"This land is old" -- spitballing the North

[Rufus Snow]

26 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

but we could also identify it as Valyria before the explosion

Well the 'Lands of the Long Summer' does kinda contrast with 'The Land of Always Winter'....

[Lady Barbrey]

9 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

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:

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

ETA2:

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:

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....

Hmm, I thought 'old' too, and I've noticed Valyrians might have white hair but it is invariably described as platinum or silver.  Still, Bran might just see it as white!  Might not be definitive but good catch, and interesting.

Yeah I've seen the round tower thing refuted before on here.

That caved in part of the crypts. I heard a theory recently that Brandon the Breaker defeated the Night's King with Joramund, then purposely broke the Horn of Winter and caved in the crypts for good measure cause the Horn conceivably could wake what's under that oldest level.

I myself wonder whether It's access to underground cavern hot springs and dragon bones, of course, but there could be something else down there.

My imagination always runs a little wild regarding the crypts.  I think of Lovecrafts The Rats in the Walls and they're going to find some monstrous cannibalistic pre-ancestors breeding and eating each other! And any Stark who dares go down will change and suffer the atavistic hungers of his ancestors!  Forget oily black stone, and monstrous aliens, that story was by far the creepiest of Lovecraft!

But what's weird is something vaguely like that is possible in a Long Night that lasted a generation, all those people huddled in the cavern hot springs subsisting on fungi - and each other!

[Rufus Snow]

Some more nice observations and connections there.

Thinking of the Horn of Joramun, just compare these two descriptions:

Quote

 A Dance with Dragons - Jon III
Lady Melisandre watched him rise. "FREE FOLK! Here stands your king of lies. And here is the horn he promised would bring down the Wall." Two queen's men brought forth the Horn of Joramun, black and banded with old gold, eight feet long from end to end. Runes were carved into the golden bands, the writing of the First Men. Joramun had died thousands of years ago, but Mance had found his grave beneath a glacier, high up in the Frostfangs. And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter, and woke giants from the earth. Ygritte had told Jon that Mance never found the horn. She lied, or else Mance kept it secret even from his own.

 

 A Feast for Crows - The Drowned Man
The horn he blew was shiny black and twisted, and taller than a man as he held it with both hands. It was bound about with bands of red gold and dark steel, incised with ancient Valyrian glyphs that seemed to glow redly as the sound swelled.

The Valyrian glyphs said 'I am Dragonbinder' and 'Blood for fire, fire for blood.'  I wonder what the runes on the other Horn said?

58 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

That caved in part of the crypts. I heard a theory recently that Brandon the Breaker defeated the Night's King with Joramund, then purposely broke the Horn of Winter and caved in the crypts for good measure cause the Horn conceivably could wake what's under that oldest level.

No telling if Mance's horn was really Joramun's or not, but you have to wonder if it claimed to bind ice creatures, for a blood-price, of course.. To be honest, though, the Kings Beyond the Wall that followed - Gorne and Gendel - come more to mind in the context of collapsed crypts or tunnels.

Oh dear, I'm going to have to go back to the KbtW stories as well now... But thinking of crypts / tunnels/ G&G / Gendel's children / Jon & Ygritte in the cave / Bloodraven's cave / caves under the Wall and so on, all make me wonder how KtbW stories might impact on these various elements of Winterfell and the North generally.

I do like the idea of waiting out winter in a centrally-heated cave, though not quite sure I'm up for your suggested menu

And now Gendel has come up, it's a small step to Grendel, one of the antagonists of Beowulf, whose name means 'bear', and who later goes on to fight a dragon....

Oh, and another thing I need to check for timeline possibility: could Summer have seen that dragon over Winterfell around the time Euron had his horn blown at the kingsmoot?

 

 

[Weirwood Ghost]

I'm hoping it means with all the north's ancient history, that all those first men rise from their barrowy graves to some dramatic & useful conclusion. One can daydream...

