"This land is old" -- spitballing the North

[Lady Barbrey]

1 hour ago, Rufus Snow said:

According to the 'official' story horses arrived with the First Men, and if our own world is any guide, so did dogs - humans and dogs co-evolved to a large degree. They also suposedly had bronze technology, but I have my doubts as to when this arose....

[***Personally, I find lizard-lions totally incredible (and I've said elsewhere that biology clearly isn't George's major), they are way out of their climatic zone if they're supposed to be crocs. They really are a bug, not a feature - like the yellow and green glass in the Winterfall glass gardens.... Alan Dean Foster is your man for good biologically-aware writing.]

Interesting you mention the Bering land bridge - what's the current state of play on the 'Clovis first' argument? Consider the vast array of scientific disciplines we can bring to bear on the peopling of the Americas, and we're still only scraping the surface. That's allegedly on the same sort of timescale. Yet in Westeros people claim to know the identities of named individuals and who they married and who all their descendents are? It's a pattern we see repeatedly - all those people long ago lived in a golden age, they were almost gods, they lived for thousands of years, and everything has been getting worse and worse ever since.... yet the archaeology usually shows they lived simple, brutish and short lives in abject parasite- and disease-ridden poverty, and in reality everything has been getting more developed, more complex and healthier etc etc. So far Westeros only has a mythos, but not reliable science.

Ancient Greeks would tell you they descended from gods or titans who came down from Olympus and inhabited Greece usually via  a few highly implausible sexual unions - modern science will tell you that some roaming bands of early Indo-europeans struggled through the Balkans and scratched out a rudimentary living as goatherds for thousands of years before they got round to metalworking, writing, philosophy and the hoplite phalanx. That certain Greek families claimed to be descended from Herakles or Apollo should be taken with the same grain of salt applied to those in the Reach claiming to be descended from Garth Greenhand.

My current take is that the proto-FM may have come across the Arm from Essos, but as bands of primitive hunter-gatherers, with a palaeolithic level of technology. (They may have come some other route but that gets too tinfoily for now). I think they wandered around the continent, then for one reason or another some settled in what is now the Barrowlands - who knows, perhaps the aurochs herds were particularly happy there? I think this developed as the heimat of the culture which came to be known as the 'First Men' - it's not necessarily where they originated, but where they settled and developed their culture. Barrow building is a primitive (neolithic) level of social organisation, often arising alongside agriculture. Once the culture becomes established - ie successful as a survival strategy - it spreads - most of the North seems to have been settled whlst the FM were at this level of development judging by the spread of Barrows. I think at some point there was a bronze age transition, with the development of more heirarchical societies, tribalisation and a rise in conflict - this is when ringforts become common. The culture spreads out from the heimat until ringforts are found from 'the land of always winter to the shores of the summer sea'. I think the ringforts are the nucleii from which the 'petty kingdoms' arose, and the origins of the 'noble families'. From there we move onto more familiar ground with the Andal invasion, iron-age transition, stone castles and proto-feudalism, ie something more like 'history' rather than 'prehistory'.

Anyway, we're not going to pin it all down, 'cause at the very least even the maesters lack the wherewithal to even collect the evidence we need, let along represent it clearly or understand it....

Well if we're going paleo, I think one of the theories for the peopling of the Americas is they were following big game herds they traditionally hunted that were migrating for some habitat reason or another across the Bering Strait.  So maybe they were followings auroch herds! How long has ghost grass been around in Essos - were the herds migrating because their habitat had been spoiled?

I really like your reasoning, Rufus Snow.  Even though we're unlikely to get a handle on it because George doesn't follow the science exactly, he DOES seem to have enough archeological and anthropological knowledge to follow things in broad strokes, except when he doesn't for story purposes, so it is always illuminating and cause for speculation when I read posts such as yours.

[Rufus Snow]

14 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

 I'm pretty certain there were wild dragons in Westeros, for instance, but very few of them, because it seems to be an amazingly non-volcanic land.  If there were any dragons, they presumedly liked hot thermal areas, which kind of narrows it down in the present day to known hot thermal areas in Westeros, such as Dragonstone, which is volcanic, and Winterfell with its hot springs and possibly Hardhome because of that explosion.  Dragons of course can fly so wouldn't need the Arm of Dorne.

