"This land is old" -- spitballing the North

[Rufus Snow]

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Eddard II

Robert frowned. "Have we ridden onto a graveyard?"

"There are barrows everywhere in the north, Your Grace," Ned told him. "This land is old."

Last we heard, Eddard never spent any time at the Citadel, and no-one seems to be particularly good at geology in Westeros, so we have to ask what Ned means when he says the land is old? I don't think he's talking about sedimentary vs igneous vs metamorphic rocks: it strikes me he means that the land has been inhabited for a very long time, longer than the rest of the realm.

The stories in the North claim that's where the First King of the First Men lived, and we also never see this ancient type of tomb anywhere else in Westeros. This to me suggests that contrary to the standard story, the First Men could have been present in the North before they were in the South. The story of the Hammer of the Waters is told about the Neck as well as the Broken Arm. We take it for granted that the Broken Arm separates Westeros from Essos, but equally the Neck separates the North from the South. And if the First Men were in the North first - where did they really come, and how did they really get there?

So, what do you think Ned meant?

[John Suburbs]

I dunno. I think it's a reference to the fact that the north still holds to the old ways and many of the beliefs and early structures are honored to this day. This would be unlike the south which saw the Andal invasion replace the First Men culture with their new one. So the north will still hold the barrows sacred, but the south would let anything like that be forgotten, since it is nothing more than the silly superstitions of a pagan peoples. Note the stumps atop High Heart, or even the crumbling monuments of the Mudd Kings.

[Euron III Greyjoy]

I think that there doesn't need to be a conspiracy behind everything. Why cant Ned have simply been telling a fact? The First Men supposedly invaded around 12,000 years ago, that seems pretty old to me. 

[wia]

Isn't this what Ned means?

Quote

The barrowlands is a region of wide, hilly plains covered with barrows, the ancient graves of the First Men. The largest hill, Great Barrow in Barrowton, is said to contain the grave of the First King of the First Men or a King of the Giants.

Quote

The First King was the legendary sovereign of the First Men when they first arrived in Westeros around 12,000 years before Aegon's Landing, according to the people of the North. It was under his leadership that the First Men travelled to Westeros from Essos.

 

[Legitimate_Bastard]

I think Ned is being literal. That is all.

[Rufus Snow]

52 minutes ago, wia said:

Isn't this what Ned means?

Quote

The barrowlands is a region of wide, hilly plains covered with barrows, the ancient graves of the First Men. The largest hill, Great Barrow in Barrowton, is said to contain the grave of the First King of the First Men or a King of the Giants.

Quote

The First King was the legendary sovereign of the First Men when they first arrived in Westeros around 12,000 years before Aegon's Landing, according to the people of the North. It was under his leadership that the First Men travelled to Westeros from Essos.

And why are there no barrows anywhere else? Barrow building represents a more primitive stage of society (equivalent to the neolithic in our own world) and if the whole continent had been inhabited when the FM were at that level of progress, why did they only leave barrows in the North? We know ringforts appear in the north and the south, and that should represent a developmental stage between tumuli (barrows) and castle-building.

1 hour ago, EloImFizzy said:

I think that there doesn't need to be a conspiracy behind everything. Why cant Ned have simply been telling a fact? The First Men supposedly invaded around 12,000 years ago, that seems pretty old to me. 

Who said anything about conspiracy? You seem to have missed something in what I said - I'm not disputing dates, I'm querying routes. If the FM entered Westeros in the south, why is the oldest archaeology in the north?

 

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

I dunno. I think it's a reference to the fact that the north still holds to the old ways and many of the beliefs and early structures are honored to this day. This would be unlike the south which saw the Andal invasion replace the First Men culture with their new one. So the north will still hold the barrows sacred, but the south would let anything like that be forgotten, since it is nothing more than the silly superstitions of a pagan peoples. Note the stumps atop High Heart, or even the crumbling monuments of the Mudd Kings.

