A hundred leagues of black bog and drowned forest strangling the one dry causeway between the North and the rest of Westeros, held not by walls but by mud, fever, lizard-lions, and a people who know every hidden path through it better than any invader ever will.
The oldest tale the maesters keep holds that the Neck was made, not born — that the children of the forest called the Hammer of the Waters down upon it to drown the land beneath the advancing First Men, breaking dry ground into swamp faster than any army could cross. Whether the working truly succeeded or merely bought time, the crannogmen who settled the bogs afterward, small and secretive and sworn to House Stark since before living memory, have turned the swamp itself into a wall no southern host has ever fully solved.
At its narrowest point stands Moat Cailin, the ancient causeway-fortress that lets the North decide who passes and who does not; every King in the North since Torrhen Stark knelt to Aegon has understood that the Neck, not the Wall, is the North's true southern gate, however less romantic the mud proves in the telling.
In the timeline
SourcesTWOIAF · The NorthAGOT · Bran VIIACOK · Catelyn
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House seated here
Where is The Neck?
A hundred leagues of black bog and drowned forest strangling the one dry causeway between the North and the rest of Westeros, held not by walls but by mud, fever, lizard-lions, and a people who know every hidden path through it better than any invader ever will.
Is The Neck from the books or the show?
Book canon. This entry follows George R. R. Martin's novels and histories, and notes where the television series diverges rather than following it.