns do exist...

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"Where are the rest of you?" Bran asked Leaf, once.

"Gone down into the earth," she answered. "Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us."

Bran III, Dance 34

Interestingly, one of the treasures used to pay for the Freefolk’s passage south of the Wall included, “a helm made from a unicorn's head, complete with horn.” Jon XII, Dance 58. And here, we learn that Rickon is on Skagos...

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The white wolf raced through a black wood, beneath a pale cliff as tall as the sky. The moon ran with him, slipping through a tangle of bare branches overhead, across the starry sky.

"Snow," the moon murmured. The wolf made no answer. Snow crunched beneath his paws. The wind sighed through the trees. Far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like. They were hunting too. A wild rain lashed down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goat's long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food. Many a night his sister's pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself.

"Snow," the moon called down again, cackling. The white wolf padded along the man trail beneath the icy cliff. The taste of blood was on his tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins. Once they had been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four remained … and one the white wolf could no longer sense.

"Snow," the moon insisted.

The white wolf ran from it, racing toward the cave of night where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above the wide world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream. The wolf's pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no fur could keep the chill out. On the other side the wind was colder still, the wolf sensed. That was where his brother was, the grey brother who smelled of summer.

"Snow." An icicle tumbled from a branch. The white wolf turned and bared his teeth. "Snow! " His fur rose bristling, as the woods dissolved around him. "Snow, snow, snow! " He heard the beat of wings. Through the gloom a raven flew.

It landed on Jon Snow's chest with a thump and a scrabbling of claws.

"SNOW! " it screamed into his face.

"I hear you." The room was dim, his pallet hard. Grey light leaked through the shutters, promising another bleak cold day. "Is this how you woke Mormont? Get your feathers out of my face."

Jon I, Dance 3

Of course, Skagossons are not the only cannibals. Since Jon tells us about the cannibal clans of the great ice rivers in Jon III, Storm 26, we have to suspect that Skagossons might actually practice cannibalism, whether for custom, necessity, or ritual. From Jon X, Storm 73, we recall...

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Open the gate and let them pass. Easy to say, but what must follow? Giants camping in the ruins of Winterfell? Cannibals in the wolfswood, chariots sweeping across the barrowlands, free folk stealing the daughters of shipwrights and silversmiths from White Harbor and fishwives off the Stony Shore?

And we have to wonder whether this is foreshadowing Peasebury’s feast on the march to Winterfell, and what else the passage might foreshadow. With the publication of The Princess and the Queen, and the realization that Cannibal, just possibly, might still be alive somewhere, many readers speculate that Cannibal could be living on Skagos, and that he might be Melisandre’s stone dragon, or, perhaps, even tie in with the great stone beast vision and Jon. And here is the teaser for what is coming in Winds...

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"Where is the boy?" Somehow Davos knew he would not like the answer. "Where is it you want me to go, my lord?"

Robett Glover said, "Wex. Show him."

The mute flipped the dagger, caught it, then flung it end over end at the sheepskin map that adorned Lord Wyman's wall. It struck quivering. Then he grinned.

For half a heartbeat Davos considered asking Wyman Manderly to send him back to the Wolf's Den, to Ser Bartimus with his tales and Garth with his lethal ladies. In the Den even prisoners ate porridge in the morning. But there were other places in this world where men were known to break their fast on human flesh.

Davos IV, Dance 29

In The Stoneborn of Skagos, TWOIAF, we learn that Skagosi might “have a strong admixture of Ibbenese blood,” or “be descended from giants.” Whether that’s true or relevant, we get a little more information to help us sort out the cannibalism rumors. They are said to “feed upon the flesh of men during winter.” Well, this does not appear to be all that uncommon in times of starvation in the North and Beyond the Wall. And, “It is claimed that they still offer human sacrifice to their weirwoods,” which of course ties in to what we are learning about the religious practices of the First Men, and the actual power of weirwoods. The chapter also helps to develop our understanding of the Skagosi use of shaggy unicorns, that may or may not be goats, or might possibly be related to goats. We also learn that there definitely is trade between the Skagosi and the non-Skagosi, but it is very limited. And we learn that Skagosi have served in the Night’s Watch, with at least one rising to become Lord Commander.