[Lady Barbrey]

5 minutes ago, Weirwood Ghost said:

I'm hoping it means with all the north's ancient history, that all those first men rise from their barrowy graves to some dramatic & useful conclusion. One can daydream...

We certainly get hints that could be possible with their iron swords seeming to keep them from rising.  I like it too.  The biggest objection I'd have is it is too much like Aragorn and his host of the dead in Lord of the Rings, so I think we need either a clever variation or something entirely different.

So wouldn't it be really cool if the first crypt inhabitants were not buried with direwolves but with their dragons?  As suggested by my theory above?

When they break through that cave-in I can just imagine their wonder at finding dragon bones interred with the human ones.

And Jon raises them? Because he's of the same bloodline they were originally - fire and ice, before it split into branches - so can bond dragons and raise the dead? Shades of the show and the Night's King but that could be what the show was riffing on and making simpler (my idea for this pre-dates the show!). I've never thought an Other could raise a dead dragon.  The text has made it fairly clear that dragon consciousness clings to their bones in a way not true of any other animal or human.  Their will is too strong.  You'd need someone of Valyrian blood to bond them and Stark blood to raise them.

This would indeed be waking the sleepers, breaking dragons out of stone, raising giants from the earth and all these other sayings we keep hearing in reference to the Horn and other things.

[Lady Barbrey]

3 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

Some more nice observations and connections there.

Thinking of the Horn of Joramun, just compare these two descriptions:

The Valyrian glyphs said 'I am Dragonbinder' and 'Blood for fire, fire for blood.'  I wonder what the runes on the other Horn said?

No telling if Mance's horn was really Joramun's or not, but you have to wonder if it claimed to bind ice creatures, for a blood-price, of course.. To be honest, though, the Kings Beyond the Wall that followed - Gorne and Gendel - come more to mind in the context of collapsed crypts or tunnels.

Oh dear, I'm going to have to go back to the KbtW stories as well now... But thinking of crypts / tunnels/ G&G / Gendel's children / Jon & Ygritte in the cave / Bloodraven's cave / caves under the Wall and so on, all make me wonder how KtbW stories might impact on these various elements of Winterfell and the North generally.

I do like the idea of waiting out winter in a centrally-heated cave, though not quite sure I'm up for your suggested menu

And now Gendel has come up, it's a small step to Grendel, one of the antagonists of Beowulf, whose name means 'bear', and who later goes on to fight a dragon....

Oh, and another thing I need to check for timeline possibility: could Summer have seen that dragon over Winterfell around the time Euron had his horn blown at the kingsmoot?

 

 

My post in response to this one didn't come up.  I believe it consisted of a recipe for Stark Tartare, various ruminations on horns, and identifying which northerner best fits a description of Grendel's mother.

Do you think all the underground caves and mazes we hear about were primarily for the Children?

Euron is the greatest puzzle to me because I think he represents some kind of 'other' Other, maybe something watery.  The Iron Born seem on the verge of taking center stage.  There are just so many "Har" names riddling the World Book, I think something important will happen with them, and not just Euron..

I am curious - did you study archeology? I have a minor in it from eons ago and have forgotten 90% of it, but you seem to know your stuff.  So does @wia for that matter. It's been an incredibly interesting discussion for me! If you ever decide to do a new read through , let me know and we can compare notes as we go!

[Joey Crows]

They'll say the same about the South, primarily the Riverlands, in a few thousand years time. So many graves and memorials to those who've died. So, I see it as a sort of reminder that the North will continue to exist even after tragedy. Maaaybe??

[hiemal]

10 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

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

That's one of prints that led me down this rabbit hole.

 

[hiemal]

6 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

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.

Good stuff.The Children/weirwoods are native to the planet in this scenario, it seems? Are humans native or invaders? I'm very interested in hearing other ideas about the whole magic/balance backstory/theme/history since it seldom comes up and is one my favorite subjects of tinfoil.