This is something which probably deserves its own thread, but I can't resist a quick 'delve' Obviously you picked up that I mentioned dragons because they can hop continents under their own steam if need be.

I'm still terribly undecided about their origins as there are so many different stories: either they were once widespread, or they were made of magic and puppy-dog tails by the Valyrians, or maybe they crawled out of the toxic bestiary we call the Shadow... so I'm not sure whether to call the likes of the Cannibal 'wild' or 'feral' dragons. It seems that for every story, another one contradicts it, but I appreciate your reminder of the hot springs at Winterfell, cause it stands to reason dragons would like those sorts of features - volcanoes and other hot rocks - and there are those stories of long-ago dragons in Westeros. So are they related to the dragons we see in the text, fire made flesh and all that, or just mundane dinosaur bones

[Lady Barbrey]

44 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

This is something which probably deserves its own thread, but I can't resist a quick 'delve' Obviously you picked up that I mentioned dragons because they can hop continents under their own steam if need be.

I'm still terribly undecided about their origins as there are so many different stories: either they were once widespread, or they were made of magic and puppy-dog tails by the Valyrians, or maybe they crawled out of the toxic bestiary we call the Shadow... so I'm not sure whether to call the likes of the Cannibal 'wild' or 'feral' dragons. It seems that for every story, another one contradicts it, but I appreciate your reminder of the hot springs at Winterfell, cause it stands to reason dragons would like those sorts of features - volcanoes and other hot rocks - and there are those stories of long-ago dragons in Westeros. So are they related to the dragons we see in the text, fire made flesh and all that, or just mundane dinosaur bones

So true about the various theories on dragons.  I myself think they were likely natural and found in great numbers in the 14 Flames.  There seems to be something special about them, their great force of will as George once described it, and perhaps other things, but if you leave WoIaF out of it with its sinister implications of forced hybridity, It's the Valyrians themselves that seem to have inherited a magical ability to bond them.

The only place on the Westeros continent proper that seems hospitable for dragons is Winterfell, and it also seems to be the only place that is rumoured to have them - the small folk claim dragons live(d) in the hot springs, and this could well be a rumour that pre-dates Targaryens and Mushrooms egg.  Plus Winterfell is not built on leveled ground but follows the contours of the land, as if the builders were reluctant to disturb the caverns and hot springs underneath.  We also have evidence of fused stone at Old town, and likely in my opinion, the Wall at its base. The only other thing that might be relevant is that confused myth of the Arryn that flies, which could easily be a dragon-rider seen from the ground, predating the Arryns altogether.

Combined with the fact that something was made or forged to combat the Others, who only appeared in Westeros, and the Daynes sharing Targ features, and that dragon spirit thing the direwolf sees escaping the burning, I've always felt that the Valyrians stem from a First Man house at Winterfell, and are probably related way back in antiquity to both the Starks and Daynes - they all came from a common ancestor with enough fluidity, and maybe magical potential, in the gene pool to make them good prospects for transformation into Others, Skinchangers or Valyrians.

And this brings me to a different part of migration theory - we know the First Men likely came from Essos, just as the British Isles were inhabited from the continent, but there's lots of evidence in the latter case that some of them crossed back over.

So to me It's always made perfect sense that the Valyrians as a people were 'forged' or created at Winterfell (which had not been built yet, talking about the hot springs)  to bond with the dragons found there, in order to defeat the Others, stuck around long enough to help build the Wall, the old keep and possibly the crypts at Winterfell, and a few other edifices in Westeros, then migrated to better habitats for their dragons, namely Dragonstone, where you can trace the architecture in the gargoyles (old keep and old inn), and then onto Valyria.

 

[Rufus Snow]

16 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Combined with the fact that something was made or forged to combat the Others, who only appeared in Westeros, and the Daynes sharing Targ features, and that dragon spirit thing the direwolf sees escaping the burning, I've always felt that the Valyrians stem from a First Man house at Winterfell, and are probably related way back in antiquity to both the Starks and Daynes - they all came from a common ancestor with enough fluidity, and maybe magical potential, in the gene pool to make them good prospects for transformation into Others, Skinchangers or Valyrians.

And this brings me to a different part of migration theory - we know the First Men likely came from Essos, just as the British Isles were inhabited from the continent, but there's lots of evidence in the latter case that some of them crossed back over.

