Dragon of Winterfell?

[Longspear Ryk]

If a dragon wereee to flee from winterfell and fly north no one would reallly see it....... Cept for the mountain tribes per haps...

[Selyse's Moustache Rides]

but a metaphorical one.

soooooo direwolves are capable of seeing metaphors now?

i think what you mean is that it is symbolic, which is different from a metaphor. so it is likely something mundane, like fire, and not something grand and amazing, like a dragon.

Well, if it's an old wise dragon, it may be laying low for now or better yet flying high - so that no one sees it until its ready - like when it finds it's rider. Or when it finds it's cousins.

for hundreds of years, and no one has seen it? no one has had any mysteriously missing sheep or small children or scorched fields? no sir, i don't buy it.

[Rohed]

Sounds like it was just Winterfell being ingulfed in flame, and the stars were also on fire. How the dragons are going to consume

[Hempen Dan the Ropemaker]

I think that line is there for a reason, its something involving a dragon, in one way or another, ice dragon jon the soul of aa escaping from the crypts or something along any of those lines, just think it is something important rather than nothing

[m_k]

Well when summer saw the dragon bran was warging him. So this mean summer is processing his vision with a human brain, right? So this mean he saw what he saw. But it happened so fast he just could not be sure.

[Eira Seren]

here's a link to the other thread discussing this

I always thought the war in the riverlands would draw a dragon's attention, it might not like the fighting (or it might); it would definitely like the wounded. . . wouldn't someone have seen it by now?

[Pomp & Happenstance]

I personally don't believe Winterfell has active volcanic activity. In A game of Thrones, page 42(ish) The Crypts of Winterfell get colder and colder the further down you go... where as with most volcanic sites (including book references like the Valyrian Mines) the further down you go the hotter it becomes, due to the lava flows.

Hot springs are formed from a variety of ways, and most of them don't include being near volcanic activity. Barometric pressure, composition of the surrounding earth matter, and global positioning are typically more sound as evidence.

[Lady Tippy Wolfsbane]

"The smoke and ash clouded his eyes, and in the sky he saw a great winged snake whose roar was a river of flame. He bared his teeth, but the snake was gone."

Summer didn't believe he saw a dragon, instead his direwolf brain thought it saw a 'winged snake'. I don't buy him mistaking a comet for a 'winged snake'.

I personally don't believe Winterfell has active volcanic activity. In A game of Thrones, page 42(ish) The Crypts of Winterfell get colder and colder the further down you go... where as with most volcanic sites (including book references like the Valyrian Mines) the further down you go the hotter it becomes, due to the lava flows.

Hot springs are formed from a variety of ways, and most of them don't include being near volcanic activity. Barometric pressure, composition of the surrounding earth matter, and global positioning are typically more sound as evidence.

True, but I believe there's also something supernatural happening in the crypts, so maybe this is a sign of some magical happenings. ^_^

[WhiteWolf26]

It's a description of the sack of winterfell. Specifically, the dreadfort men throwing a torch onto the roof of a building. It's the last page of the Theon chapter...Summer sees it above the grey cliffs, which is how he describes the walls of Winterfell. GRRM is messing with us. When Bran wakes up, he says they burned wf, not I saw a dragon. And it's not a vision of the future--Summer is seeing and hearing the sack and it's aftermath.

This is how I read it.

[boodymarie]

There have been dragons in the North. King Jaehaerys I and his wife Alysanne went to Winterfell with six dragons according to ASoS (Bran's chapter, and Jon Snow's chapter) and Queen Alysanne rode her dragon to the Wall. They would have had to store their dragons somewhere while they were in Winterfell, unless they let them fly wild, but if they were kept under the castle,they could have easily laid eggs down there.

It's the only explaination I've been able to come up with for the "winged snake" and how it could have gotten there.

[boodymarie]

Also when I reread Bran's last chapter in ACoK, there were some details that stuck out. A corpse outside the Sept, "sat with his arms drawn up, and his hand balled into hard black fists" (pg 965). If that man had been torched by one of Ramsey's men, he would would died sprawled out on the ground, not sitting with his fists up.

Before that Osha makes the comment "We made enough noise to wake a dragon" which could just be foreshadowing Drogon being attracted to the fighting pits in ADWD, or it could be suggesting that while Ramsey's men were burning Winterfell they awoke a dragon. Fire and death should be enough to attract a dormant dragon.

In AFfC Sam also talks about Queen Alysanne and King Jaehaerys' dragons, and wonders if they might have left an egg behind at the Wall. Then he wonders how they would even hatch an egg if it existed. If the egg had been produced in Winterfell instead, near the hot springs maybe it could have hatched from prolonged exposure to the heat?

I keep finding more little clues and hints like that, so I'm pretty convinced a dragon is going to appear in the North at some point. GRRM is the king of foreshadowing.

[DreamSongs]

There have been several threads on this. There are several theories of Brandon the Builder using magic in his structures. One theory has a dragon built into the Wall. Another theory has Winterfell built over a dragon.

Winterfell itself is warmed by a hot springs and the water runs through the walls. During the Sack of Winterfell, something happens that is enough to crack this old strong structure and cause the water to pool out. Summer sees the winged snake. When Theon later returns to Winterfell, he describes it as being cold where it had been warm there before.

