The Citadel

The Archive of 'A Song of Ice and Fire' Lore

Concordance

Recent Entries
Official Sites
Featured Sites
4. The Iron Islands
  • Even men of the Iron Isles have walked the Wall (I: 553)
  • For thousands of years, raiders from the islands (called ironmen by those they raided) were the terror of the seas from as far as the Port of Ibben and the Summer Isles (I: 688)
  • The ironmen prided themselves on their fierceness in battle and their sacred freedoms (I: 688)
  • Each island had its own rock king and salt king. The High King of the Isles was chosen from among their number (I: 688)
  • The ironborn use longships (II: 85)
  • The ironborn captains are proud and wilful and do not go in awe of another man's blood (II: 123)
  • A longship can travel twice as swiftly as a merchant cog (II: 123)
  • Life is mean and meagre on the islands. Men spend their nights drinking ale and arguing over who has the worse lot, the fisherfolk who struggle with the sea, the farmers who try to eke out a living from the poor thin soil, or the miners who break their backs underground (II: 124)
  • The ironmen of old turned to raiding, in part no doubt to the poor qualities of their islands (II: 124)
  • The Iron Islands are an insignificant backwater in comparison to the rest of the Seven Kingdoms (II: 125)
  • The hovels in which the smallfolk live use sod for the roofs (II: 126)
  • Longships might be painted in various colors, such as red (II: 126)
  • At least some longships have iron rams on their bows, shaped fancifully (II: 126)
  • A woman might well captain a ship in the Iron Islands (II: 129)
  • There are thralls in the Iron Islands, despite the fact that slavery is illegal in the Seven Kingdoms (II: 132)
  • There are a few women on the Iron Islands who crewed longships alongside their men, and it's said that salt and sea give them the same appetites as men (II: 277)
  • A longship a hundred feet long would have about fifty oars and room for about a hundred men on the deck. There are larger ships in the Iron Islands, belonging to the Lord Reaper of Pyke or other important figures (II: 278)
  • The ironborn call the mainland "the green lands" (II: 279)
  • Ironmen do not bend their knees often or easily, but are respectful to lords who have earned it (II: 280)
  • The Iron Islands are too rocky and sparse to breed good horses. Most islanders are indifferent riders at best, being more comfortable aboard their ships. Even lords ride garrons or shaggy ponies from Harlaw, and oxcarts are more common than drays (II: 282)
  • Smallfolk who are too poor to afford oxen or horses pull their own plows (II: 282)
  • The fleet of the Iron Islands is known as the Iron Fleet, with a Lord Captain at its head who is not necessarily the Lord of Pyke (II: 284)
  • The ironborn have a game they call the finger dance, entailing throwing short-hafted axes at one another. The trick was to catch the axe or leap over it just right. The name comes from the fact that the game usually ends with a dancer losing one or more of his fingers (II: 287)
  • Ironmen of old were often blood-drunk in battle, so berserk that they felt no pain and feared no enemy (II: 394)
  • Longships have high prows which are sometimes carved (II: 396)
  • Most ironborn would prefer fighting on foot or from the deck of a ship over fighting on horse back (II: 397)
  • The ironborn lack the discipline to stand against a charge of armored horsemen (II: 589)
  • The old way of healing serious wounds in the Iron Islands was to use fire and seawater (IV: 24)
  • Petty lords and villages can be found all along the way from the Hardstone Hills to Pebbleton at Great Wyk (IV: 26)
  • Most ironborn lords style themselves by their house names, such as "the Sparr", but some who have been influenced by the mainland style themselves as lord (IV: 27)
  • Ironmen will make use of ships captured in raids or war, such as cogs, carracks, and dromonds that cannot be run ashore (IV: 256)
  • At a kingsmoot, men of note will bring servants (thralls or salt wives, or if they are too familiar with the ways of the green lands, maesters, singers, and knights). Common men will stand in a crescent at the knoll's base, with women, children, and thralls to the rear while captains and kings climb to the top of the hill (IV: 269)
  • A claimant to the crown at a kingsmoot will come forward, supported by picked champions, and make his case to the ironborn. He then concludes by distributing the bounty and treasure he has to offer. The captains and kings who accept the treasures shout their support, and anything left over can be picked over by lesser men, whose support no one cares about (IV: 270-272)