So to me It's always made perfect sense that the Valyrians as a people were 'forged' or created at Winterfell, to bond with the dragons found there, in order to defeat the Others, stuck around long enough to help build the Wall and a few other edifices in Westeros, then migrated to better habitats for their dragons, namely Dragonstone, where you can trace the architecture in the gargoyles (old keep and old inn), and then onto Valyria.

I found it interesting GRRM gave the Daynes the purple eyes, then made a lot of noise about purple eyes not always being Valyrian - but if the connection is in the other direction... hmmm.

And what Summer saw in the sky as Winterfell burned down, I really can't imagine that being anything other than a dragon, though I'm not sure if it was escaping or just looking... either way though, I can't see it being one of Dany's so where's it from otherwise?

Finally (cos it's past bedtime now....) this little tidbit tickled my funny bone when I first saw it::

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Daenerys III

.... For half a moon, they rode through the Forest of Qohor, where the leaves made a golden canopy high above them, and the trunks of the trees were as wide as city gates. There were great elk in that wood, and spotted tigers, and lemurs with silver fur and huge purple eyes, but all fled before the approach of the khalasar and Dany got no glimpse of them.

 

[Lady Barbrey]

5 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

I found it interesting GRRM gave the Daynes the purple eyes, then made a lot of noise about purple eyes not always being Valyrian - but if the connection is in the other direction... hmmm.

And what Summer saw in the sky as Winterfell burned down, I really can't imagine that being anything other than a dragon, though I'm not sure if it was escaping or just looking... either way though, I can't see it being one of Dany's so where's it from otherwise?

Finally (cos it's past bedtime now....) this little tidbit tickled my funny bone when I first saw it::

 

Yep, in the other direction.  Purple eyes aren't confined to descendants of Valyrians, but they could very well be confined to descendants of Daynes or a common ancestor to both more likely (which is why we get the Amethyst Empress retrofit and the ancestor swords in Dany's dreams that look suspiciously like Dawn, I suspect). A particular family came from Essos to Westeros, and eons later, a branch of them moved back.  He's never made any comments on that, though I don't know if anyone's ever asked him.

People have come up with a lot of great theories on that sighting, like comets, and smoke, etc., but for me you can't on a symbolic level escape from a Winterfell-dragon connection, whether escaping, peering around, spirit or flesh animal, comet in the smoke, etc.  Dragon + Winterfell.

Oh absolutely, I saw that too at the time!  Were Valyrians created from a separate strain of apes? I asked myself.  Sadly, of course, that's not how it works, but it was a nice little nod to evolution and a pre-ancestor of both humans and lemurs passing down those bits of colouring to both! Which, if anything, supports the idea of a pre-ancestor to Daynes and Valyrians  - and Starks! on a human level.

Why do I add Starks?  Because I suspect the Others were originally made from Starks, and because they have always as far as we know lived at Winterfell, where dragons might have lived.  The Stark branch might originally have had purple eyes too!  But the important thing all of these people pass down is mutability, not colouring.  The Dayne's colouring exists as a hint to a common ancester with Valyrians, nothing more really.  The real genetic benefit of that common ancestor was mutability.

So I just imagine a family of First Men with this exceptional quality of mutability that the CotF can use and some of them have affinities to a greater or lesser degree to the elements. From them, they create skinchangers, and eventually Others, and eventually Valyrians. Some aren't changed at all or breed mutability out and become the Dayne family (but retain the ancestral sword), some pass the skinchanging and greenseeing gene down in Blackwoods, and Reeds and Starks, etc., and it spreads throughout the First Men, some are changed later, from those with icier affinities - certain members of the Stark branch - into Others, and sometime later those with fiery affinites - perhaps certain members of the Dayne branch - are tranformed into Valyrians to combat the Others. Some lose the abilities, some retain them, but if they want to ensure they come to full fruition, they commit incest and re-breed it in. 

Just thought of something else - there is mention of dragonsteel that predates Valyrians and Valyrian steel and does not seem to be dragonglass. But it could easily be dragonbone which is as hard as steel but more flexible, we're told. And before the Targs the likely place to find dragonbone from dead dragons on the continent is, once again, Winterfell.

Or maybe, in nearby barrows?