[OtherFromAnotherMother]

Thank you for putting together this information on Skagos.  Of the smaller cliffhangers we have heading into TWoW, the Davos/Rickon one is the one I am looking forward to most.  

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The white wolf raced through a black wood, beneath a pale cliff as tall as the sky. The moon ran with him, slipping through a tangle of bare branches overhead, across the starry sky.

"Snow," the moon murmured. The wolf made no answer. Snow crunched beneath his paws. The wind sighed through the trees. Far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like. They were hunting too. A wild rain lashed down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goat's long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food. Many a night his sister's pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself.

"Snow," the moon called down again, cackling. The white wolf padded along the man trail beneath the icy cliff. The taste of blood was on his tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins. Once they had been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four remained … and one the white wolf could no longer sense.

"Snow," the moon insisted.

The white wolf ran from it, racing toward the cave of night where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above the wide world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream. The wolf's pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no fur could keep the chill out. On the other side the wind was colder still, the wolf sensed. That was where his brother was, the grey brother who smelled of summer.

"Snow." An icicle tumbled from a branch. The white wolf turned and bared his teeth. "Snow! " His fur rose bristling, as the woods dissolved around him. "Snow, snow, snow! " He heard the beat of wings. Through the gloom a raven flew.

It is obviously very cold on Skagos and there appears to be a lack of food.  Could this lead to the cannibalistic culture? 

 

On 10/14/2016 at 2:33 PM, Lost Melnibonean said:

we have to suspect that Skagossons might actually practice cannibalism, whether for custom, necessity, or ritual.

My guess is a combination of your three reasons.  Necessity turned into ritual/custom.  Can't wait to find out more!

[The Fattest Leech]

Not adding much at the moment because my kid brought home germs and had made me super sick... like, way beyond cheese touch sick

Anyway, while nursing myself with bedtime and books, I came across something that I thought was interesting. Just gonna give a few bullets here, but I thought it was interesting... which actually was part of an info hole that started with Peter Steele of Type O Negative. Go figure

• Scania, or Skane as it is known locally, is a Nordic province on the southern tip of Sweden.
• It has had bitter battles with its mainland and now seems to have its own semi-distinct, yet connected, culture.
• Scanian dialects have various local native idioms and speech patterns, and realizes diphthongs and South Scandinavian Uvular trill, as opposed to the supradental /r/-sound characteristic of spoken Standard Swedish.
• The name is possibly derived from the Germanic root *Skaðin-awjã, which appears in Old Norse as Skáney.^[23] According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as *Skaðan- meaning "danger" or "damage"
• the province of Scania serves no administrative or political purposes, but is an exclusively historical and cultural entity.
• Scania/Skane does not use a unicorn as a sigil, but they do use a red griffin, which is a cousin to the Thunder Chicken for any Trans Am fans out there.
  • However, a sigil only began its use when Charles X Gustav of Sweden suddenly died in 1660 a coat of arms had to be created for the newly acquired province, as each province was to be represented by its arms at his royal funeral. I can't help but wonder if something similar to this could happen if RIckon were to return and travel through Castle Black with a Skagosi retinue as Jon is still dead?, or newly healed?, and through these acts and the renewed loyalty to the Starks the Skagosi formally comeback into the northern houses??? Just a thought.
• Scania's long-running and sometimes intense trade relations with other communities along the coast of the European continent through history have made the culture of Scania distinct from other geographical regions of Sweden.

Ack! Don't even get me started on unicorns and how they are in the Christian bible! (sorta)

Sorry if this has all been talked about already. Medicine head and all.

Carry on.

[Lost Melnibonean]

Feel better. 