[Lady Barbrey]

20 minutes ago, hiemal said:

Good stuff.The Children/weirwoods are native to the planet in this scenario, it seems? Are humans native or invaders? I'm very interested in hearing other ideas about the whole magic/balance backstory/theme/history since it seldom comes up and is one my favorite subjects of tinfoil.

They are all native to the planet.  I'm not into foreign invaders.  They're not needed and would be out of place, I think.   I love reading theories on this stuff but I think people are kind of done with it now.  I just joined back posting in the last week or two after a two or three year hiatus and can't believe how few posters there are. George had better get his next book out soon or the forums will dwindle to nothing! I miss LmL - you joined in with some great ideas on threads with him.  If you could get LmL away from moonmaidens he was brilliant. (No knock on his astronomy thoughts, it was just hard to get him away from them).

Love to hear all your thoughts.  I'm pretty open as long as there are no aliens.  Just PM me or start a thread in the World forum.

[Here's Looking At You, Kid]

The fleeting lives of men compared to the land.  Possession of the land is temporary.  It may be a clue that the north belonged to the white walkers.  

[Rufus Snow]

8 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

My post in response to this one didn't come up.  I believe it consisted of a recipe for Stark Tartare, various ruminations on horns, and identifying which northerner best fits a description of Grendel's mother.

Stark Tartare - I like it And yeah, there's something about the horns. I know some people think the cracked horn from the Fist is the real Horn of Winter, but I am not convinced. Being cracked, it's unlikely to sound correctly as well, so even if it is, it isn't, in a way...

G(r)endel's mother could be a Mormont, especially as Beowulf is a 'bear'

8 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Do you think all the underground caves and mazes we hear about were primarily for the Children?

'For' may be stretching it a bit, but they do seem to inhabit caves quite happily if Bloodraven's cave is anything to go by, and this has clear echoes with the Hollow Hill of the BwB. In fact this whole 'hollow hill' theme is highly reminiscent of the 'sidhe' in Irish mythology (or faery in English folklore - 'the little folk' despite being taller than humans in the older stories, 'the good folk' despite being mischievous meddlers,  just as the Singers are 'children' despite being an ancient folk who live extended lifetimes...) And of course the sidhe retreated to the hills because the humans invaded Ireland. The tales of elder races do echo the Irish tales of the fomor/fir bolg/Tuatha de Danaan, so I'm sure the George has taken a lot of this on board for the 'prehistory' of Westeros. (And I personally think the mythology of faeries being sensitive to iron is just a folk memory of bronze-age/iron-age culture clash.)

I can't really offer it as a worked-out theory with evidence, just a spidey-sense feeling, but I suspect that Gorne's Way is just a small section of a far vaster cavern system, which I suspect will be found to connect - amongst others - BR's cave, Winterfell crypts and the Isle of Faces, maybe even Dragonstone (or the dragonglass veins below it...). Absolutely no evidence, of course, just a feeling.

8 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Euron is the greatest puzzle to me because I think he represents some kind of 'other' Other, maybe something watery.  The Iron Born seem on the verge of taking center stage.  There are just so many "Har" names riddling the World Book, I think something important will happen with them, and not just Euron..

Euron and the Ironborn seem to have a deep Lovecraftian vibe which is beyond my ken, but he is one of the most engaging and entertaining literary villains I've ever encountered

8 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I am curious - did you study archeology? I have a minor in it from eons ago and have forgotten 90% of it, but you seem to know your stuff.  So does @wia for that matter. It's been an incredibly interesting discussion for me! If you ever decide to do a new read through , let me know and we can compare notes as we go!

Pure dilettante when it comes to history - I actually gave it up at school (too many sciences and languages, so it was history or geography that had to go, and I decided to keep geography...) A few decades later I realised how little history I knew and got fascinated all over again, especially where it intersects with mythology. And I guess living in a village that has iron age roots, a hybrid Brythonic/Danish name, Roman traces, a Norman church on a Saxon site and its own entry in the Domesday Book all helps pique the interest. (This land is old, har!)

