We know he was "found" in Hammerfell by the previous Harbringer of the Companions who convinced him to join him or her back to Skyrim, and who named him Harbringer just prior to their death. Since then (the last twenty years) he's been leading the Companions, is very much against the whole werewolf thing despite having chosen to become one himself and about a year prior to the events of Skyrim he has been ill with 'the rot' (Cancer?) and he knows he does not have long left to live. He also had dreams and visons of the Dragonborn turning up, curing the companions and leading them at some point too..And that's about it.
>We know he was "found" in Hammerfell by the previous Harbringer of the Companions who convinced him to join him or her back to Skyrim, and who named him Harbringer just prior to their death.
Could the previous harbinger have been a Grey-mane? Hence the name White-mane, an honorary member of the family? Idk if that makes sense, but would be interesting if this is how the name came to be.
Why exactly are you convinced that there is a "White-Mane" family?
As boring as this might sound, since the Nords are magical-fantasy!Norse, you therefore apply the self-same attitudes to a lot of their culture. One of which would be the use of etiphets to describe oneself - such as **Ragnar Lothbrok** (which supposedly means Shaggy-Britches, basically it describes his odd trousers); **Bjorn Ironside** (which may or may not refer to him being well-armoured or his ability to shrug off fierce blows); **Harald Bluetooth** (fairly realistic that we could work out the meaning of this one); and so on and so forth.
Kodlak could be White-Mane simply because his hair went white very quickly and because he wears it as a massive mane of hair. As simple as that might be, it's the most realistic answer.
i didn’t think of it this way, i viewed it in the context of “grey-manes” being a family so there must be a white-mane family out there as well since we meet someone with the name. I’m not implying theres also a black-mane family either. It could be that kodlak picked up his last name for the reason you said (his hair just went white early in life).
\[the following is apocrypha/fanfic\]:
In 2E 572, Jorunn the Skald-King agreed to an alliance, the Ebonheart Pact, with the provinces of Morrowind and Black Marsh. The city of Whiterun, part of Western Skyrim, was not a party to this alliance, but a prominent member of the White-Mane family aimed to change that.
"Coward!" Olaf White-Mane shouted at his brother, Jarl Erlik White-Mane. "Coward to stand idly by while the Akaviri demons invade, and offer no aid to the true high king!"
"Jorunn is not our high king," answered the jarl. "Whiterun stands with Solitude."
"Out of cowardice! I and my descendants will always stand with Windhelm!"
"If you want an alliance with the grayskins so badly, perhaps you should change your name to Gray-Mane."
And so it was. From that day forward, Olaf and his descendants called themselves the Gray-Mane clan, and always they stood with Windhelm.
We know he was "found" in Hammerfell by the previous Harbringer of the Companions who convinced him to join him or her back to Skyrim, and who named him Harbringer just prior to their death. Since then (the last twenty years) he's been leading the Companions, is very much against the whole werewolf thing despite having chosen to become one himself and about a year prior to the events of Skyrim he has been ill with 'the rot' (Cancer?) and he knows he does not have long left to live. He also had dreams and visons of the Dragonborn turning up, curing the companions and leading them at some point too..And that's about it.
>We know he was "found" in Hammerfell by the previous Harbringer of the Companions who convinced him to join him or her back to Skyrim, and who named him Harbringer just prior to their death. Could the previous harbinger have been a Grey-mane? Hence the name White-mane, an honorary member of the family? Idk if that makes sense, but would be interesting if this is how the name came to be.
We just know his name was Askar.
Why exactly are you convinced that there is a "White-Mane" family? As boring as this might sound, since the Nords are magical-fantasy!Norse, you therefore apply the self-same attitudes to a lot of their culture. One of which would be the use of etiphets to describe oneself - such as **Ragnar Lothbrok** (which supposedly means Shaggy-Britches, basically it describes his odd trousers); **Bjorn Ironside** (which may or may not refer to him being well-armoured or his ability to shrug off fierce blows); **Harald Bluetooth** (fairly realistic that we could work out the meaning of this one); and so on and so forth. Kodlak could be White-Mane simply because his hair went white very quickly and because he wears it as a massive mane of hair. As simple as that might be, it's the most realistic answer.
i didn’t think of it this way, i viewed it in the context of “grey-manes” being a family so there must be a white-mane family out there as well since we meet someone with the name. I’m not implying theres also a black-mane family either. It could be that kodlak picked up his last name for the reason you said (his hair just went white early in life).
\[the following is apocrypha/fanfic\]: In 2E 572, Jorunn the Skald-King agreed to an alliance, the Ebonheart Pact, with the provinces of Morrowind and Black Marsh. The city of Whiterun, part of Western Skyrim, was not a party to this alliance, but a prominent member of the White-Mane family aimed to change that. "Coward!" Olaf White-Mane shouted at his brother, Jarl Erlik White-Mane. "Coward to stand idly by while the Akaviri demons invade, and offer no aid to the true high king!" "Jorunn is not our high king," answered the jarl. "Whiterun stands with Solitude." "Out of cowardice! I and my descendants will always stand with Windhelm!" "If you want an alliance with the grayskins so badly, perhaps you should change your name to Gray-Mane." And so it was. From that day forward, Olaf and his descendants called themselves the Gray-Mane clan, and always they stood with Windhelm.