  • At least some Iron Islands warships employ drummers to keep time. They drum a battle beat during fighting (IV: 427)
  • Some ironborn warships are large enough to have lower decks (IV: 431)
  • There are no slaves on the Iron Islands, only thralls. Thralls are bound to service, but they are not property, and a thralls children would be considered free if they were given to the Drowned God. The onl way to win a thrall was to pay the iron price (IV: 435)
Last revised June 02, 2009
PermaLink
4.1. Geography
  • There is no safe anchorage on Pyke (II: 121)
  • The shore of Pyke is full of jagged outcroppings of rock and cliffs of grey-black stone (II: 121)
  • The point of land on which Pyke was raised had once thrust out like a sword into the ocean, but the waves had broken and shattered it thousands of years past (II: 121)
  • Pyke is now three islands and a dozen stacks of towering rock (II: 121)
  • The Iron Islands are windy, cold, and damp (II: 122)
  • Around a point clad with pines, a castle stands guarding the village of Lordsport beneath it (II: 126)
  • Ravens can be used to send word to Pyke from the mainland (II: 127)
  • Old Wyk is one of the Iron Islands (II: 128)
  • Harlaw is one of the Iron Islands and lies a day's sail from Pyke(II: 129, 285)
  • Great Wyk is the largest of the Iron Islands, large enough that some lords have holdings that do not reach the sea (II: 129. IV: 21)
  • The Iron Islands are too rocky and sparse to breed good horses (II: 282)
  • Harlaw is a day's sailing from Pyke (II: 285)
  • Saltcliffe is one of the Iron Islands (II: 287)
  • Orkmont is one of the Iron Islands (III: 941)
  • Pebbleton is a small town of several thousand fisherfolk on Great Wyk (IV: 21, 26)
  • The Hardstone Hills of Great Wyk are well inland by ironborn standards (IV: 21)
  • The hill of Nagga, where the Grey King's Hall was said to have stood, is on Old Wyk (IV: 27, 28)
  • Longships can moore beneath Ten Towers (IV: 159)
  • Harlaw is not the largest of the Iron Islands, but it is the most populous and richest (IV: 165)
  • Nagga's Cradle is a bay on Old Wyk, its shore considered sacred as above it rises a grassy hill with Nagga's Ribs at its peak (IV: 255)
  • Nagga's Ribs are like great white trees, twice as wide as a dromond's mast and twice as long. There are forty-four of them (IV: 255, 267)
  • The Goodbrothers of Old Wyk have a castle near the shore, across the island from Nagga's Ribs (IV: 260)
  • The region of Sea Dragon Point and the Stony Shore of the North are ten times larger than all the Iron Isles combined (IV: 265)
  • Nine wide, rock-hewn steps lead to the top of the hill where Nagga's Ribs lie (IV: 268)
  • Beyond the hill of Nagga are the wind-blown hills of Old Wyk, and beyond those black, cruel mountains (IV: 268)
  • The most westerly of the inhabited islets of the Iron Islands is the Lonely Light, eight days to the northwest from Great Wyk amidst rookeries of seals and sea lions (IV: 271)
  • The combined Four Shields are smaller than Harlaw (IV: 436)
Last revised June 02, 2009
PermaLink
4.1.1. Trade and Resources
  • Iron ore is the chief commodity of the Iron Islands, along with tin and lead (II: 122, 124)
  • The sea is harsh around the islands, the soil is poor, and the mines turn out nothing but base metals (II: 125)
  • Ships from the Port of Ibben trade at the Iron Islands (II: 126)
  • Fish from the sea are abundant enough to sustain the ironborn even in winter (IV: 20)
  • Sealskins, walrus tusks, arm rings made of whalebone, and bronze-banded warhorns (IV: 271)
  • Thralls are won in battle, and are not treated as slaves to be bought and sold (IV: 435)
Last revised June 02, 2009
PermaLink
4.2. The Greyjoys
  • The Lords Greyjoy still style themselves as Kings of Salt and Rock, Sons of the Sea Wind, and Lord Reapers of Pyke (I: 689)
  • The Greyjoys were the chief of the reavers of the Iron Islands (II: 131)
  • The jealousy and desire for heirship is such that in the distant past it has occasioned that brothers have murdered their own siblings at Pyke (II: 133)
  • The Seastone Chair is the seat of the Lord of Pyke (II: 284)
  • Nine-tenths of the Iron Fleet could sail in a ragged column extending for leagues (IV: 256)
  • The ships of the Iron Fleet are larger than longships, made for battle rather than raids. Most are equal in size and speed to lesser war galleys elsewhere in the Seven Kingdoms (IV: 474)
