Beyond the Wall
North of the ice lies the last home of the powers the rest of the realm has forgotten it ever feared — the children of the forest, the giants and their mammoths, and the frozen country that runs on to the Lands of Always Winter.
The children of the forest
The elder race of Westeros, and the Pact that once divided the land.
The elder race
The children of the forest
The children of the forest were the first people to walk the lands men would later name Westeros — though 'children' is the First Men's word for them, born of their small stature, and they are said to have named themselves those who sing the song of earth. They were a folk of the deep woods: small and dark, wild and secret, knowing neither metal nor masonry, arming themselves with obsidian and living close to the weirwoods whose red faces they carved. Among them walked the greenseers, to whom the tales grant powers a maester can neither credit nor wholly dismiss.
- They warred with the First Men when those crossed the land-bridge into Westeros, until both peoples, weary of slaughter, made the Pact upon the Isle of Faces and divided the land — the open country to men, the deep woods to the children.
- That accord opened the long age of peace the singers call the Age of Heroes, though its dates are the stuff of legend and no maester will vouch for them.
SourcesThe World of Ice & Fire · A Game of Thrones
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Giants and mammoths
No nursery fable — the living giants of the true north, and their dwindling.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The true north
The haunted forest, the Frostfangs, and the land beyond the maps.
The lay of the land
The haunted forest and the Frostfangs
North of the Wall the world does not end so much as grow wilder. Hard against the ice sprawls the haunted forest, a vast dark wood of soldier pines and sentinels and ancient weirwoods, hung with the silence that gives it its name. Beyond it rise the Frostfangs, cruel and cold mountains where the free folk hide in hidden valleys, and through the land wind the Milkwater and its sister rivers. Old hills of the First Men, such as the Fist that bears their name, stand watch over country no lord of the Seven Kingdoms has ever ruled.
SourcesA Storm of Swords · A Clash of Kings
The Lands of Always Winter
Farthest north of all, past the Frostfangs and the ranging-grounds of the free folk, the maps give out and the tales take over. There, the chronicles say, lie the Lands of Always Winter — a country of endless ice and dark from which the cold itself is said to come, and to which no man has ever gone and returned to tell of it. It is there, the oldest and most fearful stories hold, that the Others make their home, waiting out the long summers of men in a winter that never breaks.
SourcesA Storm of Swords · The World of Ice & Fire
The old powers
Where the study points onward — to the Others and the long night.
Why the Wall stands
The old powers, still stirring
The true north is not merely a wilderness; it is the last home of the powers the rest of Westeros has forgotten it ever feared. The weirwoods and the greenseeing of the children, the giants and their mammoths, and the memory of the Long Night are gathered here where the realm's dominion has never reached, and none of that is coincidence: the Wall itself, seven hundred feet of ice cored with a magic no maester has ever explained, was raised across the neck of this land for one purpose alone — to stand between the Seven Kingdoms and whatever it was that ended the Long Night before. The oldest tales, Old Nan's chief among them, hold that a winter fell once that would not lift, a generation of dark out of which the Others came riding dead men and dead beasts before them, broken at last only by a war the singers remember as the Battle for the Dawn. Whether that war truly finished anything, or simply drove the cold back into the Lands of Always Winter to wait out a few thousand years of human forgetting, is a question the true north itself seems built to raise and the Citadel has never been able to answer. The fuller reckoning of what the Watch has since confirmed of that old enemy — set down on the page, not merely in Old Nan's telling — is kept behind its own veil in the record of the Others.
- The Wall predates every noble house in Westeros the maesters can still trace, raised — so the earliest chronicles agree, for once — with the giants' strength as much as Bran the Builder's design.
- Every power this record has catalogued beyond the Wall answers, in the end, to the same question: what was strong enough, once, to need seven hundred feet of spelled ice between it and the rest of the world?
SourcesA Game of Thrones · A Storm of Swords · The World of Ice & Fire
Who are the children of the forest?
The children of the forest were the first people to walk Westeros — a small, dark, secret folk of the deep woods who worked no metal, armed themselves with obsidian, carved the faces into the weirwoods, and counted greenseers among them. 'Children' is the First Men's word for them, born of their small stature; they are said to have named themselves those who sing the song of earth.
What was the Pact?
The Pact was the accord that ended the long war between the children of the forest and the First Men, made upon the Isle of Faces in the God's Eye. By it the two peoples divided the land — the open country to men, the deep woods to the children — and opened the long peace the singers call the Age of Heroes, though its dates are legendary and no maester will vouch for them.
Are the giants real in Game of Thrones?
Yes — the giants of the true north are no fable. They live still beyond the Wall: enormous shaggy beings twelve feet and more in height, closer in seeming to some great ape than to the stone-castle giants of southron tales. They ride mammoths, speak the Old Tongue, and have dwindled to so few that the free folk reckon their end is near.
What are the Lands of Always Winter?
The Lands of Always Winter are the uttermost north of the world, past the Frostfangs and the ranging-grounds of the free folk, where the maps give out — a country of endless ice and dark from which the cold itself is said to come. The oldest and most fearful tales hold that the Others make their home there, and no man has ever gone and returned to tell of it.