Light a wight tonight

On the Norse thing, Thor had a cart pulled by two goats, Tooth Gnasher and Tooth Grinder, which describes Stannis.

There's a lot of stuff here, not easy to check on duplicates, but the sword forged from the heart of a star reflects a similar weapon in de Camp's The Tritonian Ring. In that story the protagonist is tasked with retrieving that which the Gods fear, which was a ring forged from a fallen star. The ring is lost (treacherous ringbearer eaten by crocodiles) so the protagonist obtains the fallen star and takes it to the only smith who can forge that metal. Instead of a ring he has a sword made. As it turns out, the reason the Gods feared the ring was that the star metal killed magic.

Since a few other science fiction writers (Vance, Piper, etc) are referenced in ASoIaF, Gared the Ranger could easily be Randall Garrett. 

Not sure if this has cropped up, lots of posts here and the search gets clumsy, but Lord Gormon Peake, a Blackfyre supporter, sounds like a reference to the Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake.

Rollie (Duck) Duckfield may be a shoutout to comedian W. C. Fields, whose name was originally Dukenfield.

Plus Howard Hughes had obsessive compulsive disorder, which approached a psychotic degree of neurosis because there was no understanding at his time period so much as there is now of the affliction, so there was no adequate counselling available or treatment, unless you were fond of electric shocks. He was mentally ill, but sane. Aerys, however was completely batshit crazy, so the analogy is not apt.

I like the way you give a clinical description of Hughes with official-sounding terminology and then write Aerys off as batshit crazy. BTW, the analogy was to Aerys's appearance and actions, which are pretty evocative of Hughes's. This is literature, not psychology.

Don't recall seeing this similarity: Lann the Clever and Vance's Cugel the Clever, both were practiced con men, though Cugel generally outsmarted himself.

Aerys the Mad in his later years is very reminiscent of Howard Hughes in the same period of his life, including not having his hair cut or nails trimmed.

Ser Gregor Clegane=Three Dog Knight!

SPOILER: TWOW

Just reading Arianne's TWOW chapter, and noticed at the beginning she mentions a holding called "Ghost Hill" home to the Tolands. Seems like a reference to the Bog Mummies found in Scandanavia (famously, the Tollund Man), which have been the subject of a few stories of ritual sacrifices whose vengueful ghosts returned to haunt their killers :)

Just in time for Hallowe'en!

Don't think I've seen this one: Petyr Baelish's steward at his tower in the Fingers is named Umfred, which has to be a nod to Brother Umphred the vile Christian monk/missionary in Vance's Lyonesse trilogy.

I don't think I've seen this possibility: in an Alayne chapter in Crows the Lords Declarant are coming to the Eyrie to meet with Littlefinger. Among them is Symond Templeton. Sounds very much like Simon Templar, the Saint of mystery novels. (Damn, I just googled this and found that there's also a Simon Templeton character in Runescape.)

The term 'warg' is lifted straight from Tolkien, if no-one's brought that up before. I'm only on the second of the six LotR books at the moment ('tis not actually a trilogy), so I don't know yet if the context is the same.

Tolkien uses warg as a synonym for wolf. I think it was in The Hobbit that the line "Where the warg howls the orc prowls" appears, showing a cooperation between wolves and orcs.

Maybe nothing to it, but there are some parallels between Queen Selyse and Queen Sollace in Vance's Lyonesse trilogy. Beyond the names' similarity they are married to men who aren't interested in them sexually and perform as a matter of duty, and both are taken with a foreign religion, R'hllorism for Selyse and Christianity for Sollace. They both pester their husbands to join those faiths.

Beyond that the characters are nothing alike.

I think the English word "stark" is more relevant, meaning grim, harsh, blunt. No frills, no smoke and mirrors.

That definition would definitely fit the old-timey Starks and the offshoot Karstarks. Hardass mofos.

Vale of Arryn. There's a Val d'Aran, a tiny bit of Spain (Catalunya) north of the Pyrenees, where the native language is Gascon.

Dany's quote: "I am but a young girl" etc is very similar to the line from Donovan's Young Girl Blues "You are but a young girl, (working your way through the phonies)". I'm sure GRRM's familiar with the song. And Dany's working her way through her share of phonies.

Summerhall: a shoutout to Pat Summerall the TV sportscaster who worked football (GRRM's passion) games for so many years?

Potatoes? There are potatoes in Westeros?

I don't think there are. They have neeps. You could have The Knights who say Neep.

Gendry asking Arya whether Jon was found under a cabbage leaf could be a cabbage patch kids reference.

Snrk... And Asha Greyjoy would be a Bratz?

Remember the mnemonic from school "I before E, except after C, and especially in the name of famous authors".

Famous authors like Robert A. Heinlein? It was a typo; gimme a break.

I've always thought that Oakenshield was a reference to the Tolkien character Thorin Oakenshield

Most likely it is. And Tolkein picked up the dwarf names from the Völuspá. Thorin and Oakenshield (Eikinskjaldi) are separate beings, and Gandalf is listed as a dwarf there.

Hahaha hey i didn't say it was a perfect fit, besides Mance Rayder isn't exactly a football player now is he :)

Sorry, I get carried away when I see parallels to LoTR that are too much of a reach. And I differentiate between the Raiders as a team and the ultra-rowdy fanbase known as Raider Nation. Rattleshirt wouldn't get a second glance among them.

I don't think I saw this one. In the caves of the CotF there was a river that ran "to an unlit sea", as did the sacred river Alph in Coleridge's Xanadu. Can't be a coincidence.

Yes!!

also The Dothraki = The Rohirrim(the horselords)

Yep, the slavetaking and rapes fit right in.