Even the holdfasts of the FM whom those first Andals fought were not totally razed; they did not destroy the archaeology. It's one thing 'letting barrows be forgotten', but they should still be there, even if they're thought to be just little hills. That suggests again that the barrow-builders did not inhabit the south. Why? Seems to be two solutions: either they were built by FM who inhabited the north first; or they were not built by FM at all, and some other people was responsible. If so, who?

 

[wia]

20 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

And why are there no barrows anywhere else? Barrow building represents a more primitive stage of society (equivalent to the neolithic in our own world) and if the whole continent had been inhabited when the FM were at that level of progress, why did they only leave barrows in the North? We know ringforts appear in the north and the south, and that should represent a developmental stage between tumuli (barrows) and castle-building.

Was it stated that there is no Barrows anywhere else or are we assuming that there aren't 'cause we weren't shown any?

I would assume that the original First Men already had various Houses with different burial customs that they have continued to practice in Westeros. Or that some of the changed their burial customs based on their experiences in Westeros. Barrow kings bury their dead in the barrows; Starks bury their dead in the crypts; Boltons bury their dead beneath the Dreadfort; Tullys putting their dead in a boat and light it afire; Blackwoods bury their dead beneath the weirwood of Raventree; Iron Islanders seem to drown in the sea, it seems, etc.

So It could be that the Barrow custom already existed when the First King came, so he chose to adapt it. Or perhaps that's the custom his family had since before he came to Westeros, while the families that followed hims had other customs. 

Legends from the North claim that the First King led his people to Westeros. Legends from the Reach claim that Garth Greenhand led his people to Westeros. For all we know it could be both of them who led people to Westeros and then one went north and the other went south. I haven't seen any info on how Garth Greenhand was buried.

[Lady Barbrey]

17 minutes ago, wia said:

Was it stated that there is no Barrows anywhere else or are we assuming that there aren't 'cause we weren't shown any?

I would assume that the original First Men already had various Houses with different burial customs that they have continued to practice in Westeros. Or that some of the changed their burial customs based on their experiences in Westeros. Barrow kings bury their dead in the barrows; Starks bury their dead in the crypts; Boltons bury their dead beneath the Dreadfort; Tullys putting their dead in a boat and light it afire; Blackwoods bury their dead beneath the weirwood of Raventree; Iron Islanders seem to drown in the sea, it seems, etc.

So It could be that the Barrow custom already existed when the First King came, so he chose to adapt it. Or perhaps that's the custom his family had since before he came to Westeros, while the families that followed hims had other customs. 

Legends from the North claim that the First King led his people to Westeros. Legends from the Reach claim that Garth Greenhand led his people to Westeros. For all we know it could be both of them who led people to Westeros and then one went north and the other went south. I haven't seen any info on how Garth Greenhand was buried.

Two ostensible first King's of the First Men, Garth and a Dustin, seemed very curious to me, so I read that Garth section in the World Book fairly closely.  You know how George says he's a gardener when it comes to writing?  I think he put himself into the World Book, arriving maybe 5,000 years before First Men even came, planting and sowing, etc., as a description of his writing process.  So to me there are two King's, but one is the author amalgamated into a legend, the other is the real one as he imagined him.

That's one of the reasons I don't dismiss @Rufus Snow 's conjecture. Another is the barrows (Though I do imagine the ones in the South were simply plowed under to make room for agriculture), and another is that the North itself says the First Men came to Westeros under the First King 12,000 years ago, and that King seems to have made his home in the North.

It makes much more sense the first major influx arrived along the Arm of Dorne, of course, and were squeezed north with new arrivals, so I'm still going with that, but as we've seen in archeology, there is more than one way to colonize a continent and people use different routes to do it.  So you've got the Arm of Dorne, but you've also got boats from east and west, and you've also got a potential unknown northern route through ice masses that has long melted similar to the Bering Strait.

So to me it's a valid conjecture.

