The Origin of the Ironborn

[Mithras]

All the quotes are given in spoiler tags for convenience. This OP looks a little disorganized which I might edit later depending on the responses.

 

[spoiler]

Maris the Maid, the Most Fair, whose beauty was so renowned that fifty lords vied for her hand at the first tourney ever to be held in Westeros. (The victor was the Grey Giant, Argoth Stone-Skin, but Maris wed King Uthor of the High Tower before he could claim her, and Argoth spent the rest of his days raging outside the walls of Oldtown, roaring for his bride.)

 

In the Age of Heroes, the legends say, the ironborn were ruled by a mighty monarch known simply as the Grey King. The Grey King ruled the sea itself and took a mermaid to wife, so his sons and daughters might live above the waves or beneath them as they chose. His hair and beard and eyes were as grey as a winter sea, and from these he took his name. The crown he wore was made of driftwood, so all who knelt before him might know that his kingship came from the sea and the Drowned God who dwells beneath it.

 

From there he ruled the Iron Islands for a thousand years, until his very skin had turned as grey as his hair and beard. Only then did he cast aside his driftwood crown and walk into the sea, descending to the Drowned God’s watery halls to take his rightful place at his right hand.

[/spoiler]

 

Argoth Stone-Skin was a giant who would later be known the Grey King. He was cheated by the Hightowers and their CotF allies. For more information about the alliance of the CotF with the Hightowers, check this thread. As a result, the Grey King swore for vengeance.

 

[spoiler]

How old is Oldtown, truly? Many a maester has pondered that question, but we simply do not know. The origins of the city are lost in the mists of time and clouded by legend. Some ignorant septons claim that the Seven themselves laid out its boundaries, other men that dragons once roosted on the Battle Isle until the first Hightower put an end to them. Many smallfolk believe the Hightower itself simply appeared one day. The full and true history of the founding of Oldtown will likely never be known.

 

We can state with certainty, however, that men have lived at the mouth of the Honeywine since the Dawn Age. The oldest runic records confirm this, as do certain fragmentary accounts that have come down to us from maesters who lived amongst the children of the forest. One such, Maester Jellicoe, suggests that the settlement at the top of Whispering Sound began as a trading post, where ships from Valyria, Old Ghis, and the Summer Isles put in to replenish their provisions, make repairs, and barter with the elder races, and that seems as likely a supposition as any.

 

Yet mysteries remain. The stony island where the Hightower stands is known as Battle Isle even in our oldest records, but why? What battle was fought there? When? Between which lords, which kings, which races? Even the singers are largely silent on these matters.

 

The reasons for the abandonment of the fortress and the fate of its builders, whoever they might have been, are likewise lost to us, but at some point we know that Battle Isle and its great stronghold came into the possession of the ancestors of House Hightower. Were they First Men, as most scholars believe today? Or did they mayhaps descend from the seafarers and traders who had settled at the top of Whispering Sound in earlier epochs, the men who came before the First Men? We cannot know.

[/spoiler]

 

The giants were the enemies of the CotF. This might be reason enough for the CotF to intervene and have the Hightower claim the marriage hand of Maris the Maid. But I think the most important reason was that Garth the Green was a GeoDawnian Emperor (The Jade Emperor himself) who held immense power in sorcery and dragonlore. Maris inherited a huge dowry from her father which included GeoDawnian genes, lore, dragons, Battle Isle and the foundation of the Hightower. The CotF did not want their enemies to have these boons which would surely change the power balance.

 

In the end, Argoth was betrayed and House Hightower emerged as a great power. Argoth sought for other allies that might aid him in taking his revenge. So, he turned to the Deep Ones. He made a Pact with them and to seal the Pact, he married a mermaid.

 

“Raging outside the walls of Oldtown, roaring for his bride” looks like the personification of a sea ravaging a city at the coast with storms and waves. He used the power of the Deep Ones to crush the primordial Iron Islands (which was a single piece of land, home to a dense wood populated by the CotF, connected to the mainland) with a Hammer of the Waters. This created the current Iron Islands and destroyed most of the forest. The remnants of a great weirwood grove are now believed to be the bones of Nagga, a sea dragon supposedly slain by the Grey King. This is actually how the Grey King took his revenge from the CotF for aiding the Hightowers to claim his prize.

 

The descendants of the Grey King were about to start a bloody war against the Hightowers and their human allies that never ceased to exist until the present day.

