A winter that lasted a lifetime, when the sun hid and the dead walked and cold things hunted men in the dark. It is the thinnest parchment in the whole chronicle — all song and no record — and the pages below say so plainly, keeping only the legend the realm still remembers.
The Long Night is the great winter at the root of Westerosi memory: not a season but a generation of darkness, a winter that lasted a lifetime, when the sun hid and the snows never ceased and cold things came out of the north to hunt men in the dark. Whatever truly happened, it left a scar deep enough that thousands of years later the North still fears the words "winter is coming," and the Wall still stands against what the dark once brought.
The coming of the Others
The tales agree that the Long Night brought the Others — a cold and alien people out of the uttermost north, the Land of Always Winter, who came with the falling dark and the deepening freeze. They raised the dead of men and beasts to fight for them, and drove the living south before them. How much is memory and how much is the terror of children by a dying fire, no one can say. But the fear is old and it is everywhere, which is itself a kind of evidence.
What the realm knows of the Others as they are written on the page — their nature, what wakes them, and what can kill them — is kept in its own account.
Sources:A Game of Thrones — Bran IV (Old Nan) · The World of Ice & Fire — The Long Night
The Last Hero
One story rises out of the rest: the tale of the Last Hero. With the world dying around him, a hero is said to have set out to seek the children of the forest, hoping their old magic might turn back the dark. He took twelve companions, a horse, a dog, and a sword — and one by one the tale strips them from him, the horse and the hounds and the friends, until he walks the frozen wood alone with a blade whose edge has shattered from the cold.
Old Nan's telling breaks off just as the dead close in around him, the way the oldest stories always seem to lose their last pages. Some read into it a sword of dragonsteel and a bargain struck with the children; others warn that we are filling silence with our own hopes. It is the barest thread of a story, and we tug at it because it is nearly all we have.
Sources:A Game of Thrones — Bran IV (Old Nan)
The Battle for the Dawn
The Long Night ended, the songs say, in a war — the Battle for the Dawn — in which the last strength of men, and by some accounts the children of the forest, threw back the Others and won the morning. The specifics dissolve the moment you press on them: who led, where it was fought, what weapon or magic turned the tide. The faith of the east tells its own version, in which a hero of prophecy did the deed. The North remembers only that the dawn came at last, and that afterward the Watch was raised to see it never came undone.
Sources:The World of Ice & Fire — The Long Night · A Clash of Kings — (the red faith's account)
The raising of the Wall
In the aftermath, the legends hold, Brandon the Builder raised the Wall — three hundred miles of ice from sea to sea — and the Night's Watch was founded to hold it, sworn to guard the realms of men against whatever the dark had loosed. Whether one man raised it, whether the children lent their magic to the work, and whether it went up eight thousand years ago or far more recently, the maesters cannot agree. What is not in doubt is that the Wall is real, that it is old beyond honest dating, and that it was built to keep something out.
Sources:A Game of Thrones — Bran IV · The World of Ice & Fire — The Wall and Beyond
The same night, remembered in the east
The Long Night is not only a Westerosi memory. Across the narrow sea and far beyond it — in Asshai and the shadow lands, among the red priests, in the annals of Yi Ti — the same darkness is remembered, though the names and heroes change. The faith of R'hllor tells of a champion who forged a burning sword to drive back the cold: a savior whose deed rhymes exactly with the Last Hero's, told in another tongue. That so many separate peoples remember one long night is, to some, the strongest sign that beneath the legend lies a real and world-spanning winter.
Sources:A Clash of Kings — (Melisandre, the red faith) · The World of Ice & Fire — The Bones and Beyond
The night that is prophesied to come again
Past the shield lies the reason any of this matters to the living. The saga does not treat the Long Night as safely buried history. Its faiths and its dreamers hold that the darkness is not done — that a second Long Night is coming, that the cold is stirring in the north again, and that the same prophecy of a promised prince or reborn hero is meant for this age and not the last.
How the novels are turning that ancient legend into a present danger — the signs, the prophecies read forward, and the figures the faithful believe the old stories point to — is spoiler ground, developed on the pages devoted to the Others, to prophecy, and to the theories readers argue over. Here we keep only the legend as the realm knows it: that the night has come before, and might come again.
Sources:A Clash of Kings — the prophecies of the red faith · A Song of Ice and Fire — the return of winter
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.
Follow the thread
What was the Long Night in Game of Thrones?
A great winter of legend, said to have lasted a generation, when the sun failed, the snows never ceased, and the Others came out of the far north to hunt the living in the dark. It is remembered eight thousand years or more before the events of the novels, in songs rather than records, so no honest date can be set to it.
Who was the Last Hero?
The figure at the center of the North's oldest tale of the Long Night. With the world dying, he set out to find the children of the forest and their magic, taking twelve companions, a horse, a dog, and a sword — and the story strips them all away one by one until he walks the frozen wood alone. Old Nan's telling breaks off just as the dead close in, so what he did next is lost.
How did the Long Night end?
In a war the songs call the Battle for the Dawn, in which the last strength of men — and by some accounts the children of the forest — threw back the Others and won the morning. The details dissolve under any close reading; the red faith of the east tells its own version, in which a prophesied hero forged a burning sword to drive back the cold.
Will there be another Long Night?
The saga's faiths and dreamers believe so, and that danger sits behind the spoiler shield. The books do not treat the Long Night as safely buried history but as a warning: the cold is said to be stirring in the north again, and the old prophecy of a promised prince read forward to this age. The specifics are developed on the pages devoted to the Others, prophecy, and reader theories.