Just wanted to bring it back to your topic.  Your fault, you shouldn't have 'delved' lol.  This is a hobby horse idea of mine I've never posted in full on a topic thread, though I'm sure it's been thought of, and your delve gave me temporary permission to mount.

But I do think this theory helps give weight to yours, because though it's full of magic, it is following the broad strokes of migration theory, evolution, genetics, archeology, etc., so extrapolating from the social and hard sciences, as long as not too detailed or precise, is not futile.  NOT FUTILE! Say it with me!

[Lady Barbrey]

9 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

  *** An aside note: why would the lizard lions in the Neck be the most renowned? Shouldn't they be runts compared to what is prowling around the Reach and Stormlands? For that matter, how can LLs survive the long winters that far north, but lemons can only grow in Dorne? ***

So if the Arm was broken 10000 years ago, that would put it roughly on par with the loss of the Bering land bridge 12000 years ago. This would help account for the disparity of wildlife without an evolutionary cause.

 

 

I may be wrong, but I think I've read of lizards that hibernate in mud or something when It's cold.  Possible explanation?  Lol. Don't understand why all the animals, and humans too, haven't started hibernation adaptations with those strange seasons.

Edit: just looked it up and it's called brumation for some lizards, snakes, tortoises - they just need a bit of water once in a while. It's actually a wonder all of Planetos isn't reptile world with a few mammal hiberbators thrown in.  It's kind of amazing how much I learn by engaging in the Westeros forum!

Yep, agree with second point.

[Rufus Snow]

9 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Your fault, you shouldn't have 'delved' lol

Har! Mea culpa

Maybe a slight diversion, but not at all a distraction, as it does bring some things back into focus which I've been a little loath to engage. Like the Otheriness of Starks for one... but yes, I like the idea that maybe the FM (or proto-FM) of the Barrowfield Culture (for want of a better name) may have also been the crucible of genetic variation. Hence the preponderance of 'magical' bloodlines in the North (wargs, greenseers/dreamers, whatever it is the Boltons are REALLY up to, Corpse Queens and yadda yadda....)

OK, now we're beginning to get stuff showing up I wasn't expecting, so it's all to the good. This with the Daynes as possibly showing a common ancestry with Valyrians, that's a great explanation for their similarity whcih totally meshes with George's insistence on them not BEING Valyrian. Also bear in mind this process I've suggested of the FM spreading and colonising the whole continent once they reach a certain technological level - namely bronze working - might suggest this is when the conflict with the CotF first flared up - barrowlands being bare windswept plains might not be the ideal habitat for CotF, so previously no conflict, but once the FM start moving again.... and of course that might also be an explanation for why the proto-FM settled there first - no Children!

I wonder now whether the creation of 'House Thenn' might be a nod to that process of colonisation, tribalisation and formation of petty kingdoms? The Thenns have done all that, NOW they have stepped into the 'noble House' category too, after having been 'stuck' in the bronze age for a few thousand years

And, yes, that early mention of 'dragonsteel' long before Valyria was supposed to be a thing. It is all getting a whole lot more suggestive. And we haven't even begun thinking about how it all meshes in with the Long Night, creation of the Others and so on....

Hmmm, well, there you go. Start delving around in ancient graves, and you never know what's you're going to dig up. I just hope it doesn't manifest Lord Caernarvon-style

[wia]

16 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

Like the Otheriness of Starks for one...

Actually, I wonder how does that fact that the crypts are the actual Winterfell (since the oldest building, the First Keep, is awfully young) relates to the barrow thing. There are theories that at some point inhabitants have been living underground. Would that be before or after barrows?

[Rufus Snow]

2 hours ago, wia said:

Actually, I wonder how does that fact that the crypts are the actual Winterfell (since the oldest building, the First Keep, is awfully young) relates to the barrow thing. There are theories that at some point inhabitants have been living underground. Would that be before or after barrows?

Good question - I need to think about that.

There are some half-formed factoids in the back of my mind which I need to catch up to on my current re-read - there's a mention somewhere of some levels of the crypts having collapsed for instance, and I think that was described as the oldest, but then it also says somewhere that the crypts are getting deeper, so the newer levels are dug beneath the older.... but my mental image is a bit confused and I can't recall all the quotes, so that's a definite target for dredge out again. To some degree the crypts do remind me of gallery graves, though, so suspect they may have begun as a regular gallery-style tumulus on the surface, then been dug out later to make more space?