  • The only fleets comparable to the Greyjoy fleet in the Seven Kingdoms are the royal fleet and the Redwyne fleet based at the Arbor (SSM: 1)
Last revised July 29, 2009
PermaLink
4.2.1. Pyke
  • There is no safe anchorage on Pyke (II: 121)
  • The shore of Pyke is full of jagged outcroppings of rock and cliffs, and the castle seems a part of the rest with its towers, walls, and bridges quarried of the same grey-black stone, wetted by the same waves, covered with the same patches of dark green lichen, and speckled with the droppings of the same sea birds (II: 121)
  • The point of land on which Pyke was raised had once thrust out like a sword into the ocean, but the waves had broken and shattered it thousands of years past. All that remain are three bare islands and a dozen stacks of towering rock. Atop those islands and pillars Pyke stands (II: 121)
  • Pyke is almost a part of the rock it stands on, its curtain wall closing off the headland around the foot of the great stone bridge that goes from clifftop to the largest of the islets, dominated by the massive size of the Great Keep (II: 121, 122)
  • Further out from the Great Keep are the Kitchen Keep and the Bloody Keep, each on its own island (II: 122)
  • Towers and outbuildings cling to the stacks beyond the islands, linked to one another by covered archways when the pillars stand close and by long walks of wood and rope when they don't (II: 122)
  • The Sea Tower rises from the outmost island at the point of the broken sword. It is the oldest part of the castle, tall and round, the pillar of rock it stands on sheer sided and half-eaten through by the battering of the waves (II: 122)
  • The base of the Sea Tower is white from centuries of salt spray and the upper stories are green from lichen, while the jagged crown is blackened with the soot from the nightly watchfire (II: 122)
  • A gatehouse guards the great bridge the spans the distance from the clifftop to the Great Keep (II: 122)
  • Lordsport is on the other side of Pyke from the Greyjoy keep (II: 126, 287)
  • The walls of Pyke run as a crescent from cliff to cliff. The gatehouse is in its center, with three square towers to either side of it. One of them, the south tower, collapsed as it was breached by Robert Baratheon's forces (II: 132)
  • The gatehouse gates are supplemented by an iron portcullis (II: 132)
  • Beyond the curtain wall is half a hundred acres of headland. The stables, kennels, other outbuildings, sheep and swine pens are all there (II: 132)
  • To the south of the curtain wall are the cliffs and the wide stone bridge that leads to the Great Keep (II: 132)
  • The lord of Pyke resides in the Sea Tower (II: 133)
  • The Bloody Keep is larger and better furnished than the Sea Tower, the ceilings of its suite so high that it is lost in the gloom (II: 133)
  • The Bloody Keep was given its name for the bloody butchering of the sons of the old River King a thousand years before (II: 133)
  • From the Bloody Keep, a covered stone walkway leads back to the Great Keep. From there to the Sea Tower one must cross three further bridges, each narrow than the last. The final one is of rope and wood (II: 134)
  • The door into the Sea Tower is of grey wood, studded with iron (II: 134)
  • The Sea Tower has a damp and draughty solar (II: 134, 289)
  • The water about the towers of Pyke are green if the sun shines (II: 287)
  • The hall of the Greyjoys is long and smoky, with room enough to seat more than four hundred men (II: 287)
  • The lands and keep of House Wynch are on the other side of the island from the Greyjoy castle at Pyke (II: 287)
  • The Seastone Chair is a massive block of oily black stone, carved into the shape of a kraken. It sits on a dais in the great hall of the Greyjoys (II: 287)
  • Feasts in Pyke are meagre enough, plain fare of salted fish and fish stews, unspiced goat, and black bread being served (II: 289)
  • Atop the Flint Cliffs is the Blind Lord’s tower, said to be haunted (IV: 21)
Last revised February 28, 2007
PermaLink
4.2.2. Ancestors and History
  • When Aegon slew Black Harren, Harren's brother was Lord Commander of the Watch and had 10,000 swords at his command; but he did not march (I: 553)
  • During the Wars of Conquest, the riverlands belonged to Harren the Black, King of the Isles (I: 684)
  • Harren's grandfather, Harwyn Hardhand, took the Trident from Arrec the Storm King whose ancestors had won lands up to the Neck 300 years earlier by killing the last River King (I: 684)
