![]() Others are used for the grazing of sheep…Such riches as the Iron Islands possess lie under the hills of Great Wyk, Harlaw, and Orkmont, where lead, tin, and iron can be found in abundance. “Some say that the Iron Islands are named for the ore that is found there in such abundance…tower keeps of lesser lords stand on some of the smaller islets, beside miniscule fishing villages. After all, the Iron Islands are not devoid of resources: But while it’s true that the insular nature of their homeland does mean that the Ironborn would be by necessity a maritime people, it would be a mistake to draw a straight line from this to piracy. This is especially true, given the way that the Iron Islands’ geography has been used to justify their reaving, as we see from the quote above. Little and less was taken in trade much and more was bought in blood, with the point of a sword or the edge of an axe…” (WOIAF)Īnother one of my running themes in this series is the idea that geography is not destiny. All that the islands lacked the reavers found in the green lands. So the ironborn had no choice but to turn to the vast forests of the green lands, the mainland of Westeros. In the dawn of days, there were extensive forests on Great Wyk, Harlaw, and Orkmont, but the shipwrights of the isles had such a voracious need for timber that one by one the woods vanished. “Archmaester Haereg has argued that it was a need for wood that first set the ironborn on this bloody path. ![]() (For more on this, let me suggest reading this essay on thralldom and Theon’s ACOK chapters) The irony is that the Old Way constantly attacks the New Way for supposedly weakening the Iron Islands, and thereby brings about the weakness that it decries, leaving the New Way to clean up the mess. ![]() In comparison, the New Way has been surprisingly stable due to its superior ability to deal with the material realities of the Iron Islands in a complex world of many powers. ![]() Contrary to Aeron Damphair’s belief in an Old Way that is as unchanging and eternal as the tides, I will show that the Old Way is in fact fundamentally unstable, and as it fails to cope with the pressures placed on it by events, it constantly changes while insisting that it’s not. This is doubly true for the Iron Islands, because of the way that characters in ASOIAF and certain members of the fandom assume that the “Old Way” is intrinsic, the one and eternal culture of the Ironborn.Īs I will attempt to show in this essay, this is not the case. Cultures, societies, polities are all too complicated for such simplistic narratives. If there’s one thing that I hope I have done in this series, it’s to push back against the idea of essentialism – whether it’s the idea that Northmen are inherently honorable, Valemen inherently isolationist, or the Riverlanders inherently divided. ![]()
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