I'm also piqued by the Winterfell site being possibly a conjoining of a number of separate ringforts (which is used to explain the land not being levelled). So, on some reflection, I could see WF as having risen around one or more barrows as the culture evolved technologically.

 

[Totally left-field, and possibly even a total brain-fart, but one concept of feng shui is 'seeing the dragon in the landscape'....]

ETA:

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - The Turncloak

"The steps go farther down," observed Lady Dustin.

"There are lower levels. Older. The lowest level is partly collapsed, I hear. I have never been down there." He pushed the door open and led them out into a long vaulted tunnel, where mighty granite pillars marched two by two into blackness.

OK, so why start by digging so deep you leave space above? Hmm...

ETA2:

Quote

The World of Ice and Fire - The North: Winterfell

We can dismiss Mushroom's claim in his Testimony that the dragon Vermax left a clutch of eggs somewhere in the depths of Winterfell's crypts, where the waters of the hot springs run close to the walls, while his rider treated with Cregan Stark at the start of the Dance of the Dragons. As Archmaester Gyldayn notes in his fragmentary history, there is no record that Vermax ever laid so much as a single egg, suggesting the dragon was male. The belief that dragons could change sex at need is erroneous, according to Maester Anson's Truth, rooted in a misunderstanding of the esoteric metaphor that Barth preferred when discussing the higher mysteries.

Within its walls, the castle sprawls across several acres of land, encompassing many freestanding buildings. The oldest of these—a long-abandoned tower, round and squat and covered with gargoyles—has become known as the First Keep. Some take this to mean that it was built by the First Men, but Maester Kennet has definitively proved that it could not have existed before the arrival of the Andals since the First Men and the early Andals raised square towers and keeps. Round towers came sometime later.

OK, I hadn't spotted that the crypts were close to the warm water before... and of course, Yandel is a past master at dismissing out of hand things we later find out to be true. Barth's 'esoteric metaphor' seems true, so perhaps we shouldn't dismiss the possibility of Vermax having laid some eggs at WF, and could it be a hatchling that Summer saw in the sky?

And, sorry Maester Kennet, I don't accept that round towers only came in with the Andals - too many supposedly old castles have round towers (eg Storm's End, supposedly built by Brandon the Builder...)

 

And lastly, for now:

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

........ A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. The tree itself was shrinking, growing smaller with each vision, whilst the lesser trees dwindled into saplings and vanished, only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn. And now the lords Bran glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail. Some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts, but they were gone before he could put a name to them.

Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand.

I know someone has brought this up elsewhere - I had originally leapt to the usual conclusion that 'white-haired' = old, but that was an assumption... 'white-haired' could also refer to one of those proto-Dayne/proto-Valyrians we were discussing upthread. Caught in the very act of performing some variety of blood-magic by Bran's surveillance of the deep past....

[hiemal]

On 10/10/2018 at 2:15 PM, Rufus Snow said:

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?

Venturing deep into the tinfoil I posit that this refers to the splintered nature of time in the world of Ice and Fire. Briefly, I think the same magical "infection" that has misaligned the seasons has also somehow either interwoven entirely different timelines or different fragments from the same timeline so that Westeros was "first" settled from across the Arm of Dorne, through what is NOW the Land of Always of Winter but was THEN something else entirely, and possibly even by sailors from across the Sunset Sea. -whew-

In other words, all of the apparent anachronisms and these other misalignments of historical dates are symptoms a deeper malady relating the nature of time itself. There are stories about knights in Westeros thousands of years before the Andal invasion because there were knights in Westeros before the Andal invasion- this iteration, anyways.

Quote

"The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite,/ That ever I was born to set it right!"... Hamlet Act I Scence 5

 

[Rufus Snow]

45 minutes ago, hiemal said:

In other words, all of the apparent anachronisms and these other misalignments of historical dates are symptoms a deeper malady relating the nature of time itself. There are stories about knights in Westeros thousands of years before the Andal invasion because there were knights in Westeros before the Andal invasion- this iteration, anyways.

