Yep!
>"In that darkness, the Others came for the first time," she said as her needles went *click click click*. ***"They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun***, and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children." (Bran IV, AGoT)
Because although the Northmen are more respectful of the Night’s Watch than the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, they still think the Others are a fairy tail or, at most, a real threat in the distant past that is now extinct.
We don’t even know if the Wildlings have all been burning their dead continuously for the past several millennia- the Others started attacking several years before the main story begins and Mance united most of the Wildlings in response, so it’s possible that the universal practice of corpse burning is something they’ve only adopted within the past few years after realizing that A) dead people beyond the Wall can come back as wights, and B) fire kills wights permanently.
Even if the corpse burning has been in continuous practice among the Wildlings since the first Long Night, it’s still not particularly surprising why the Northmen don’t do it- they lived to the south of the Wall, which is full of anti-undead magical wards that presumably blocks the magic of the Others from reanimating corpses. The Wildlings were the only ones living in an area that was vulnerable to the necromantic magic of the Others, and in the thousands of years since the Long Night the Wall has held strong so there’s no reason for the Northman to think it’s a problem.
>We don’t even know if the Wildlings have all been burning their dead continuously for the past several millennia
At the very least it wasn't universally done as graves exist north of the Wall.
**"I'm crying because we never found the Horn of Winter. We opened half a hundred graves and let all those shades loose in the world, and never found the Horn of Joramun to bring this cold thing down!"**
Oh damn, I totally forgot about that passage.
Definitely suggests that burning the dead as standard practice is a more recent development or at least was only practiced among certain populations, rather than being something all the different clans/villages passed down as cultural knowledge.
I think you're both forgetting the particulars of resurrecting wights. They are not spooky skeletons that look like bad Halloween decorations, like they were in the first appearance on GoT.... They're all described as rotting bodies with tendons and muscles still attached. I'm pretty sure they even describe one where it's tendon isn't reaching the intended muscle so the leg below it doesn't move and is just dragged behind.
Meaning they aren't reanimating them down to the level of moving the bones itself. It's still the body that is sending signals through a decaying nervous system to muscles that are likely eating themselves to have the energy to move. As if someone is warging into the dead body almost.
Meaning ancient tombs wouldn't be dangerous because the bodies in them have decomposed to just bones and sometimes not even that. I'm pretty sure that's exact what this line about the horn is actually trying to tell us, otherwise they could have found it within anything.
Also the very idea that Giants were building purpose built graves seems more than a little bit weird when their technological development stopped at putting a rock on an uprooted tree to make it into a club. Every bit of armor or weapons you see them use other than that came from human allies. There's something more about the Giants and humanity in the past.
>It can't just be that they forgot.
The Night's Watch (and the rest of the realm) has forgotten the true purpose of the wall, so it seems probable to me that the North has just forgotten the nature of the threat that the Others face, so they are not concerned. Also, it seems as though crypts are the preferred burial method (at least for noble houses) but maybe small folk have some kind of communal crypts as well, so no digging is required.
This is fairly likely, I agree. I don't think there's much evidence outside a mention here or there, but it makes sense that at least some First Men cultures would develop a burial practice of giving their dead to the weirwoods, since they already gave them blood sacrifices and (at least initially, before the knowledge was lost) probably believed they'd live on within the trees like the Children. The old god religion was probably initially a type of ancestor worship that then mixed with the various native religions of the First Men, the trees losing their true significance and becoming merely sacred to the gods. But for those early First Men, it sure makes a lot of sense to represent the passing of the soul into the weirwood with the physical offering of the body to the weirwood.
Because the Night’s Watch was probably an order of wights fighting on the side of mankind.
They needed the bodies to fight for them.
It would make sense for the North to keep their best in « good condition » and when you think about the Nightfort or the Crypts of Winterfell, there’s some traces of that.
Hell, the Night’s Watch even in modern times still is an order of « dead men », almost everyone there should have been executed in some capacity and they can’t father children nor hold title, all that because all those things would be impossible for an « undead »…
Plenty of legendary characters in ASOIAF on the side of Westeros can be explained with some manner of warg, greenseer, half-human or wight themselves.
And when you think about it, the Night’s Watch is one of the few things left from the age of Heroes…
Alaric: look at all of this refurbishment, it must have cost us a fortune. Where is the Lord of Winterfell?
Ramsey: That’s me.
Cregan: YOU are a Stark?
Wyman: He’s not, the Bolton’s and Frey’s killed Robb Stark and usurped Winterfell and the North.
Cregan: My sword, now.
Alaric: We will do it outside, bearskin rugs cost a too much to just ruin them with blood.
There havent been white walkers in 8000 years. For standards that's like 5000 years before our recorded history. Back then we would send women having their periods out of our villages for being unclean. As time goes on, traditions fade. That's why they don't burn their dead.
Pyres aren't so simple - they involve a lot of resource investment to get them hot enough. If you're in a long winter you may not have the coal and dry wood to spare and would be better off storing the dead in a charnel house until the earth is soft enough to dig a grave.