What could men do that would be enough to damage the structural stability of Winterfell? Fire would destroy wood, not stone. Would the hot springs not continue to pump out warm water to ground? What if the hot springs were no longer hot because the source of the warmth disappeared?

Winter comes to the North sooner. The is war and many men have been sent to fight leaving the women and children. Women and children in the sparse North with winter coming in would be spending quite a bit of time inside.

So yes, I buy into the idea of a dragon in Winterfell wholeheartedly. There is something the entombed Starks guard and a reason there must always be a Stark in Winterfell. Why not a dragon?

[Queen‍‍‍‍‍‍ Alysanne‍‍™]

I just noticed this today when reading, I was mindblown.

[Wade Stark]

Maybe it was Sheepstealer?

[Daedric Justice]

others believe it was a vision Bran had of the return of the dragons

________________________

This is the only one that makes sense to me.

It can't just be a description of the smoke and fire around Winterfell because Summer/Bran actually uses the word "smoke" in the previous sentence and the word "fires" in the following sentence!

I.e.

"The SMOKE and ash clouded his eyes, and in the sky he saw a great winged snake who's roar was a river of FLAME. He bared his teeth but then the snake was gone. Behind the cliffs tall FIRES were eating up the stars"

If Summer knows the words for "smoke", "flame" and "fire" then why on earth would he need to describe "fire" or "smoke" as a "winged snake"? And why would he even know the words for "snake" or "wing"? I just think this description is far too dragonesque to be describing anything else (including the comet).

I think it was Bran having a brief vision and not recognising that's what it was. Personally, I think it foretells a dragon appearing at Winterfell specifically at some point in the future.

But hey, what do I know?

[Daedric Justice]

PS it could of course be a real dragon but I find it weird that nobody (apart from Summer) noticed this. Osha and co also spent a whole morning walking around Winterfell and inspecting the damage. I would have thought that they would have noticed a big hole in the ground or something if a dragon got loose. Also they were all hiding below ground themselves in the crypts. Would they not have heard something?

[Margaery's Horse]

K... if R + L = J, could the dragon flying out of Winterfell be Jon?

Jon does get his hand burned in his fight with the wights for Cmdr Mormont? There's your fiah

[Margaery's Horse]

...When Theon later returns to Winterfell, he describes it as being cold where it had been warm there before...

...Would the hot springs not continue to pump out warm water to ground? What if the hot springs were no longer hot because the source of the warmth disappeared?

The absence of warmth reported by Theon/Reek with the proposed exisitence/awakening/leaving of the Dragon is an awesome theory, well done.

Yet, devil's advocate: it could be GRRM noting through Theon/Reek that the Stark's absence and the Bolton presence is unwelcomed by Winterfell.

[PrettyPig]

In A game of Thrones, page 42(ish) The Crypts of Winterfell get colder and colder the further down you go...

There is also a passage in Jaime's weirwood dream that describe what could possibly be interpreted as an underground lair of sorts....he mentions it being very cold, with cold water, which might imply that this is somewhere in the north. IMO he is beneath the crypts at Winterfell.

He had no choice but to descend. Down a twisting passageway he went, narrow steps carved from the living rock, down and down. I must go up, he told himself. Up, not down. Why am I going down? Below the earth his doom awaited, he knew with the certainty of dream; something dark and terrible lurked there, something that wanted him. Jaime tried to halt, but their spears prodded him on. If only I had my sword, nothing could harm me. The steps ended abruptly on echoing darkness. Jaime had the sense of vast space before him. He jerked to a halt, teetering on the edge of nothingness. A spearpoint jabbed at the small of the back, shoving him into the abyss. He shouted, but the fall was short. He landed on his hands and knees, upon soft sand and shallow water. There were watery caverns deep below Casterly Rock, but this one was strange to him. "What place is this?".....

Crouching, listening, Jaime moved in a circle, ready for anything that might come out of the darkness. The water flowed into his boots, ankle deep and bitterly cold. Beware the water, he told himself. There may be creatures living in it, hidden deeps . . .

"Do they keep a bear down here?" Brienne was moving, slow and wary, sword to hand; step, turn, and listen. Each step made a little splash. "A cave lion? Direwolves? Some bear? Tell me, Jaime. What lives here? What lives in the darkness?"

"Doom." No bear, he knew. No lion. "Only doom."

GRRM has dropped several hints throughout the series about dragons in the north - that adds up to be a lot of metaphorical dragons for the reader to accept. I personally think it will be more literal.

[spunken en eggs]

i the cripts are cave'd in they make a point to tell " no one knows how deep they go" so i supose a dragon on thermals could be hatched ( dont we need blood/fire magic for that?)

i dont get how he would get out whit out beeing seen by the ppl in the cript thow.

he could be hiding a harthome, vulcanic activate, isolation on account of being curst.. could be they f'd up there when trying to move the dragon.. someting.. ?

en a small think, if the dragon heats winterfell, it needs to be of decent size, how does this thing feed? dany's need to feed. or is it already white't? en indeed 8000 years old :S