  • Harren the Black was a vain and bloody tyrant, little loved. When Aegon the Conqueror threatened, many of his lords deserted him to join Aegon's host (I: 684)
  • Harren the Black and his line died in the burning of Harrenhal by Aegon the Conqueror (I: 684)
  • The Greyjoys claim descent from the Grey King of the Age of Heroes, who was supposed to have ruled the western isles and the sea itself, taking a mermaid as his wife (I: 687)
  • King Urron of House Greyiron made the High Kingship of the Isles hereditary choosing some 5,000 years ago by slaying all the other kings when they had assembled for the choosing. These events, called the kingsmoot, has traditionally been held at the hill of Nagga on Old Wyk, where the Grey King's Hall was said to have stood. (I: 688. IV: 29. SSM: 1)
  • The line of King Urron was ended when the Andals swept over the islands a thousand years after his line became hereditary High Kings. The Greyjoys, like other lords, intermarried with the conquerors (I: 688)
  • King Qhored boasted, truthfully, that his laws were known wherever men could smell salt water or hear the crash of waves (I: 688)
  • Qhored's descendants lost the Arbor, Oldtown, Bear Island, and much of the western shore over the centuries (I: 688)
  • Harren the Black ruled all the lands between the mountains from the Neck to the Blackwater Rush (I: 688)
  • Lord Vickon Greyjoy of Pyke was chosen by the surviving ironborn lords to have primacy over them after Aegon conquered them (I: 688)
  • Harren the Black had completed Harrenhal and had finally took up residence when word came on that very day of Aegon the Conqueror's landing (II: 88)
  • Harren had desired the highest hall and the most colossal towers in the Seven Kingdoms. The construction of his dream took forty years. Thousands of captives from the other realms died in the quarries chained to sledges or laboring on the five huge towers. Weirwoods were cut down to provide rafters and beams (II: 88)
  • Harren the Black beggared the riverlands and the Iron Islands to make Harrenhal (II: 88)
  • The point of land on which Pyke was raised had once thrust out like a sword into the ocean, but the waves had broken and shattered it thousands of years past (II: 121)
  • Thousands of years before, King Urron Redhand said "The Drowned God makes men, but it's men who make crowns" (II: 123)
  • Rodrik Greyjoy, son to Balon Greyjoy, assaulted Seagard during his father's great rebellion. Jason Mallister slew him beneath the castle's walls and threw the ironborn reavers back into the sea (II: 131)
  • A thousand years earlier, the sons of the River King were butchered in their beds at Pyke so that the pieces of their bodies might be sent back to their father on the mainland (II: 133)
  • Greyjoys were not murdered in Pyke, unless it was once in a great while by their own brothers (II: 133)
  • Maron Greyjoy, the second of Balon Greyjoys sons, was killed in the collapse of the old south tower along the curtain wall (II: 136)
  • Victarion, Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet and brother to Lord Balon Greyjoy, sailed into Lannisport with his other brother Euron Croweye and burned the ships there. Victarion is a fearsome warrior, sung of in the alehouses, but it was Euron who made the plan (II: 284)
  • The Seastone Chair, a massive block of oily black stone carved in the shape of a great kraken, was reputedly found on the shore of Old Wyk by the First Men when they first came to the Iron Islands thousands of years ago (II: 287)
  • In 211, reavers out of the Iron Islands were known to raid coastal villages of the Reach and the Westerlands, even going as far south as the Arbor, under the auspices of Lord Dagon Greyjoy (TSS: 82, 83, 121)
  • Ironborn reavers carried off half the wealth and some hundred women of Fair Isle in 211 (TSS: 121)
  • No woman has ever ruled the ironborn (IV: 23)
  • In old times, kings were chosen by the kingsmoot. Among the kings so chosen as High King were Urras Ironfoot, Sylas Flatnose, Harrag Hoare, and the Old Kraken (IV: 29)
  • The Old Kraken was an ancestor of the Greyjoys (IV: 29, 278)
  • Haereg's History of the Ironborn discusses Urron of Orkmont's massacre at a kingsmoot to establish House Greyiron's rule in the Iron Islands until the Andals came a thousand years later (IV: 165)
  • Though it's traditionally said the last kingsmoot took place four thousand years ago, Denestan's Questions suggests the true date is less than half that (IV: 165)