You're right - messed up timelines can also account for some of the oddities - and as you mentioned the knights, there is also Alyssa Arryn who lived thousands of years before ... the Arryns

I've tended so far to put these sorts of events into the category headed 'history messed up by later storytellers having their own agendas' (like all the Christian saints romping amongst the bronze-age heroes of irish myth ... as written down by monks...), but I should keep in mind that it possibly is this fucked up for real

[John Suburbs]

10 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I may be wrong, but I think I've read of lizards that hibernate in mud or something when It's cold.  Possible explanation?  Lol. Don't understand why all the animals, and humans too, haven't started hibernation adaptations with those strange seasons.

Edit: just looked it up and it's called brumation for some lizards, snakes, tortoises - they just need a bit of water once in a while. It's actually a wonder all of Planetos isn't reptile world with a few mammal hiberbators thrown in.  It's kind of amazing how much I learn by engaging in the Westeros forum!

Sure, gators today exist as far north as Virginia, so these would certainly have to brumate during the winter. The thing is, the farther north you go, the smaller they get -- they can be upwards of 12 feet in the Everglades.

So in the Neck, not only do we have the largest and fiercest LLs in the land despite their northern location, but they also seem to brumate for years at a time, which would be quite the feat for any reptile let alone ones that still grow to man-eating proportions. All the while, none of these creatures ever found their way down the Green Fork to warmer waters on the Trident or even in the Bay of Crabs.

So it's a puzzle -- one that I can't resolve without magic.

[Lady Barbrey]

44 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Sure, gators today exist as far north as Virginia, so these would certainly have to brumate during the winter. The thing is, the farther north you go, the smaller they get -- they can be upwards of 12 feet in the Everglades.

So in the Neck, not only do we have the largest and fiercest LLs in the land despite their northern location, but they also seem to brumate for years at a time, which would be quite the feat for any reptile let alone ones that still grow to man-eating proportions. All the while, none of these creatures ever found their way down the Green Fork to warmer waters on the Trident or even in the Bay of Crabs.

So it's a puzzle -- one that I can't resolve without magic.

Yeah it makes no sense.  I live in South West Canada and the biggest of our lizards are no more than a foot long.

[hiemal]

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

Sure, gators today exist as far north as Virginia, so these would certainly have to brumate during the winter. The thing is, the farther north you go, the smaller they get -- they can be upwards of 12 feet in the Everglades.

So in the Neck, not only do we have the largest and fiercest LLs in the land despite their northern location, but they also seem to brumate for years at a time, which would be quite the feat for any reptile let alone ones that still grow to man-eating proportions. All the while, none of these creatures ever found their way down the Green Fork to warmer waters on the Trident or even in the Bay of Crabs.

So it's a puzzle -- one that I can't resolve without magic.

For example- if the North was not always in the "north".  A brief summary of tinfoil- there are now no magnetic poles on Planetos and north and south are instead now determined by magical "poles" of Ice and Fire- poles that have shifted several times throughout history after cataclysmic magical events such as that which brought about the Long Night and probably established the current Land of Always Winter as well the cardinal direction and the Doom of Valyria which resulted in the loss of the Land of Always Summer and leaving the world destabilized until a new Pole can be established (Isle of Faces?).

[Lady Barbrey]

2 hours ago, hiemal said:

For example- if the North was not always in the "north".  A brief summary of tinfoil- there are now no magnetic poles on Planetos and north and south are instead now determined by magical "poles" of Ice and Fire- poles that have shifted several times throughout history after cataclysmic magical events such as that which brought about the Long Night and probably established the current Land of Always Winter as well the cardinal direction and the Doom of Valyria which resulted in the loss of the Land of Always Summer and leaving the world destabilized until a new Pole can be established (Isle of Faces?).

That is not the least bit tinfoil in its supposition that the poles are ice and fire.  More than once I've seen where sticks are laid out and the characters say, "from North to South, from ice to fire". There's direct correlation.  I have a slightly different interpretation of what that means than you do, but they could gel with adjustments both sides.

When George was asked about scientific explanations for the planet's strange seasons, he said 'It's magic'.  Did he mean it's nonsense?  Or did he mean that magic is the scientific explanation?  We know magic is a force in this fantasy world. So maybe magic is a force to be considered, like gravity, as keeping the world turning on a predictable path when it is balanced.  That means to me there never were magnetic poles as we know them, but magical poles of ice and fire that acted as magnetic poles.  When the Children created the Others, they messed with the ice magic pole and sent the whole planet into the Long Night.  When they created the Valyrians to stop the Others and the Long Night, they messed with the fire magic pole and created an artificial fix.  Summer did come again but the seasons are erratic because neither pole is balanced.

