Seven wind-scoured islands off the western coast where the soil gives nothing and the sea gives everything, provided a man is willing to take it by the oar rather than ask for it. The ironborn hold that this is not theft so much as theology.
The Grey King is said to have ruled the first ironborn from a throne of driftwood and whalebone in an age too old for the Citadel to date with any confidence, and to have wed a mermaid besides — the kind of founding tale the ironborn tell with a straight face and a raised horn both. What the maesters can attest with more confidence is that the Old Way took hold early and held fast: raiding, not farming, remains the ironborn's stated calling, and the Drowned God's clergy still preach that what is dead may never die.
A kingsmoot's squabbling captains gave way, in time, to the hereditary Hoare kings, whose black-blooded line reaved so far it claimed the riverlands of the mainland besides — until Aegon the Conqueror burned Harren the Black alive in his own new-built hall, and let the ironborn choose their own liege from among themselves rather than name one over them. They chose Vickon Greyjoy of Pyke, and so a house that had been one kraken among many rose, more by the Conqueror's whim than by any triumph of its own, to rule all seven islands. Dagon Greyjoy's reaving of the sunset sea a century ago is still cited by the ironborn as proof that the Old Way never truly died, whatever the green lands prefer to believe. A more recent rebellion under the current Lord Reaper of Pyke ended in defeat and a hostage taken north — a debt some among the ironborn have not forgotten.
In the timeline
Beyond the text
What the chronicle strongly implies but never states outright, and what the author has said beyond the page — set apart from the established record, and never sworn to by the maesters.
Theorized
On Old Wyk the ironborn crown their kings among great pale curving stones they name the ribs of Nagga — the sea dragon the Grey King is said to have slain in the Dawn Age, roofing his hall with her bones. The chronicle's own maesters half allow a stranger, likelier truth: that the ribs are the petrified boles of a weirwood grove, a drowned echo of the old gods' groves standing at the wet heart of the ironborn's faith, legend grown thick over carved white wood.
SourceThe World of Ice & Fire, "The Iron Islands" & "The Grey King"
SourcesTWOIAF · The Iron IslandsACOK · Theon
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House seated here
Where is The Iron Islands?
Seven wind-scoured islands off the western coast where the soil gives nothing and the sea gives everything, provided a man is willing to take it by the oar rather than ask for it. The ironborn hold that this is not theft so much as theology.
Is The Iron Islands 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.