 

[Brandon Ice-Eyes]

I interpreted it as the north remembering a lot of the ancient customs that the south forgot. Doesn’t mean that they still practice all of them but common sayings such as that he who passes the sentence swings the sword and staunchly standing by guest right were primarily first men traditions, though the World book states that the andals held to guest right, though less closely. Up until yet, we have seen no signs of there being barrows or giant remains south of the three sisters and the neck and though this could change if George writes it so, for now I think it means that the north still honours first men traditions, and a lot of the burial sites  have remained untouched as such - supported by the recent fire and blood extract where lord Alaric stark shows the good queen Alyssane giants remains near winterfell. Just how I interpreted and could be seen differently by others.

[Rufus Snow]

17 minutes ago, wia said:

Was it stated that there is no Barrows anywhere else or are we assuming that there aren't 'cause we weren't shown any?

You're right in that it's not explicit, but they are always mentioned in context with the North and they were an unusual enough feature for Maester Kennet to make his special study when he went to the North. Ned's statement that they are 'everywhere in the North' (not just the Barrowlands) also suggests he's talking about something a southron like Bob finds unfamiliar. And that line 'this land is old' implies 'your land is not'. Is it just northern chauvinism, or does the archaeology justify the claim?

17 minutes ago, wia said:

I would assume that the original First Men already had various Houses with different burial customs that they have continued to practice in Westeros. Or that some of the changed their burial customs based on their experiences in Westeros. Barrow kings bury their dead in the barrows; Starks bury their dead in the crypts; Boltons bury their dead beneath the Dreadfort; Tullys putting their dead in a boat and light it afire; Blackwoods bury their dead beneath the weirwood of Raventree; Iron Islanders seem to drown in the sea, it seems, etc.

We really only have our own history to compare with, and looking back over similar time scales, each phase in funerary customs tends to be widespread (Urnfields, tumuli, inhumation, cremation etc) and changes tend to be widespread too - which is to say it's usually societal scale, rather than family scale. I think (but can't prove) the individual House variations are more recent - by the time the Starks were known to be using their crypts, it seems the Dustins were no longer using barrows, but alas we're looking in the gaps in the data In that list, it's notable that the outlier - Tully boat funeral - is the youngest House. Most others use inhumation, just on private property. And, yes, I'd guess the ironborn do sea burials, but I seem to have some recollection of Asha's men wanting to at least die near a stream so they can find their way to the watery halls...

17 minutes ago, wia said:

So It could be that the Barrow custom already existed when the First King came, so he chose to adapt it. Or perhaps that's the custom his family had since before he came to Westeros, while the families that followed hims had other customs. 

The custom already existing would suggest someone before the First Men...

17 minutes ago, wia said:

Legends from the North claim that the First King led his people to Westeros. Legends from the Reach claim that Garth Greenhand led his people to Westeros. For all we know it could be both of them who led people to Westeros and then one went north and the other went south. I haven't seen any info on how Garth Greenhand was buried.

There are those who will argue they are one and the same person. Personally, I think they're both just shadowy projections into a distant and unknowable past, myths developed after the fact to justify the status quo in the North and the Reach respectively, but that's probably straying too far for now

Another idea expressed 'in world' is that the barrows were built by giants, but that also has the question of why only in the North, and also if the giants don't even build homes, would they build tombs?

I'd really like to read Maester Kennet's book

[Rufus Snow]

10 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

You know how George says he's a gardener when it comes to writing?  I think he put himself into the World Book, arriving maybe 5,000 years before First Men even came, planting and sowing, etc., as a description of his writing process.

Oooh, that's a fun idea

[Lady Barbrey]

4 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

Oooh, that's a fun idea

I'm pretty positive about it.

[U. B. Cool]

3 hours ago, EloImFizzy said:

I think that there doesn't need to be a conspiracy behind everything. Why cant Ned have simply been telling a fact? The First Men supposedly invaded around 12,000 years ago, that seems pretty old to me. 

I think so.  Ned meant the land has been inhabited for thousands of years.  People come and go.  

I want to point something out here.  Is it possible the First Men were more primitive than we are led to believe?  Like maybe they were cave dwellers in the past.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

This Land is Old = The Land Remembers = The North Remembers?

They are similar in sprit, if not specific terminology.