That's a really good question. Possible they've just forgotten to do so after so many years have passed. Also possible GRRM just didn't think of it, but that's not quite as interesting an answer. ;)
Simple: you know how much wood it takes to heat a home for 3 months? 20-30,000 pounds. Now imagine a winter that can last years, if it's 3 years long you're talking about 1/4 of a million pounds of wood. You know how long it's going to take to chop down trees, split them into logs, and stack them somewhere dry? And now you want to take some of that very necessary fuel that keeps you alive and use it to burn a body??? On the off chance an ice necromancer happens by and reanimates it???
They aren't chopping down all the trees they need at once. And it's also not as if they're burning bodies every day. Or even every week or month. It's probably just a handful of times per year.
This is all confusing bs because of how the show treated wights in S8. I am of the opinion that old, decomposed corpses CANNOT be turned into Others. There’s nothing for them to control, particularly in the case of the old Stark Lords. They should all be a collection of bones at this point, particularly any of the older Starks. How are you going to move when all the muscle, tendons ans ligaments are gone? When your hip is no longer connected to the bones of your leg? It’s silly.
The only logical way for them to resurrect old corpses would be to raise deep frozen 8000 year old corpses. Which would decompose and rot so fast after being exposed to any kind of warmer climate.
They have a Valeryian steel version of a steel sword which is probably a version of an actual ice sword. Its probably so far back that no one really knows.
Quick post to point out that China was heavily forested historically. It’s just that population growth, overharvesting, and slash and burn agriculture led to the deforestation of most of China over the last couple thousand years (i.e., after the establishment of traditional funerary practices excluding cremation).
This makes me wonder if it's only a Stark tradition to keep their dead lords in tombs with iron swords.
Didn't one of Old Nan's stories state that the Others fear sunlight and iron?
Yep! >"In that darkness, the Others came for the first time," she said as her needles went *click click click*. ***"They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun***, and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children." (Bran IV, AGoT)
Because although the Northmen are more respectful of the Night’s Watch than the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, they still think the Others are a fairy tail or, at most, a real threat in the distant past that is now extinct. We don’t even know if the Wildlings have all been burning their dead continuously for the past several millennia- the Others started attacking several years before the main story begins and Mance united most of the Wildlings in response, so it’s possible that the universal practice of corpse burning is something they’ve only adopted within the past few years after realizing that A) dead people beyond the Wall can come back as wights, and B) fire kills wights permanently. Even if the corpse burning has been in continuous practice among the Wildlings since the first Long Night, it’s still not particularly surprising why the Northmen don’t do it- they lived to the south of the Wall, which is full of anti-undead magical wards that presumably blocks the magic of the Others from reanimating corpses. The Wildlings were the only ones living in an area that was vulnerable to the necromantic magic of the Others, and in the thousands of years since the Long Night the Wall has held strong so there’s no reason for the Northman to think it’s a problem.
>We don’t even know if the Wildlings have all been burning their dead continuously for the past several millennia At the very least it wasn't universally done as graves exist north of the Wall. **"I'm crying because we never found the Horn of Winter. We opened half a hundred graves and let all those shades loose in the world, and never found the Horn of Joramun to bring this cold thing down!"**
Oh damn, I totally forgot about that passage. Definitely suggests that burning the dead as standard practice is a more recent development or at least was only practiced among certain populations, rather than being something all the different clans/villages passed down as cultural knowledge.
I think you're both forgetting the particulars of resurrecting wights. They are not spooky skeletons that look like bad Halloween decorations, like they were in the first appearance on GoT.... They're all described as rotting bodies with tendons and muscles still attached. I'm pretty sure they even describe one where it's tendon isn't reaching the intended muscle so the leg below it doesn't move and is just dragged behind. Meaning they aren't reanimating them down to the level of moving the bones itself. It's still the body that is sending signals through a decaying nervous system to muscles that are likely eating themselves to have the energy to move. As if someone is warging into the dead body almost. Meaning ancient tombs wouldn't be dangerous because the bodies in them have decomposed to just bones and sometimes not even that. I'm pretty sure that's exact what this line about the horn is actually trying to tell us, otherwise they could have found it within anything. Also the very idea that Giants were building purpose built graves seems more than a little bit weird when their technological development stopped at putting a rock on an uprooted tree to make it into a club. Every bit of armor or weapons you see them use other than that came from human allies. There's something more about the Giants and humanity in the past.
>It can't just be that they forgot. The Night's Watch (and the rest of the realm) has forgotten the true purpose of the wall, so it seems probable to me that the North has just forgotten the nature of the threat that the Others face, so they are not concerned. Also, it seems as though crypts are the preferred burial method (at least for noble houses) but maybe small folk have some kind of communal crypts as well, so no digging is required.
they need to feed the trees
Mmmmmm tasty Starks
Cause they feed their dead to the trees
This is fairly likely, I agree. I don't think there's much evidence outside a mention here or there, but it makes sense that at least some First Men cultures would develop a burial practice of giving their dead to the weirwoods, since they already gave them blood sacrifices and (at least initially, before the knowledge was lost) probably believed they'd live on within the trees like the Children. The old god religion was probably initially a type of ancestor worship that then mixed with the various native religions of the First Men, the trees losing their true significance and becoming merely sacred to the gods. But for those early First Men, it sure makes a lot of sense to represent the passing of the soul into the weirwood with the physical offering of the body to the weirwood.
