Do Krakens exist?

[Mat92]

12 minutes ago, Wrl6199 said:

Yeah Krakens exist. Well They are talked about but their mythical in westeros. An iron-born legend was that a sea dragon named nigga was able to feed  on Krakens and leviathans. The south sea of drone was supposed to be infested with krakens. Plus the arms of house grey-joy was a kraken.

It's uh... it's "nagga"

[Wrl6199]

Wow I dint know how i made that typo.

[the trees have eyes]

On 21/10/2016 at 10:13 PM, Sir Matthis Light said:

Where did the Greyjoys get the idea for their banner then? <--- Thats the way I see it.

 

On 21/10/2016 at 10:59 PM, LynnS said:

As many times as he had visited White Harbor, Davos had never set foot inside the New Castle, much less the Merman's Court....... Behind the dais a kraken and grey leviathan were locked in battle beneath the painted waves.  aDwD Davos III

 

The Manderlys have a Merman for their coat of arms so this does not mean it's real.  Just as we have our mythical creatures so too does Westeros.  The tricky part is knowing where GRRM has drawn the line.

We have dragons, giants, Others, White Walkers & Children of the Forest confirmed to be real.  Of these the giants and Children are simply different humanoid species while the Others & White Walkers and maybe the dragons are magical in nature.

The Mermen, krakens, griffins, cockatrice and unicorns of heraldry seem to be mythological creatures though the purple unicorn of House Brax may get a bit of life breathed into it by the goat Jon saw Shaggydog fighting (presumably on Skagos).

Manticores are obviously real in story but they are different in Westeros to our world's mythology.

Direwolves are entirely natural just uncommon in story and are based on an extinct earth species that was a contemporary of the sabre tooth tiger so are not really in the same category as magical or mythological creatures.

6 hours ago, Lord Vance II said:

If there are dragons, ice dragons, wyverns, mammoths, giants and white walkers, I don't see any reason why there wouldn't be gigantic, sometimes aggressive squid. Doubt we'll actually see one though.

Ice dragons seem to be fan favourites but out of hope not out of actual representation in story other than as a name for a constellation.

Personally I don't think we'll see a kraken as it seems better left to the imagination and it rests in an awkward place between a wild animal of mythology and the religion of the Ironborn.  Given we know magic is real and the likes of Mel and Thoros have real power this would put the Ironborn's religion and, potentially, Aeron's powers in an awkward place for story telling.  Much better if it's left obscure and to the imagination.

[Lord Vance II]

1 minute ago, the trees have eyes said:

Ice dragons seem to be fan favourites but out of hope not out of actual representation in story other than as a name for a constellation.

They talk about ice dragons in AWoIaF. The maester seems to accept them as a fact based on, to use Roger Goodell's favorite term, the preponderance of evidence and tales. Many times bigger than fire dragons, living far beyond the shivering sea, breathe supercold air. 

I don't think they are going to play into the story, they have no reference in ASoIaF. But they do exist. I think of them like Wyverns, super cool, but not really relevant. 

[LynnS]

4 minutes ago, the trees have eyes said:

Personally I don't think we'll see a kraken as it seems better left to the imagination and it rests in an awkward place between a wild animal of mythology and the religion of the Ironborn.  Given we know magic is real and the likes of Mel and Thoros have real power this would put the Ironborn's religion and, potentially, Aeron's powers in an awkward place for story telling.  Much better if it's left obscure and to the imagination.

We won't know until WoW; but I suspect that Kraken's can be called up from the deep with the appropriate horn.

[Shouldve Taken The Black]

Krakens are largely believed to have been based upon sailors' sightings of Giant Squids, so in a sense on earth they both do and don't exist - i.e. they're not entirely made up, people generally do believe in them and of course there are sightings...but imagination kinds of runs away with people when describing and depicting them. Happy to use that same logic for Planetos. 

[the trees have eyes]

8 hours ago, Lord Vance II said:

They talk about ice dragons in AWoIaF. The maester seems to accept them as a fact based on, to use Roger Goodell's favorite term, the preponderance of evidence and tales. Many times bigger than fire dragons, living far beyond the shivering sea, breathe supercold air. 

I don't think they are going to play into the story, they have no reference in ASoIaF. But they do exist. I think of them like Wyverns, super cool, but not really relevant. 

I haven't read tWOIAF but I was under the impression that GRRM had his maester adopt the Herodotus approach to historical accuracy, i.e. repeat what he knew to be true but also repeat outlandish and unsubstantiated stories from second/third or many times removed sources.

What we know of dragons from ASOIAF is that they are associated unambiguously with fire, "fire made flesh", so I'm fairly sceptical about the ice dragons we've never seen or heard tell of in story and are only mentioned in the compendium that (I think) merges historical fact and myth.

[estermonty python]

On 10/25/2016 at 11:33 AM, Lord Vance II said:

They talk about ice dragons in AWoIaF. The maester seems to accept them as a fact based on, to use Roger Goodell's favorite term, the preponderance of evidence and tales. Many times bigger than fire dragons, living far beyond the shivering sea, breathe supercold air. 

I don't think they are going to play into the story, they have no reference in ASoIaF. But they do exist. I think of them like Wyverns, super cool, but not really relevant. 

You have to take everything that maester says with a grain of salt.  He's an imperfect narrator, especially when it comes to dragons, where, among other things, he directly contradicts Maester Aemon regarding whether dragons can change their sex.  

I feel pretty confident that the "ice dragon activity" he reports is actually activity involving the Others - and I think we are supposed to think that as well.