  • It's said no woman has ever ruled over the ironborn (IV: 165)
  • Beneath Nagga's Ribs, every captain stands as an equal (IV: 166)
  • The kings of the ironborn wore driftwood crowns (IV: 255, 263)
  • No king of the Iron Isles ever needed a Hand (IV: 265)
  • In ancient days, the ironborn would sail their ships up the Mander as far as Bitterbridge, plundering and reaving with impunity. This changed when the Gardeners armed the fisherfolk of the Shield Islands some two thousand years ago (IV: 431)
  • Black Harren's line still exists through the female line (IV: 439)
  • The ironborn have not dared to raid the Reach since the days of Dagon Greyjoy. Lord Dagon was wont to flee back to the Iron Islands whenever ships were sent after his raiders (IV: 474)
  • The reaving of the ironborn under Lord Dagon led the Lannisters to begin to build ships for an attack against the Iron Islands while Lord Beron Stark was gathering swords at Winterfell to drive the ironmen from his shores (TMK: 664)
  • The Seven Kingdoms were seemingly left to fend for themselves against Lord Dagon Greyjoy and his ironborn reavers troubling all the lands on the western coast, as King Aerys I ignored the trouble so he could be closeted with his books, while Prince Rhaegal was said to be so mad as to dance naked in the halls of the Red Keep and Prince Maekar so angry at his brother and his advisors that he sat and brooded at Summerhall. Some blamed Lord Bloodraven, the Hand of the King, for this state of affairs, while others claimed his attention was focused on Tyrosh where the sons of Daemon Blackfyre and Bittersteel plotted another attempt to seize the Iron Throne (TMK: 664)
  • House Hoare was the house of Harwyn Hardhand and Harren the Black (SSM: 1)
  • Roughly around 210, House Stark was in a difficult situation, with the current lord of the house slowly succumbing to wounds he received fighting the ironborn. (SSM: 1, 2)
Last revised September 04, 2012
PermaLink
4.2.3. Bannerhouses
  • House Harlaw of Harlaw (I: 689. II: 129, 285. IV: 159)
  • House Stonehouse of Old Wyk, ruled by the Stonehouse (I: 689. II: 128. IV: 269)
  • House Merlyn of Great Wyk (I: 689, II: 287)
  • House Sunderly of Saltcliffe, ruled by a lord (I: 689. II: 287. IV: 702)
  • House Tawney of Orkmont, ruled by a lord (I: 689. III: 941. IV: 702)
  • House Wynch of Iron Holt, on Pyke, ruled by a lord (I: 689. II: 287, 733)
  • House Drumm on Old Wyk. The Drumm is also known as the Bone Hand, and is Lord of Old Wyk (II: 128, 733. IV: 699)
  • House Blacktyde of Blacktyde (II: 287)
  • House Sparr of Great Wyk, ruled by the Sparr (II: 287. IV: 18)
  • House Saltcliffe of Saltcliffe (II: 287)
  • Thirty longships can carry about 1,000 men (II: 290, 588)
  • House Farwynd of Great Wyk (III: 941)
  • House Volmark of Volmark, on Harlaw (III: 941. IV: 159, 701)
  • House Myre of Harlaw (III: 941. IV: 159)
  • House Stonetree of Harlaw (III: 941. IV: 159)
  • House Kenning of Harlaw (III: 941)
  • House Orkwood of Orkmont, ruled by a lord (III: 941. IV: 700)
  • Pebbleton is a small town of several thousand on Great Wyk, ruled by Lord Merlyn from his square tower. There are turrets upon each of its corners (IV: 21, 26)
  • Petty lords can be found all along the way from the Hardstone Hills to Pebbleton on Great Wyk (IV: 26)
  • The Harlaws have no rival on Harlaw. The Volmarks and Stonetrees have large holdings and many famed captains and warriors, but they bow before the Harlaw. The Myres and Kennings were once bitter foes of the Harlaws, but are now vassals (IV: 165-166)
  • Among the Harlaw of Harlaws vassals are various cadet branches of the house, each ruling a seat (IV: 166-168)
  • Orkwood of Orkmont can raise at least twenty longships (IV: 170)
  • House Codd's words are "Though All Men Do Despise Us". They make use of nets when they fight (IV: 170)
  • Humble lesser houses, of small lineage: Shepherds, Weavers, Netleys, and Humbles (IV: 258)
  • The Humbles are said to be the humblest of all the ironborn houses, descendants of thralls and saltwives (IV: 258)
  • House Sharp (IV: 259)
  • It's claimed that the Volmarks are the true heirs of the "black line", the descendants of Harren the Black (IV: 260)