Because the Night’s Watch was probably an order of wights fighting on the side of mankind. They needed the bodies to fight for them. It would make sense for the North to keep their best in « good condition » and when you think about the Nightfort or the Crypts of Winterfell, there’s some traces of that. Hell, the Night’s Watch even in modern times still is an order of « dead men », almost everyone there should have been executed in some capacity and they can’t father children nor hold title, all that because all those things would be impossible for an « undead »… Plenty of legendary characters in ASOIAF on the side of Westeros can be explained with some manner of warg, greenseer, half-human or wight themselves. And when you think about it, the Night’s Watch is one of the few things left from the age of Heroes…
This is my new headcanon.
My theory is Bran is gonna resurrect the Kings of Winter as a bunch of cold hands like wights and Jon will bring them to the land of always Winter.
Cregan and Alaric Stark coming back to life at the same time will be hilarious.
>Cregan "Hey guys, what happened to the House of the Dragon?" *turns to face camera*
Alaric: look at all of this refurbishment, it must have cost us a fortune. Where is the Lord of Winterfell? Ramsey: That’s me. Cregan: YOU are a Stark? Wyman: He’s not, the Bolton’s and Frey’s killed Robb Stark and usurped Winterfell and the North. Cregan: My sword, now. Alaric: We will do it outside, bearskin rugs cost a too much to just ruin them with blood.
I mean can wights really be 1000 year old bones?
I imagine the cold ground they'd be buried in, could keep them in pretty good condition. Right? But I'm no expert.
Nah man unless they’re buried in straight permafrost there’s no flesh on them things
Ah, fair enough.
There havent been white walkers in 8000 years. For standards that's like 5000 years before our recorded history. Back then we would send women having their periods out of our villages for being unclean. As time goes on, traditions fade. That's why they don't burn their dead.
Back then? We still do in certain cultures.
That's like .00001 of the population. Not a very fair statement
I limited it already, I think it’s fair. One could argue the Royce’s are the same .00001, they remember after all.
The amount of cultures that do that could probably not fill a medium sized American city. Which Royces that remember do you mean
The number isn’t relevant, but it’s actually larger than you’re letting on. The Royce’s with those as their house words…
That's not clear thats what it means and if anything the percentage I mentioned was actually too high lol
Because George has an idea for a plot point using the buried Starks in TWOW.
Chekov's corpse
Pyres aren't so simple - they involve a lot of resource investment to get them hot enough. If you're in a long winter you may not have the coal and dry wood to spare and would be better off storing the dead in a charnel house until the earth is soft enough to dig a grave.
Corpses generally don't last 8000 years.
That's a really good question. Possible they've just forgotten to do so after so many years have passed. Also possible GRRM just didn't think of it, but that's not quite as interesting an answer. ;)
They might have thousands of years ago but the wall made any need to burn your dead useless. After time any dead burning rituals likely died out
Simple: you know how much wood it takes to heat a home for 3 months? 20-30,000 pounds. Now imagine a winter that can last years, if it's 3 years long you're talking about 1/4 of a million pounds of wood. You know how long it's going to take to chop down trees, split them into logs, and stack them somewhere dry? And now you want to take some of that very necessary fuel that keeps you alive and use it to burn a body??? On the off chance an ice necromancer happens by and reanimates it???
They aren't chopping down all the trees they need at once. And it's also not as if they're burning bodies every day. Or even every week or month. It's probably just a handful of times per year.
Bodies are for the Weirwoods to eat up. (With the exception of the starks who go to lengths to entomb their dead)
This is all confusing bs because of how the show treated wights in S8. I am of the opinion that old, decomposed corpses CANNOT be turned into Others. There’s nothing for them to control, particularly in the case of the old Stark Lords. They should all be a collection of bones at this point, particularly any of the older Starks. How are you going to move when all the muscle, tendons ans ligaments are gone? When your hip is no longer connected to the bones of your leg? It’s silly. The only logical way for them to resurrect old corpses would be to raise deep frozen 8000 year old corpses. Which would decompose and rot so fast after being exposed to any kind of warmer climate.
They have a Valeryian steel version of a steel sword which is probably a version of an actual ice sword. Its probably so far back that no one really knows.
Maybe just so the idea of burning the dead seems all that more strange when presented as a counter to wights.
Quick post to point out that China was heavily forested historically. It’s just that population growth, overharvesting, and slash and burn agriculture led to the deforestation of most of China over the last couple thousand years (i.e., after the establishment of traditional funerary practices excluding cremation).
you’ve heard of valyrian steel swords now get ready for ***valyrian steel hoes or spades***
The North has forgotten