[wia]

12 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

You're right in that it's not explicit, but they are always mentioned in context with the North and they were an unusual enough feature for Maester Kennet to make his special study when he went to the North. Ned's statement that they are 'everywhere in the North' (not just the Barrowlands) also suggests he's talking about something a southron like Bob finds unfamiliar. And that line 'this land is old' implies 'your land is not'. Is it just northern chauvinism, or does the archaeology justify the claim?

Ah, I see. It is very interesting.

12 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

We really only have our own history to compare with, and looking back over similar time scales, each phase in funerary customs tends to be widespread (Urnfields, tumuli, inhumation, cremation etc) and changes tend to be widespread too - which is to say it's usually societal scale, rather than family scale. I think (but can't prove) the individual House variations are more recent - by the time the Starks were known to be using their crypts, it seems the Dustins were no longer using barrows, but alas we're looking in the gaps in the data In that list, it's notable that the outlier - Tully boat funeral - is the youngest House. Most others use inhumation, just on private property. And, yes, I'd guess the ironborn do sea burials, but I seem to have some recollection of Asha's men wanting to at least die near a stream so they can find their way to the watery halls...

Though we don't know, I'd also assume that the changes in burial customs were probably recent. 

But also let's look at wildlings, who are also First Men. Mance was digging up graves of Joramun, kings and heroes and a giant meaning that originally the custom was to bury. Now they're burning their dead out of necessity due to the Others. Like Targaryens and possibly Valyrians as well (though we don't really know about Valyrians). But they are doing it for entirely different reasons . So while I agree that overall it should be working more or less similar to our world, it also makes me wonder if some of it is skewed due to things like that.

12 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

The custom already existing would suggest someone before the First Men...

I always assumed that there were other people (or not really people, hard to say) before the First Men. 

Quote

 The World of Ice and Fire - The Stormlands: House Durrandon
Much of the early history of Westeros is lost in the mists of time, where it becomes ever more difficult to separate fact from legend the further back one goes. This is particularly true of the stormlands, where the First Men were comparatively few and the elder races strong.

Quote

The World of Ice and Fire - The Iron Islands
Archmaester Haereg once advanced the interesting notion that the ancestors of the ironborn came from some unknown land west of the Sunset Sea, citing the legend of the Seastone Chair. The throne of the Greyjoys, carved into the shape of a kraken from an oily black stone, was said to have been found by the First Men when they first came to Old Wyk. Haereg argued that the chair was a product of the first inhabitants of the islands, and only the later histories of maesters and septons alike began to claim that they were in fact descended of the First Men. But this is the purest speculation and, in the end, Haereg himself dismissed the idea, and so must we.

Quote

The World of Ice and Fire - The Reach: Oldtown
An even more fanciful possibility was put forth a century ago by Maester Theron. Born a bastard on the Iron Islands, Theron noted a certain likeness between the black stone of the ancient fortress and that of the Seastone Chair, the high seat of House Greyjoy of Pyke, whose origins are similarly ancient and mysterious. Theron's rather inchoate manuscript Strange Stone postulates that both fortress and seat might be the work of 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.

-----

12 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

There are those who will argue they are one and the same person. Personally, I think they're both just shadowy projections into a distant and unknowable past, myths developed after the fact to justify the status quo in the North and the Reach respectively, but that's probably straying too far for now

Another idea expressed 'in world' is that the barrows were built by giants, but that also has the question of why only in the North, and also if the giants don't even build homes, would they build tombs?

I'd really like to read Maester Kennet's book 

True, it's probably that.

Were there ever giants in the south?

I'd like to read it too.

[wia]

12 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Two ostensible first King's of the First Men, Garth and a Dustin, seemed very curious to me, so I read that Garth section in the World Book fairly closely.  You know how George says he's a gardener when it comes to writing?  I think he put himself into the World Book, arriving maybe 5,000 years before First Men even came, planting and sowing, etc., as a description of his writing process.  So to me there are two King's, but one is the author amalgamated into a legend, the other is the real one as he imagined him.

That's one of the reasons I don't dismiss @Rufus Snow 's conjecture. Another is the barrows (Though I do imagine the ones in the South were simply plowed under to make room for agriculture), and another is that the North itself says the First Men came to Westeros under the First King 12,000 years ago, and that King seems to have made his home in the North.