I have just started a new re-read, I'm still on AGoT - Ned is sitting uncomfortably on the Iron Throne cursing Robert for going hunting. I'm trying to restrict myself to reading one chapter at each sitting, so as not to get caught up and go galloping off without noticing all the subtle details.... it's hard to do with such an engrossing read, though. I'd be happy to compare notes if you're at a similar point 

[wia]

19 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

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.

Well if we look at out planet, the ice is on both poles. And the fire would be the sun and the core of earth, I guess.
Which sort of reminds me how Valyrians operated these mines and the Dothraki legend of the moon wandering too close to the sun and cracking and producing a dragon. So maybe Westeros isn't as far from out planet than we think in the fire and ice sense.

[wia]

14 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

There are just so many "Har" names riddling the World Book, I think something important will happen with them, and not just Euron..

Tormund roared. "Har! King o' My Hairy Butt Crack, more like. 

I just had to, I'm sorry.  

 

14 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I am curious - did you study archeology? I have a minor in it from eons ago and have forgotten 90% of it, but you seem to know your stuff.  So does @wia for that matter. It's been an incredibly interesting discussion for me! If you ever decide to do a new read through , let me know and we can compare notes as we go!

It's an incredibly interesting discussion for me as well!

 

5 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

I have just started a new re-read, I'm still on AGoT - Ned is sitting uncomfortably on the Iron Throne cursing Robert for going hunting. I'm trying to restrict myself to reading one chapter at each sitting, so as not to get caught up and go galloping off without noticing all the subtle details.... it's hard to do with such an engrossing read, though. I'd be happy to compare notes if you're at a similar point 

I've been rereading by POV recently. I pick one and real all of the books chronologically. It's a different sort of fun and gives a new perspective.

[hiemal]

14 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

They are all native to the planet.  I'm not into foreign invaders.  They're not needed and would be out of place, I think. 

If it weren't for all of the Lovecraft references peppering the Song, I could almost agree with you. But ultimately, whether foreign or domestic, the concept of invaders is central to the history of Westeros and to the North and central to the disputed timelines at the heart of the OP because all of these invasions seem to follow the same kind of script- one in which the invaders are better armed. Stone Age vs. Bronze Age vs Iron Age vs Valyrian Steel Age (?).

Yet the North bucks the trend to at least some extant by repelling the Andals... so...?

Another bit of tinfoil I've played with is that some of the issues with dates stem from problems with adjusting from a solar to a lunar calendar? I.e. If the seasons were once aligned "properly" but went out of whack at some point perhaps that threw calculations into confusion if previously years were measured from winter solstice to winter solstice, for example, instead of as twelve lunar months...

 

[Rufus Snow]

6 minutes ago, hiemal said:

Another bit of tinfoil I've played with is that some of the issues with dates stem from problems with adjusting from a solar to a lunar calendar? I.e. If the seasons were once aligned "properly" but went out of whack at some point perhaps that threw calculations into confusion if previously years were measured from winter solstice to winter solstice, for example, instead of as twelve lunar months...

I wouldn't accuse you of tinfoiling this issue, as I have diifciulties with it too. Given the tech level of the world at hand, there are really only two ways I can think of to measure 'years'. One you've mentioned, which is solstice-to-solstice. This clearly cannot work on GRRth because it measures - strictly speaking - a seasonal cycle, and the whole premise of the magical imbalance is that seasons have become detached from years.

The only other method is tracking the sun's apparent movement against the 'fixed stars' - we can't be 100% sure this is going to work either, because we don't know HOW the season-imbalancing works. I really do hope there's a mechanism that actually works, such as the planet's axis of rotation being tilted over, or something similar which makes sense physically. I know this is a fantasy series, but if it boils down to nothing more than 'because magic', I will be sorely disappointed. As it stands, the apparent pattern of long winters following long summers would be entirely consistent with the axis being pulled around by magical forces. It's obviously not just temperature changes alone, as the day length still changes between summer and winter...