Ha! I'm off topic again.  But while our interpretations might be imaginative, I think the premise that the poles are ice and fire magic concentrations that are determining the planet's wobbly orbit can be easily extrapolated from the text.

[Rufus Snow]

What I would really like to know, is when the Long Night occurred was it global or was there a Long Night in the northern hemisphere and a Long Day in the southern?

ie does the 'magic' block the light from the sun (affecting the whole planet) or does it tip the planet over, so that one side gets more winter, and the other side more summer? (Because we do know from the maesters that winter days are short and summer days are long, so it's not TOTALLY unlike our own world....)

[wia]

7 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

More than once I've seen where sticks are laid out and the characters say, "from North to South, from ice to fire". There's direct correlation.

That a really logical thought, but it always bothered me that there's no fire in the south.

[Lady Barbrey]

6 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

What I would really like to know, is when the Long Night occurred was it global or was there a Long Night in the northern hemisphere and a Long Day in the southern?

ie does the 'magic' block the light from the sun (affecting the whole planet) or does it tip the planet over, so that one side gets more winter, and the other side more summer? (Because we do know from the maesters that winter days are short and summer days are long, so it's not TOTALLY unlike our own world....)

I wish I were more of a scientist to answer that but as we don't even know where an equator might be...

But I think Sothyros must get the opposite, long summers when long winters hit the northern hemisphere.  George is definitely not interested in expanding the world in detail down south, though, so I don't know if he's going there.

[Lady Barbrey]

38 minutes ago, wia said:

That a really logical thought, but it always bothered me that there's no fire in the south.

Bothers me too, trying to get my head around it. But who knows what's in Sothyros.  Still, no one likely has to go there or to the poles.  I think when Others and Valyrians were transformed, a symbiotic relationship was also formed. The poles, the Hearts of Winter and Summer, are also in the bloodline, the hearts of one or more human representatives.  That's why the literal pole could maybe be at the bottom of the globe, but we could also identify it as Valyria before the explosion because of all the Valyrians with that symbiotic relationship running around. 

Maybe all humans with that symbiotic relationship to fire and ice MUST be destroyed to right the seasons.  Destroy the bloodline and with it goes the bond that messes with the magical equilibrium at the poles. It's possible.

[Lady Barbrey]

9 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

Har! Mea culpa

Maybe a slight diversion, but not at all a distraction, as it does bring some things back into focus which I've been a little loath to engage. Like the Otheriness of Starks for one... but yes, I like the idea that maybe the FM (or proto-FM) of the Barrowfield Culture (for want of a better name) may have also been the crucible of genetic variation. Hence the preponderance of 'magical' bloodlines in the North (wargs, greenseers/dreamers, whatever it is the Boltons are REALLY up to, Corpse Queens and yadda yadda....)

OK, now we're beginning to get stuff showing up I wasn't expecting, so it's all to the good. This with the Daynes as possibly showing a common ancestry with Valyrians, that's a great explanation for their similarity whcih totally meshes with George's insistence on them not BEING Valyrian. Also bear in mind this process I've suggested of the FM spreading and colonising the whole continent once they reach a certain technological level - namely bronze working - might suggest this is when the conflict with the CotF first flared up - barrowlands being bare windswept plains might not be the ideal habitat for CotF, so previously no conflict, but once the FM start moving again.... and of course that might also be an explanation for why the proto-FM settled there first - no Children!

I wonder now whether the creation of 'House Thenn' might be a nod to that process of colonisation, tribalisation and formation of petty kingdoms? The Thenns have done all that, NOW they have stepped into the 'noble House' category too, after having been 'stuck' in the bronze age for a few thousand years

And, yes, that early mention of 'dragonsteel' long before Valyria was supposed to be a thing. It is all getting a whole lot more suggestive. And we haven't even begun thinking about how it all meshes in with the Long Night, creation of the Others and so on....

Hmmm, well, there you go. Start delving around in ancient graves, and you never know what's you're going to dig up. I just hope it doesn't manifest Lord Caernarvon-style

The curse!

Yeah, so interesting how my ideas do kind of mesh with yours.  Love the idea of that 'crucible', and also the Children-less plains for an explanation of why they settled there originally.