  • The Farwynds are considered strange by the other ironborn. Holding lands on the westernmost shores of Great Wyk, many of their holdings are on the scattered rocks in the seas beyond, some so small only a single household can reside there. The most distant of these is the Lonely Light, eight days to the northwest from Great Wyk. It's claimed that there are skinchangers among the Farwynds, able to change into sea lions, walruses, and spotted whales (IV: 271)
  • House Ironmaker (IV: 272, 699)
  • The Drumm carries the famous Valyrian steel sword, Red Rain, which his ancestor Hilmar the Cunning took from an armored knight with his wits and a wooden cudgel. The Drumms have an old lineage with many heroes to its credit, including Roryn the Reaver, Dale the Dread, and Gormond the Oldfather who was said to have had had a hundred sons (IV: 273)
  • The ironborn can raise hundreds of ships. Each major house can likely command a hundred vessels (IV: 434-435. SSM: 1)
  • There might be as many as 500 longships and war galleys (IV: 473, 474)
  • House Farwynd of Sealskin Point, on Great Wyk (IV: 702)
  • House Myre was once involved in the hanging of ten men in a single day, which is commemorated on their arms (SSM: 1)
Last revised July 29, 2009
PermaLink
4.2.3.1. The Botleys of Lordsport
  • Lordsport is on Pyke (II: 126)
  • Above the village of Lordsport is the stronghold of House Botley. Originally the stronghold had been of timber and wattle, but Robert Baratheon had razed it to the ground. Lord Sawane rebuilt in stone, making a small square keep crowning the hill overlooking the village (II: 126)
  • Lordsport was also burned by Robert Baratheon's forces during the putting down of the rebellion (II: 126)
  • The old sept of Lordsport was destroyed in the rebellion, but it was never rebuilt (II: 126)
  • Lordsport's town is half the size of Lord Hewett's Town on Oakenshield (IV: 434)
Last revised June 02, 2009
PermaLink
4.2.3.2. The Goodbrothers of Great Wyk, Old Wyk, and Orkmont
  • The main strength of the Goodbrothers is nearly forty longships (II: 280)
  • Goodbrother men are conspicuous, as they wear striped goat hair sashes (II: 280)
  • There appear to be at least three chief branches of the house, on Old Wyk, Great Wyk, and Orkmont (III: 941. IV: 258)
  • The Goodbrothers of Great Wyk have a black-and-gold warhorn on red as their symbol (IV: 18)
  • The Goodbrothers of Great Wyk have their seat at Hammerhorn amidst the Hardstone Hills. It is as much as six leagues inland from the sea (IV: 20-21)
  • The Hammerhorn is a large, bulky castle with spiked iron battlements. Its stones were quarried from the cliff that looms behind it, and the entrances to caves and mines can be seen beneath its walls. It's gate is of iron (IV: 22)
  • There are several branches of the Goodbrothers throughout Great Wyk. Among them are those who hold the towers of Downdelving, Crow Spike Keep, and Corpse Lake (IV: 26)
  • The Goodbrothers of Orkmont (IV: 258)
  • The Goodbrothers of Old Wyk have a castle near the shore called Shatterstone, across the island from Nagga's Ribs (IV: 260, 702)
Last revised July 18, 2009
PermaLink
4.2.3.3. The Harlaws of Harlaw
  • House Harlaw of Harlaw (I: 689. II: 129, 285)
  • Longships may moor beneath the castle of Ten Towers (IV: 159)
  • The head of House Harlaw is styled Lord of the Ten Towers, Lord of Harlaw, and the Harlaw of Harlaw (IV: 159)
  • The Widow's Tower is one of the ten that make up Ten Towers, receiving its name recently following Lord Harlaw's sister, Lady Gwynesse, taking up permanent residence there out of mourning for her husband who died off Fair Isle during Greyjoy's Rebellion (IV: 160)
  • Ten Towers is the newest castle on the Iron Islands, raised by Lord Theomore Harlaw some six generations ago (IV: 161-162)
  • Ten Towers is a strange structure, thanks to Lord Theomore's changable nature. Each tower follows a different plan and design from the next, making it look as if ten castles were squeezed together (IV: 161-162)
  • Lord Theomore had six wives over the course of his life. After losing three infant sons to the flooded cellars, damp stones, and nitre of his ancestral seat of Harlaw Hall, he resolved to build a new castle (IV: 162)
  • Ten Towers is warmer, airier, and better sited than Harlaw Hall (IV: 162)
  • The Book Tower is the broadest of the ten towers, octagonal in shape and made out of great, hewn stones. Its stair is built within the thickness of the walls. It has at least five stories, and is named after Lord Harlaw's library that is kept there (IV: 162)
  • There is a village associated with Ten Towers (IV: 163)
  • Harlaw is not the largest of the Iron Islands, but it is the most populous and richest (IV: 165)