[OtherFromAnotherMother]

On 1/5/2017 at 7:51 PM, The Fattest Leech said:

Not adding much at the moment because my kid brought home germs and had made me super sick... like, way beyond cheese touch sick

Anyway, while nursing myself with bedtime and books, I came across something that I thought was interesting. Just gonna give a few bullets here, but I thought it was interesting... which actually was part of an info hole that started with Peter Steele of Type O Negative. Go figure

• Scania, or Skane as it is known locally, is a Nordic province on the southern tip of Sweden.
• It has had bitter battles with its mainland and now seems to have its own semi-distinct, yet connected, culture.
• Scanian dialects have various local native idioms and speech patterns, and realizes diphthongs and South Scandinavian Uvular trill, as opposed to the supradental /r/-sound characteristic of spoken Standard Swedish.
• The name is possibly derived from the Germanic root *Skaðin-awjã, which appears in Old Norse as Skáney.^[23] According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as *Skaðan- meaning "danger" or "damage"
• the province of Scania serves no administrative or political purposes, but is an exclusively historical and cultural entity.
• Scania/Skane does not use a unicorn as a sigil, but they do use a red griffin, which is a cousin to the Thunder Chicken for any Trans Am fans out there.
  • However, a sigil only began its use when Charles X Gustav of Sweden suddenly died in 1660 a coat of arms had to be created for the newly acquired province, as each province was to be represented by its arms at his royal funeral. I can't help but wonder if something similar to this could happen if RIckon were to return and travel through Castle Black with a Skagosi retinue as Jon is still dead?, or newly healed?, and through these acts and the renewed loyalty to the Starks the Skagosi formally comeback into the northern houses??? Just a thought.
• Scania's long-running and sometimes intense trade relations with other communities along the coast of the European continent through history have made the culture of Scania distinct from other geographical regions of Sweden.

Ack! Don't even get me started on unicorns and how they are in the Christian bible! (sorta)

Sorry if this has all been talked about already. Medicine head and all.

Carry on.

Not adding much!? You must be kidding... Those were great additions. I like the potential parallels you found between Skane and Skagos. Both seem to be separated from their "mainland" counterparts. While Skane is not an island, it does seem to be different from the rest of Sweden, just as Skagos seems to be different from the rest of the North. 

I'm so curious what George is going to do with Skagos. I could see him setting them up to be these monstrous, cannabalistic people then we find out the cannabalistm is overblown and they are very similar to the Free Folk in their culture. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

5 minutes ago, OtherFromAnotherMother said:

Not adding much!? You must be kidding... Those were great additions. I like the potential parallels you found between Skane and Skagos. Both seem to be separated from their "mainland" counterparts. While Skane is not an island, it does seem to be different from the rest of Sweden, just as Skagos seems to be different from the rest of the North. 

I'm so curious what George is going to do with Skagos. I could see him setting them up to be these monstrous, cannabalistic people then we find out the cannabalistm is overblown and they are very similar to the Free Folk in their culture. 

Here's what he's gonna do with Skagos.

Due to the scrapping of the 5 year gap, he needs to find a way to bolster the Northern troop numbers sooner than he would have thought necessary. Hence we saw the 3000 Mountain Clansmen arrive from a seemingly empty part of the map, out of the blue so to speak.

Skagos will serve a similar purpose. Martin has managed to use Rickon's story arc to bring Skagos into the fold. So, my prediction - mentioned numerous times on this forum before - is that the Skagosi are indeed fierce and somewhat savage, but they are also fervent Old Gods worshippers. Cannibalism is in fact perfectly fine among the Children, you will note, and I doubt the Old Gods frowned on it at all, as it is simply the meat of the dead being consumed by the living to continue the circle of life.

So in any case, you will note that the Northern tip of Skagos extends well past the Wall. And in Winter, when the ice packs extend, Skagos will be connected to the Haunted Forest by solid ice. Meaning they will be completely open to attack from the Others. So, not only do the Skagosi need to ally with the rest of the North, they in fact need to move their entire population off the island and into the North if they are to survive the coming Long Night.