It makes much more sense the first major influx arrived along the Arm of Dorne, of course, and were squeezed north with new arrivals, so I'm still going with that, but as we've seen in archeology, there is more than one way to colonize a continent and people use different routes to do it.  So you've got the Arm of Dorne, but you've also got boats from east and west, and you've also got a potential unknown northern route through ice masses that has long melted similar to the Bering Strait.

So to me it's a valid conjecture.

 

It most certainly is a valid conjecture. And that take on George is great imo.

[Rufus Snow]

5 minutes ago, wia said:

But also let's look at wildlings, who are also First Men. Mance was digging up graves of Joramun, kings and heroes and a giant meaning that originally the custom was to bury. Now they're burning their dead out of necessity due to the Others.

That's a good thought - the coming of the Others give a great incentive to start cremating your dead instead of burying them. So would we be justified in taking that as evidence of burial customs predating the Long Night?

10 minutes ago, wia said:

Were there ever giants in the south?

I believe so, as they are described as one of the 'elder races', which your Stormlands quote above said were strong in the Stormlands before the coming of men.

The other thing which piqued me about the barrows compared to the other 'ancient' buildings is that they are so clearly primitive, whereas the things like the Seastone Chair, the base of the Hightower and so on are advanced in design and construction. So there's that tension between what (for want of better terminology) we might call the 'mythic' and 'archaeological' versions of deep time. One related to CotF, giants and First Men, the other relating to Deep Ones, squishers and Merlings and the like.

Also, there's this phrase that keeps popping up - I have to wonder if it's meant literally or if it's just idiomatic:

Quote

The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Dawn Age

....... What can most accurately be told about the Dawn Age? The eastern lands were awash with many peoples—uncivilized, as all the world was uncivilized, but numerous. But on Westeros, from the Lands of Always Winter to the shores of the Summer Sea, only two peoples existed: the children of the forest and the race of creatures known as the giants.

Quote

The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Dawn Age

Yet no matter the truths of their arts, the children were led by their greenseers, and there is no doubt that they could once be found from the Lands of Always Winter to the shores of the Summer Sea.

Quote

The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Age of Heroes

The Age of Heroes lasted for thousands of years, in which kingdoms rose and fell, noble houses were founded and withered away, and greet deeds were accomplished. Yet what we truly know of those ancient days is hardly more than what we know of the Dawn Age. The tales we have now are the work of septons and maesters writing thousands of years after the fact—yet unlike the children of the forest and the giants, the First Men of this Age of Heroes left behind some ruins and ancient castles that can corroborate parts of the legends, and there are stone monuments in the barrow fields and elsewhere marked with their runes. It is through these remnants that we can begin to ferret out the truth behind the tales.

What is commonly accepted is that the Age of Heroes began with the Pact and extended through the thousands of years in which the First Men and the children lived in peace with one another. With so much land ceded to them, the First Men at last had room to increase. From the Land of Always Winter to the shores of the Summer Sea, the First Men ruled from their ringforts. Petty kings and powerful lords proliferated, but in time some few proved to be stronger than the rest, forging the seeds of the kingdoms that are the ancestors of the Seven Kingdoms we know today. The names of the kings of these earliest realms are caught up in legend, and the tales that claim their individual rules lasted hundreds of years are to be understood as errors and fantasies introduced by others in later days.

My reading of that is that the FM were limited in range until the Pact, and then spread to cover all the continent at around the stage where they were building ringforts (which I thought above was a stage between mere barrow-building and full-blown castle building - the 'bronze' age, if you will, between the stone age of the Barrows, and the iron of the castles...) The line here that "the First Men at last had room to increase" suggests that beforehand they had only limited terrirtory.

Then it goes on to talk about the petty kings contending and slowly building larger realms - a process totally incompatible with the idea that all FM were once ruled by a First King. Unless their numbers were so few that they amounted to little more than a petty kingdom anyway....