 

[spoiler]

Many legends have come down to us through the millennia of the salt kings and reavers who made the Sunset Sea their own, men as wild and cruel and fearless as any who have ever lived. Thus we hear of the likes of Torgon the Terrible, Jorl the Whale, Dagon Drumm the necromancer, Hrothgar of Pyke and his krakensummoning horn, and Ragged Ralf of Old Wyk.

 

Most infamous of all was Balon Blackskin, who fought with an axe in his left hand and a hammer in his right. No weapon made of man could harm him, it was said; swords glanced off and left no mark, and axes shattered against his skin.

 

The lands the reavers plundered were densely wooded but thinly peopled in those days. Then as now, the ironborn were loath to go too far from the salt waters that sustained them, but they ruled the Sunset Sea from Bear Island and the Frozen Shore down to the Arbor. The feeble fishing boats and trading cogs of the First Men, which seldom ventured out of sight of land, were no match for the swift longships of the ironmen with their great sails and banks of oars. And when battle was joined upon the shores, mighty kings and famous warriors fell before the reavers like wheat before a scythe, in such numbers that the men of the green lands told each other that the ironborn were demons risen from some watery hell, protected by fell sorceries and possessed of foul black weapons that drank the very souls of those they slew.

 

“It is as I feared. The green lands have made you soft, and the Starks have made you theirs.”

“You're wrong. Ned Stark was my gaoler, but my blood is still salt and iron.”

 

According to their faith, the ironborn are a race apart from the common run of mankind. “We did not come to these holy islands from godless lands across the seas,” the priest Sauron Salt-Tongue once said. “We came from beneath those seas, from the watery halls of the Drowned God who made us in his likeness and gave to us dominion over all the waters of the earth.”

 

a queer, misshapen race of half men sired by creatures of the salt seas upon human women. These Deep Ones, as he names them, are the seed from which our legends of merlings have grown, he argues, whilst their terrible fathers are the truth behind the Drowned God of the ironborn.

[/spoiler]

 

The descendants of the Grey King were empowered by the magic of the Deep Ones and they overwhelmed greenlanders for a long time. The boons of the Deep Ones were superior weapon technology, superior marine technology, command of sea monsters, possibly command of the winds, necromancy, sorcery and so on. The price of these boons was that the ironborn made countless human sacrifices to the Deep Ones and their monstrous fathers.

 

[spoiler]

“A place like this, there might be squishers.”

“Squishers?” Brienne gave him a suspicious look.

“Monsters,” Nimble Dick said, with relish. “They look like men till you get close, but their heads is too big, and they got scales where a proper man’s got hair. Fish-belly white they are, with webs between their fingers. They’re always damp and fishy-smelling, but behind these blubbery lips they got rows of green teeth sharp as needles. Some say the First Men killed them all, but don’t you believe it. They come by night and steal bad little children, padding along on them webbed feet with a little squish-squish sound. The girls they keep to breed with, but the boys they eat, tearing at them with those sharp green teeth.”

 

Still farther east lie the so-called Thousand Islands (Ibbenese chartmakers tell us that there are in truth fewer than three hundred), a seagirt scatter of bleak windswept rocks believed by some to be the last remnants of a drowned kingdom whose towns and towers were submerged beneath the rising seas many thousands of years ago. Only the boldest or the most desperate mariners ever make landfall here, for the people of these islands, though few in number, are a queer folk, inimical to strangers, a hairless people with green-tinged skin who file the teeth of their females into sharp points and slice the foreskins from the members of their males. They speak no known tongue and are said to sacrifice sailors to their squamous, fishheaded gods, likenesses of whom rise from their stony shores, visible only when the tide recedes. Though surrounded by water on all sides, these islanders fear the sea so much that they will not set foot in the water even under threat of death.

 

Scholars still debate the purpose of these mazes. Were they fortifications, temples, towns? Or did they serve some other, stranger purpose? The mazemakers left no written records, so we shall never know. Their bones tell us that they were massively built and larger than men, though not so large as giants. Some have suggested that mayhaps the mazemakers were born of interbreeding between human men and giant women. We do not known why they disappeared, though Lorathi legend suggests they were destroyed by an enemy from the sea: merlings in some versions of the tale, selkies and walrus-men in others.

 

The countless tribes and clans of the free folk remain worshippers of the old gods of the First Men and children of the forest, the gods of the weirwood trees (some accounts say that there are those who worship different gods: dark gods beneath the ground in the Frostfangs, gods of snow and ice on the Frozen Shore, or crab gods at Storrold’s Point, but such has never been reliably confirmed).