[wia]

41 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

really do hope there's a mechanism that actually works, such as the planet's axis of rotation being tilted over, or something similar which makes sense physically. I know this is a fantasy series, but if it boils down to nothing more than 'because magic', I will be sorely disappointed.

Apparently

Quote

The seasons are "completely fantasy based". There's no sci-fi type element to it at all.
http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/To_Be_Continued_Chicago_IL_May_6_8/

I personally would prefer that magic should have a scientific-like system/logic of sorts, but oh well.

 

[hiemal]

42 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

I wouldn't accuse you of tinfoiling this issue, as I have diifciulties with it too. Given the tech level of the world at hand, there are really only two ways I can think of to measure 'years'. One you've mentioned, which is solstice-to-solstice. This clearly cannot work on GRRth because it measures - strictly speaking - a seasonal cycle, and the whole premise of the magical imbalance is that seasons have become detached from years.

The only other method is tracking the sun's apparent movement against the 'fixed stars' - we can't be 100% sure this is going to work either, because we don't know HOW the season-imbalancing works. I really do hope there's a mechanism that actually works, such as the planet's axis of rotation being tilted over, or something similar which makes sense physically. I know this is a fantasy series, but if it boils down to nothing more than 'because magic', I will be sorely disappointed. As it stands, the apparent pattern of long winters following long summers would be entirely consistent with the axis being pulled around by magical forces. It's obviously not just temperature changes alone, as the day length still changes between summer and winter...

/agree The maesters must be measuring something but they didn't begin doing so until well after the Long Night . There is another group that might have some interesting data- the again Lovecraft-linked Cult of Starry Wisdom who, iirc, are found primarily in port cities (like Oldtown). Oldtown also houses the Starry Sept, so there are a lot of pieces of tinfoil begging to be knitted together here.

I've also wondered, semi-related, at this world's difficulty with navigation- it seems to be all charts and seat-of-the-pants navigation. No compasses, no sextants, nothing. Related?

[Lady Barbrey]

9 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

Stark Tartare - I like it And yeah, there's something about the horns. I know some people think the cracked horn from the Fist is the real Horn of Winter, but I am not convinced. Being cracked, it's unlikely to sound correctly as well, so even if it is, it isn't, in a way...

I do think It's the horn from the fist because we have been so pointedly told that Sam still has it through thick and thin.  It's become Chekhov's gun to me, sooner or later It's going to go off.  It also just seems to have a little chip, so it should physically work; if it isn't working then other factors come into play like who is blowing it or if it needs magic to blow.

G(r)endel's mother could be a Mormont, especially as Beowulf is a 'bear'

Hah! I was thinking LongJon Umber in disguise!

'For' may be stretching it a bit, but they do seem to inhabit caves quite happily if Bloodraven's cave is anything to go by, and this has clear echoes with the Hollow Hill of the BwB. In fact this whole 'hollow hill' theme is highly reminiscent of the 'sidhe' in Irish mythology (or faery in English folklore - 'the little folk' despite being taller than humans in the older stories, 'the good folk' despite being mischievous meddlers,  just as the Singers are 'children' despite being an ancient folk who live extended lifetimes...) And of course the sidhe retreated to the hills because the humans invaded Ireland. The tales of elder races do echo the Irish tales of the fomor/fir bolg/Tuatha de Danaan, so I'm sure the George has taken a lot of this on board for the 'prehistory' of Westeros. (And I personally think the mythology of faeries being sensitive to iron is just a folk memory of bronze-age/iron-age culture clash.)