Hmmm... more to mull over, thanks folks, for humouring my spitballs

[Lady Barbrey]

41 minutes ago, wia said:

It most certainly is a valid conjecture. And that take on George is great imo.

Ha! Take a look at the picture in the Wiki.  It even looks like George.  And that green hand sigil - what better sigil for a writer who describes himself as a gardener?  I didn't see it on the first read-through and I remember LmL and I were so curious about the Order of the Green Hand.  What was their sinister purpose?  When if it's anything at all, it's probably just a bunch of old dude writers that party together lol.

WoIaF is a slippery production.  I spotted a lot of refs to writers and characters.  It gets to the point you wonder if the Pact was just a promise he made to his publisher.

[wia]

9 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

That's a good thought - the coming of the Others give a great incentive to start cremating your dead instead of burying them. So would we be justified in taking that as evidence of burial customs predating the Long Night?

I think we would be justified in taking that as evidence of burial customs predating the Long Night. But also the thing that made me curious for a while now is why pretty much the whole of Westeros or at least the North doesn't burn their dead as well? - Wouldn't that be the thing to make a custom after the Long night? 

 

14 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

My reading of that is that the FM were limited in range until the Pact, and then spread to cover all the continent at around the stage where they were building ringforts (which I thought above was a stage between mere barrow-building and full-blown castle building - the 'bronze' age, if you will, between the stone age of the Barrows, and the iron of the castles...) The line here that "the First Men at last had room to increase" suggests that beforehand they had only limited terrirtory.

Perhaps that was what happened indeed.
But then that also makes me wonder if there are any burrows beyond the Wall. Maester Kennet didn't go there, did he?

 

16 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

Hmmm... more to mull over, thanks folks, for humouring my spitballs

Thanks for the thread, it's very interesting.

 

15 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Ha! Take a look at the picture in the Wiki.  It even looks like George.  And that green hand sigil - what better sigil for a writer who describes himself as a gardener?  I didn't see it on the first read-through and I remember LmL and I were so curious about the Order of the Green Hand.  What was their sinister purpose?  When if it's anything at all, it's probably just a bunch of old dude writers that party together lol.

lol, I love it! 

[Lady Barbrey]

9 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

That's a good thought - the coming of the Others give a great incentive to start cremating your dead instead of burying them. So would we be justified in taking that as evidence of burial customs predating the Long Night?

I believe so, as they are described as one of the 'elder races', which your Stormlands quote above said were strong in the Stormlands before the coming of men.

The other thing which piqued me about the barrows compared to the other 'ancient' buildings is that they are so clearly primitive, whereas the things like the Seastone Chair, the base of the Hightower and so on are advanced in design and construction. So there's that tension between what (for want of better terminology) we might call the 'mythic' and 'archaeological' versions of deep time. One related to CotF, giants and First Men, the other relating to Deep Ones, squishers and Merlings and the like.

Also, there's this phrase that keeps popping up - I have to wonder if it's meant literally or if it's just idiomatic:

My reading of that is that the FM were limited in range until the Pact, and then spread to cover all the continent at around the stage where they were building ringforts (which I thought above was a stage between mere barrow-building and full-blown castle building - the 'bronze' age, if you will, between the stone age of the Barrows, and the iron of the castles...) The line here that "the First Men at last had room to increase" suggests that beforehand they had only limited terrirtory.

Then it goes on to talk about the petty kings contending and slowly building larger realms - a process totally incompatible with the idea that all FM were once ruled by a First King. Unless their numbers were so few that they amounted to little more than a petty kingdom anyway....

Hmmm... more to mull over, thanks folks, for humouring my spitballs

Yeah, I think the petty kingdom would be correct.  But the title might have stuck, and you have to wonder who was the main representative for something like the Pact, or high king/martial strategizing against the Andals.  I've always wondered about the title King in the North instead of King of the North.  It reminds me when James was deposed and exiled to France, loyalists called him the King Across the Water, like Viserys is called at least once by Targ loyalists.  It's possible when the Andals invaded and pushed people out, loyalist First Men referred to that line of first King's as their King in the North because they still thought of him as King of Westeros but he was located in the North.