  • The Harlaws have no rival on Harlaw. The Volmarks and Stonetrees have large holdings and many famed captains and warriors, but they bow before the Harlaw. The Myres and Kennings were once bitter foes of the Harlaws, but are now vassals (IV: 165-166)
  • Among the Harlaw of Harlaws vassals are various cadet branches of the house, each ruling a seat. Among the seats are Harlaw Hall, the Tower of Glimmering sited on a crag above the western coast, Grey Garden, and Harridan Hill (IV: 167)
  • Lord Rodrik Harlaw's two sons were killed off Fair Isle during Greyjoy's Rebellion (IV: 167)
  • The Harlaws own a storied Valyrian steel sword, Nightfall (IV: 275)
  • Harlaw is larger than the Four Shields combined (IV: 436)
Last revised June 02, 2009
PermaLink
4.3. The Drowned God
  • The Drowned God is said to have made the ironborn to reave and rape, to carve out kingdoms and to make their names known in fire and blood and song (II: 125)
  • Priests wear sea water robes, mottled green and grey and blue, which colors are those of the Drowned God (II: 127, 128. IV: 18)
  • Priests wear their hair and beards long and braid ropes of dried seaweed through them (II: 128. IV: 18)
  • One of the ironborn might become a priest of the Drowned God after an experience such as nearly drowning (II: 128)
  • A priest carries a waterskin filled with sea water (II: 128, 129)
  • The process of a blessing is that the priest has a person kneel. Using his skin of sea water, he pours a stream of it upon the person's head. As he does this he intones, "Let <person> your servant be born again from the sea, as you were. Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel." Then the kneeling person responds, "What is dead may never die." Finally, the priest closes with, "What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger" (II: 129)
  • The Drowned God brought flame from the sea, and sailed the world with fire and sword (II: 132)
  • Priests of the Drowned God bless new ships, speaking invocations and pouring sea water over prows (II: 278, 279)
  • When an ironman drowns, it's said that the Drowned God needed a strong oarsman, and the refrain "What's dead may never die" is used. It is believed he will be feasted in the Drowned God’s watery halls, his every want satisfied by mermaids (II: 281. IV: 20)
  • Ritual executions, involving the drowning of victims in water (particularly salt water), are made in the Drowned God's name if (for example) someone insults the god (II: 394, 527)
  • The person who leads should be the one to execute the offering to the Drowned God (II: 394)
  • "Lord God who drowned for us," is part of the litany of the Drowned God's priests (IV: 17, 28)
  • Priests of the Drowned God know how to drown a man and then bring him back to life. This is done as part of the rites of the god, consecrating the drowned person to him. Not all men are successfully revived, however (IV: 17-18. TSS: 154)
  • Drowned men are acolytes of the Drowned God’s priests. They wear mottled robes and carry driftwood cudgels to show their devotion (IV: 17-19)
  • Some ironborn do not go so far as to drown so that a priest may revive them. Instead, a symbolic drowning takes place shortly after birth where their heads are briefly dipped in seawater and little more (IV: 19)
  • The Storm God has warred with the Drowned God for a thousand thousand years (IV: 20)
  • Ravens are said to be the creatures of the Storm God (IV: 22)
  • Priests of the Drowned God that ironborn must not shed the blood of ironborn, but they believe that methods such as drowning are acceptable (IV: 23)
  • Priests and their drowned men primarily make use of those things that can be taken from the sea, such as driftwood for makeshift shelters and sealskin for tents (IV: 26)
  • The Storm God is thought to reside in a cloudy hall (IV: 29)
  • The shore of Nagga's Cradle, the bay beneath Nagga's Ribs, is considered scared (IV: 255)
  • A drowned priest is said to be able to sour wells and make women barren with his gaze (IV: 433)
  • The ironborn have their bodies committed to the sea, so they may find the Drowned God's halls (IV: 435)
  • The Drowned God was a creation of the Ironborn (SSM: 1)
Last revised July 29, 2009
PermaLink
4.3.1. The Old Way
  • The ironmen used to carry woman away as prizes, and kept them as wives whether they wished it or not. A man would have his true wife, his rock bride who was of the islands as he was, and he would have the salt wives captured in raids (II: 124)