[/spoiler]

 

The Deep Ones troubled other parts of Planetos through raids similar to the ironborn.

 

[spoiler]

According to these tales, the return of the sun came only when a hero convinced Mother Rhoyne's many children—lesser gods such as the Crab King and the Old Man of the River—to put aside their bickering and join together to sing a secret song that brought back the day.

 

The first Ser Artys Arryn supposedly rode upon a huge falcon (possibly a distorted memory of dragonriders seen from afar, Archmaester Perestan suggests). Armies of eagles fought at his command. To win the Vale, he flew to the top of the Giant's Lance and slew the Griffin King. He counted giants and merlings amongst his friends, and wed a woman of the children of the forest, though she died giving birth to his son.

[/spoiler]

 

But interestingly, they were convinced by a hero to set aside infighting during the Long Night and work together to bring the dawn back.

 

[spoiler]

“I swear it by earth [CotF] and water [Deep Ones],” said the boy in green.

“I swear it by bronze [First Men] and iron [ironborn],” his sister said.

“We swear it by ice [Starks] and fire [first dragonriders],” they finished together.

[/spoiler]

 

We see the joining of antagonistic sides in the oath of the Reeds as well.

[Caspoi]

Are you saying that the Ironborn are the offspring of a giant and a mermaid?

[Mithras]

Are you saying that the Ironborn are the offspring of a giant and a mermaid?

 

Yes, that is the case for the descendants of the Grey King. Of course they lost their size and fishlike appearance due to centuries of interbreeding with their salt wives taken from the First Men. Aeron recalls the deterioration in the sizes and lives of the ironborn.

 

But that was in the dawn of days, when mighty men still dwelt on earth and sea. The hall had been warmed by Nagga’s living fire, which the Grey King had made his thrall. On its walls hung tapestries woven from silver seaweed most pleasing to the eyes. The Grey King’s warriors had feasted on the bounty of the sea at a table in the shape of a great starfish, whilst seated upon thrones carved from mother-of-pearl. Gone, all the glory gone. Men were smaller now. Their lives had grown short.

[INCBlackbird]

I knew that the ironborn were convinced of this but I never really considered that it could be true. I always thought they came up with this legend to fuel their sense of superiority. That they want to believe this to set them apart from everyone else in Westeros because they need to believe they're better in order to justify the fact that they steal from them. And I always thought it made sense that such a culture, religion and legend developed due to the fact that their soil is poor and hard to farm on, they also have little woods so they were kind of forced to steal to survive and so a culture developed that endorsed and even cheered for that. So yeah, that is my assumption. But obviously I could be totally wrong, you make a good case. Maybe I'm being too realistic and ignoring that it's fantasy too much.

[LordToo-Fat-to-Sit-a-Horse]

Certainly interesting

 

 

but why on earth would the Deep Ones have superior  weapon technology, superior marine technology, possibly command of the winds, necromancy ?

 

I can get behind superior water magic sure.. but marine technology? Deep ones need ships?

[Belgarad]

The "We swear it by bronze and iron" line would make more sense if it applied to the First Men and the Andals as those metals represented their respective technology levels when they met.

[Doorlocks]

 

“I swear it by earth [CotF] and water [Deep Ones],” said the boy in green.

“I swear it by bronze [First Men] and iron [ironborn],” his sister said.

“We swear it by ice [Starks] and fire [first dragonriders],” they finished together.

 

 

 

I liked your whole post, but this in particular caught my interest.  I think there's a corresponding group, and also a specific family, associated with each of those, although I'm not 100% sure on all of them.

 

Earth (CotF; Reed) and Water (Deep Ones; Greyjoy or Tully?)
Bronze (First Men; Royce) and Iron (Andals; Arryn or Greyjoy?)

Ice (Others; Stark) and Fire (Dragons; Targaryen)

 

There's also likely an individual that GRRM has in mind to ultimately be associated with each, but those are harder to figure out. 

 

There's a lot of talk about the properties of some of these things in of themselves (fire is warming but destructive; ice is preservative but deadly), but how about their interactions with each other?  While fire will destroy ice, it can make earth nearly indestructible (i.e. firing clay or baking mud.)  Will a Reed be immeasurably strengthened by a Targaryen, or the Children by acquiring Dragons? 

[slant]

wow have to re-read carefully again, but this makes sense

[Mithras]

Certainly interesting

 

 

but why on earth would the Deep Ones have superior  weapon technology, superior marine technology, possibly command of the winds, necromancy ?