Yes, agreed!  With everything!  But as with the older stories, his sidhe are dual-natured.  Not malevolent, though they can be, but with their own purposes and agendas that can be antipathetic to humans.  Most of the Lovecraftian allusions are meant to point out their most sinister side, if we want to call it that, and draw attention to Lovecrafts obsession with hybridity.  The Children are the greatest magic-users on Westeros, and one simple basic to Westeros magic is that it has a price: life, whether embodied in blood, Stannis's seed, Varys's testicles, Dany's fetus, human death, petrifaction/leeching of life in wood (Asshai) or flesh (greyscale) or grass (ghost grass). There are no children in Asshai because their life force as sperm or eggs or fetuses are used up in magic by all those magic users before they're even born. (This is my own interpretation, anyway).  The magic used at Asshai is still leeching the life out of things.  The magic used at the Rhoyne is doing the same because greyscale became a disease.  Any time we know of great magic being used, like the Arm of Dorne being broken, we can bet the sacrifice of life was huge. I've seen the Children described as hippy dippy little people, but they're really not, and the tales of the Sidhe tell us that too. The Children seem to have given up, but have they? Perhaps they've been humbled by the damage they themselves have done to the planet through creation of hybrids, and of course their goal is still to preserve the land and forests,  their Gods, but that really might come down to destroying humanity, and if so they'll do it.

I can't really offer it as a worked-out theory with evidence, just a spidey-sense feeling, but I suspect that Gorne's Way is just a small section of a far vaster cavern system, which I suspect will be found to connect - amongst others - BR's cave, Winterfell crypts and the Isle of Faces, maybe even Dragonstone (or the dragonglass veins below it...). Absolutely no evidence, of course, just a feeling.

That was infectious.  Now I have the same feeling!

Euron and the Ironborn seem to have a deep Lovecraftian vibe which is beyond my ken, but he is one of the most engaging and entertaining literary villains I've ever encountered

Love him as a villain too.  That Lovecraftian vibe of the Ironborn has a reason, I suspect.  Doesn't the ritual of drowning then reviving men, who supposedly come back harder and stronger but don't, seem a holdover or  throwback to an older time when they really did.  Transformation. Hybridity. Sacrifice. 'Something in the water'.  The first humans in Westeros, pre-dating major First Men migration,though some may have been First Men, were likely the 'maroons'- shipwrecked sailors, or escaped slaves who came by boat or rafts, etc.  The Children would not have liked this if their communities started growing, as I suspect they did at Oldtown and other ports.  So I imagine the first experiment they made with hybrids to protect their shores from humanity was with humans and sea creatures to sink boats coming too close.  Azor Ahai's first attempt to forge a sword - he tempered his sword with water.

But it didn't take, they still kept coming eventually.

Pure dilettante when it comes to history - I actually gave it up at school (too many sciences and languages, so it was history or geography that had to go, and I decided to keep geography...) A few decades later I realised how little history I knew and got fascinated all over again, especially where it intersects with mythology. And I guess living in a village that has iron age roots, a hybrid Brythonic/Danish name, Roman traces, a Norman church on a Saxon site and its own entry in the Domesday Book all helps pique the interest. (This land is old, har!)

That is fascinating! I am jealous!  I would have become an archeologist if I lived in the UK.  In Canada there's too much tension because you're messing with the ancestors of a people your own ancestors colonized.  But since I'm all British descent, I could happily have dug up the whole of Britannia to my heart's content!

I have just started a new re-read, I'm still on AGoT - Ned is sitting uncomfortably on the Iron Throne cursing Robert for going hunting. I'm trying to restrict myself to reading one chapter at each sitting, so as not to get caught up and go galloping off without noticing all the subtle details.... it's hard to do with such an engrossing read, though. I'd be happy to compare notes if you're at a similar point 

Perfect!  I am just a little further on.  PM when you see something you think has relevance, or if you just have something you want to hammer out, any topic!  I too am going slow, but It's because I hate rereading.  Spent too many years doing English lit, so it feels like work not fun.

 

 

[Lady Barbrey]

5 hours ago, wia said:

Well if we look at out planet, the ice is on both poles. And the fire would be the sun and the core of earth, I guess.
Which sort of reminds me how Valyrians operated these mines and the Dothraki legend of the moon wandering too close to the sun and cracking and producing a dragon. So maybe Westeros isn't as far from out planet than we think in the fire and ice sense.

Yes.  I'm still seeing it in a magical sense but it should make sense on a pragmatic level as well to account for the tilt fluctuations.