  • In the old days, the ironborn did not labor at farming, fishing, or mining. That was the labor for the captives they brought from their raids. The true trade of the ironmen was warfare (II: 125)
  • The Old Way had been destroyed when Aegon the Conqueror had burnt Black Harren, gave Harren's kingdom to the rivermen, and the reduced the Iron Islands to an insignificant backwater of a greater realm (II: 125)
  • The ironborn reavers used to carry burning brands, razing the places they raided (II: 132)
  • In the Old Way, only women could decorate themselves with baubles bought with coin. Warriors wore only the jewelry they took from the corpses of enemies that they slew themselves. This practice was called "paying the iron price* (II: 135)
  • Ritual executions, involving the drowning of victims in salt water, are made in the Drowned God's name if (for example) someone insults the god. It is the old way of the ironborn (II: 394)
  • Ironmen of old were often blood-drunk in battle, so berserk that they felt no pain and feared no enemy (II: 394)
  • The Old Way extends even to comrades, if one ends their life to save them pain or because they've failed in some matter (II: 395)
  • During reaving expeditions, the prettier women were taken as salt wives while the crones and ugly ones were simply raped and killed unless they had useful skills and did not seem likely to be troublesome; those became thralls (II: 395)
  • It is not part of the Old Way to lay siege to castles. Glory can only be gotten by fighting man to man, not by flinging rocks (II: 399)
  • There are no slaves on the Iron Islands, only thralls. Thralls are bound to service, but they are not property, and a thralls children would be considered free if they were given to the Drowned God. The onl way to win a thrall was to pay the iron price. Selling slaves is not part of the Old Way (IV: 435)
Last revised June 02, 2009
PermaLink
4.4. Songs, Stories, and Legends
  • The Grey King of the Age of Heroes, who was supposed to have ruled the western lands and the sea itself, taking a mermaid as his wife (I: 687)
  • It is said that every captain is a king aboard his own vessel, and so it is little to wonder at that the islands are named the land of the ten thousand kings (II: 123)
  • The old red tales are still told around the driftwood fires and the smokey hearths all across the islands, even in the high stone halls of Pyke (II: 125)
  • The Seastone Chair, a massive block of oily black stone carved in the shape of a great kraken, was reputedly found on the shore of Old Wyk by the First Men when they first came to the Iron Islands thousands of years ago (II: 287)
  • Reaving songs tend to be loud and stormy, telling of dead heroes and deeds of wild valor (II: 398)
  • Haereg's History of the Ironborn discusses Urron of Orkmont's massacre at a kingsmoot to establish House Greyiron's rule in the Iron Islands until the Andals came a thousand years later (IV: 165)
  • Ironmen play fiddles to reaving songs such as "The Bloody Cup" and "Steel Rain" (IV: 260)
  • It's said in Ironborn legend that Nagga was the first sea dragon, able to feed on leviathins and krakens and to drown whole islands in her wrath until the Grey King slew here and the Drowned God turned her bones to stone. The Grey King turned Nagga's ribs into the beams and pillars of his longhall, and her skull into his throne. In time the hall decayed, leaving only the ribs, and the throne of fangs was swallowed by the sea (IV: 268)
  • The Grey King is said to have ruled for a thousand years and seven, taking a mermaid to wife, warring against the Storm God, and wearing robes of woven seaweed and tall, pale crown made from the teeth of Nagga (IV: 268)
  • The Grey King's halls were said to have been warmed by the living fire of Nagga. Tapetries of silver seaweed adorned it, and the Grey King's warriors feasted at a table shaped like a starfish, seated on thrones carved of mother-of-pearl (IV: 268)
  • The Ironborn believe that in ancient days, men were mightier and longer-lived (IV: 268)
Last revised January 04, 2009
PermaLink
A Forum of Ice and Fire
Westeros
Blood of Dragons

Westeros.org is the premiere fansite for George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Discuss the series on the forums and browse the fan-edited wiki. Read all about HBO's Game of Thrones, learn more about the books from our resource collections and play the MUSH.

New to the series? Read our spoiler-free review of A Game of Thrones.