 

I can get behind superior water magic sure.. but marine technology? Deep ones need ships?

 

Note that the Deep Ones are the hybrids of some primordial monsters and humans. I think those primordial monsters are aliens as in the universe of Lovecraft. So, they might be technologically much more advanced than the residents of Planetos. We do know that the earliest runic records of the First Men talk about the “foul black weapons of the reavers which drink the souls of the slain”. I read that as some iron or steel fused with bloodmagic, not so different than the Valyrian Steel technology. Deep Ones might not need ships but they can sure help the ironborn build better ships or even invent the ships if they didnot exist.

 

I liked your whole post, but this in particular caught my interest.  I think there's a corresponding group, and also a specific family, associated with each of those, although I'm not 100% sure on all of them.

 

Earth (CotF; Reed) and Water (Deep Ones; Greyjoy or Tully?)
Bronze (First Men; Royce) and Iron (Andals; Arryn or Greyjoy?)

Ice (Others; Stark) and Fire (Dragons; Targaryen)

 

There's also likely an individual that GRRM has in mind to ultimately be associated with each, but those are harder to figure out. 

 

There's a lot of talk about the properties of some of these things in of themselves (fire is warming but destructive; ice is preservative but deadly), but how about their interactions with each other?  While fire will destroy ice, it can make earth nearly indestructible (i.e. firing clay or baking mud.)  Will a Reed be immeasurably strengthened by a Targaryen, or the Children by acquiring Dragons? 

 

I do not include the Andals because I think the Grey King likely lived much before even the Fist Men came to Westeros. I do not think the First Men were the first humans in Westeros. The Great Empire of the Dawn likely reached Westeros long before the First Men came. As I said, I think Garth the Green was the Jade Emperor of the GEotD. Similarly, Valyria didnot exist at this time. Or if it existed, it was a GeoDawnian colony settled by GeoDawnians. Valyria was formed after the LN by what we now call the Valyrians.

[slant]

so the drowned god is Cthulhu? 

 

Elric Stormbringer from Moorcock Multiverse had a sword exactly like 

 

"foul black weapons that drank the very souls of those they slew"

 

this leads me to believe that it is the same sword as

 

 

 

How long the darkness endured no man can say, but all agree that it was only when a great warrior—known variously as Hyrkoon the Hero, Azor Ahai, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser —arose to give courage to the race of men and lead the virtuous into battle with his blazing sword Lightbringer that the darkness was put to rout, and light and love returned once more to the world.

[Mithras]

so the drowned god is Cthulhu? 

 

Pretty much.

[LordToo-Fat-to-Sit-a-Horse]

yet, the Ironborn have no Deep one traits, like the people of the Neck or the Sisters, or the basilisks isles, or the thousand islands,

 

nieither they have any Giant traits (Umbers?)

 

on the other hand, many of the cultural differences that support the idea of them being a different race, are actually present in FM ancient history.. like Thraldom.. or even Sea God + Sky God.

 

naval technology can be explained by need. Innovation is often driven by need. If the Iron ISlands werent actually an island before the Hammer that drowned the neck, then it makes sense if the FM had to adapt to their new enviorment. their reaving culture is part of the same (no food, no wood, means reaving)

 

besides, the Grey King, is more related, IMO, to a greenseer.. (Giant greenseer?).. a throne of Naggas bones, a crown of driftwood (or Naggas teeth in other tales)..

 

Also, The tsunami that hit the pre-Iron islands, seems to be the end of the Grey Kings rule, not the beggining.

 

ETA: the swords are interesting though... they seem like both VS and Lightbringer (in Nissa Nissa´s tale)

 

ETA2: as far as i know, the ironborn from the Lonely light, and this particular one are the only IB that show any Deep one traits:

 

“Is that a threat?” One of the Codds pushed to his feet. A big man, but pop-eyed and wide of mouth, with dead white flesh. He looked as if his father had sired him on a fish, but he still wore a longsword. “Dagon Codd yields to no man.”

 

[aryagonnakill#2]

I believe that the Deep Ones took the Iron Isles from the cotf as you say, I even like the reason you give. However I make 1 distinction in that I think the Iron Born as we know them today were taken as thralls by the Deep Ones, and that when the cotf destroyed the iron isles with the hammer of the waters, the deep ones were killed but some humans survived.  Or that in the aftermath of the hammer of the waters, some humans were washed off the mainland and wound up on the iron isles.

 

I also don't see why the black weapons can't simply have been iron weapons when everyone else was using bronze.