If they are smart, they will do so, just like the wildlings did. But how to achieve that when there are hostile lords already occupying the Northern lands? Well, the answer is to get a Stark to authorize your migration. And in that sense, the arrival of Rickon would have been a godsend to the Skagosi.

So in short, I think their future is quite clear: The will make a deal to support Rickon's cause against the Boltons, in exchange for the Starks allowing their entire nation to migrate to the mainland for the Winter. So expect to see thousands of Skagosi arriving with Rickon in the next book.

[Fire Eater]

I think the cannibalism is just a rumor akin to Southrons thinking the Northmen are barbaric. 

 It is also said that those seafarers brave enough to trade on Skagos have glimpsed the stoneborn lords riding great, shaggy, horned beasts, monstrous mounts so sure-footed they have been known to climb the sides of mountains.

As for the unicorns, given their description I think they are likely Elasmotherium, a Pleistocene-era wolly rhinoceros with a horse-like gait and speed and one long horn.

 Though rarely seen off their island, the stoneborn once were accustomed to crossing the Bay of Seals to trade or, more oft, raid—until King Brandon Stark, Ninth of His Name, broke their power once and for all, destroyed their ships, and forbade them the sea. For most of recorded history, they have remained an isolated, backward, savage folk, as like to murder those who land upon their isle as to trade with them. When they do consent to trade, the Skagosi offer pelts, obsidian blades and arrowheads, and "unicorn horns" for goods they desire.

I think the bolded means the Skagosi weren't allowed to maintain ships or a fleet. I think that could have been what the rebellion during Daeron II's reign could have been about. Ships are used for more than just naval warfare, but also trade. Lack of ships has likely contributed to their island's isolation. 

[Unknownfinger]

7 hours ago, Fire Eater said:

I think the cannibalism is just a rumor akin to Southrons thinking the Northmen are barbaric. 

 

I had not that of this before and I think you may be on to something friend. The Isle of Unicorns and Flesh Eaters being just a bunch of myth making and ignorance tracks well. 

[Lost Melnibonean]

3 hours ago, Unknownfinger said:

I had not that of this before and I think you may be on to something friend. The Isle of Unicorns and Flesh Eaters being just a bunch of myth making and ignorance tracks well. 

Leaf confirms that there are still unicorns in the world. 

[Fire Eater]

11 hours ago, Unknownfinger said:

I had not that of this before and I think you may be on to something friend. The Isle of Unicorns and Flesh Eaters being just a bunch of myth making and ignorance tracks well. 

No, just the cannibalism is the myth. The unicorns are real, a woolly rhinoceros known as Elasmotherium. It had a horse-like gait and one long horn. It fits with the theory of the origins of the unicorn IRL coming from tales of Indian rhinos.  

[Bonkers]

Perhaps Rickon and cannibalism will be connected to his warging of Shaggydog?  Perhaps he is too far gone, like Jojen is always warning Bran....Rickon may now just be a Direwolf.

[Vaedys Targaryen]

On 7/1/2017 at 6:57 PM, Free Northman Reborn said:

So in any case, you will note that the Northern tip of Skagos extends well past the Wall. And in Winter, when the ice packs extend, Skagos will be connected to the Haunted Forest by solid ice. Meaning they will be completely open to attack from the Others. So, not only do the Skagosi need to ally with the rest of the North, they in fact need to move their entire population off the island and into the North if they are to survive the coming Long Night.

On 7/1/2017 at 9:27 PM, Fire Eater said:

 Though rarely seen off their island, the stoneborn once were accustomed to crossing the Bay of Seals to trade or, more oft, raid—until King Brandon Stark, Ninth of His Name, broke their power once and for all, destroyed their ships, and forbade them the sea. For most of recorded history, they have remained an isolated, backward, savage folk, as like to murder those who land upon their isle as to trade with them. When they do consent to trade, the Skagosi offer pelts, obsidian blades and arrowheads, and "unicorn horns" for goods they desire.

 

I think with this information, the Skagosi might know more about the Others and will be more than willing to give this information on to help against the fight.