[Lord Vance II]

On 10/25/2016 at 8:22 PM, the trees have eyes said:

I'm fairly sceptical about the ice dragons we've never seen or heard tell of in story and are only mentioned in the compendium that (I think) merges historical fact and myth.

I don't think it merges history and myth any more than any narrator in the story. In their society it's often one in the same. 

14 hours ago, estermonty python said:

You have to take everything that maester says with a grain of salt.  He's an imperfect narrator, especially when it comes to dragons, where, among other things, he directly contradicts Maester Aemon regarding whether dragons can change their sex.  

I hate that phrase so much, can't explain why. But yeah, of course, but I just don't see why people are so skeptical of ice dragons given all the other fantastic things in the world. Again, I'm not saying the Night King will swoop in on one. I just don't see why it's so hard to believe there could be a handful of ice dragons in the Land of Always Winter. 

14 hours ago, estermonty python said:

I feel pretty confident that the "ice dragon activity" he reports is actually activity involving the Others - and I think we are supposed to think that as well.

I can't get on board with that. I don't see how a humanoid creature could be confused for a gigantic ice dragon. Especially since nearly all the reported sighting seem to be at sea and Others are very land based as far as we know. If anything a sudden ice storm or something would be more likely to be mistaken for an ice dragon attack. 

[estermonty python]

5 hours ago, Lord Vance II said:

I can't get on board with that. I don't see how a humanoid creature could be confused for a gigantic ice dragon. Especially since nearly all the reported sighting seem to be at sea and Others are very land based as far as we know. If anything a sudden ice storm or something would be more likely to be mistaken for an ice dragon attack. 

It's been awhile since I read it, but I thought the "reported ice dragon activity" was, in fact, something along the lines of a sudden ice storm - i.e. the sort of dramatic temperature shift that we've seen occur when the Others are nearby.  I didn't get the sense that there were ice dragon sightings, just "evidence of ice dragon activity" which is vague enough to suggest, I don't know, death and coldness and destruction.  

I'd disagree that the Others are "very land based" based on Cotter Pyke's note from Hardhome reading "dead things in the water."

 

All that said, I actually agree with you that ice dragons exist in the world, so I don't really know why I'm pushing back.   

[the trees have eyes]

5 hours ago, Lord Vance II said:

I don't think it merges history and myth any more than any narrator in the story. In their society it's often one in the same.

I am not talking about the unreliable narrator, more how the maesters are reporting stories secondhand that they have no reliable witnesses or evidence for - and I specifically referenced Herodotus to illustrate this.  Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who is known as "is the father of history" and whose works "historia" give us the word history but his method - collecting oral histories and personal accounts - mixed up legend and fact in quite a jumble that would drive the modern historian to distraction.

My impression was that the maester GRRM had chosen to write his world book was writing in this tradition so we cannot assume that some of the more outlandish stories are true.  After all part of the mystery and appeal of the world is that you don't know what is beyond the distant horizon and this allows exotic and improbable tales to take root but this isn't confirmation that they are true.

I think this best sums up the approach I thought tWoiaf took: (taken from Rolling Stone review)

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/features/10-craziest-things-we-learned-from-world-of-ice-and-fire-20141103

8. The farther out you go, the more far out things get.
Everything in The World of Ice & Fire is written from the perspective of a maester, one of the scholar-teacher-healer-advisors in gray robes and ceremonial chains found in the service of every noble House in Westeros. And they're the first to tell you that the details about the lands farthest away from Westeros are sketchy at best. But man, what a sketch! Far to the east, the warrior women of Hyrkoon make up the finest fighting force on the planet; only the choicest male specimens are permitted to breed. Farther still stands the sprawling empire of Yi Ti, an Imperial China analog whose wealth, size, and armies make it the greatest civilization in history. And at the ass-end of everything stands Asshai, which is a distant cousin to Tolkien's Mordor, where the sorcerers and death cults of a thousand lands converge to be creepy and mysterious. There's no telling if these stories are true, but the old newsroom adage applies in the maesters' Citadel as well: Some stories are too good to check.

This actually reads a lot like Herodotus as it happens.  The further away the less reliable eyewitness testimony and the less corroboration there is.  Maybe there really are manticores or naga in those parts of Earth, or ice dragons in those parts of Planetos.

Everything I have read in ASOIAF over the last 15 years points to dragons being "fire made flesh".  There is nothing at all I recall that suggests ice dragons do exist and for me the ice dragon constellation is no more than an easter egg referencing his earlier work and adding a bit of lyrical exoticism to the world.  I would be very surprised if either ice dragons do exist in contradiction to everything we know about dragons or if GRRM chose to confirm their existence with all the possible revelations and story impact via a companion work outside the main story.

Incidentally, your underlined comment suggests that history and myth are treated with equal respect.  This undermines everything as nothing can be relied on and I think it's fairer to say stories are reported and handed on whether they are true or not.  Does it matter to people whether Lann the Clever or Garth Greenhand did what they are alleged to have done?  Not really.  People will believe the kernel of the story but understand that the rest is embellishment and exaggeration.  Do ice dragons exist though? This is a yes or no and I'm strongly inclined to "no".

[Lord Vance II]

14 minutes ago, estermonty python said:

All that said, I actually agree with you that ice dragons exist in the world, so I don't really know why I'm pushing back.   

Sorry. 

I went and reread the couple paragraphs and they're kind of stand out in that the maester (can't remember his name) sounds like he wants to dismiss ice dragons but feels obligated to include them. I can't think of anything else in TWoIaF that the's so skeptical about except Mushroom's tales. He says another maester's gone as far as to say that things like sudden ice storms are actually ice dragon attacks.Just stood out to me.