History Main / GrimUpNorth

* The comic book miniseries/movie ''Thirty Days of Night'' was about a remote town in Alaska attacked by vampires during its long "winter night".

Whenever TheDarkLord rises to gather his armies and bring destruction upon the lands of men, elves, dwarves and the race of funny midgets, he always, always, ''always'' does this from a stronghold built in the most [[EvilIsDeathlyCold frigid]], dark, frigid, remote, [[RuleOfThree frigid]], ''[[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment cold]]'', benighted corner of the wasteland that usually gets simply called "the North".

This trope may stem from how generally inhospitable the North often is to human (and other) life. While a gentle cover of snow can imply [[SnowMeansLove romance]], and snow can often be used to create an incredibly beautiful and peaceful otherworldly air, when taken to blizzard-level extremes it becomes [[HailFirePeaks an icy hell]]. As many forms of AlwaysChaoticEvil creatures are somehow protected from extreme cold- for example, the undead simply don't care about temperatures- the North is an environment where the Forces of Good are often at a disadvantage.

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* In ''{{Doomsday}}'', Scotland is sealed off from the rest of the UK (and the world) to contain a zombie-creating plague, and a 50-foot high version of Hadrian's Wall made of steel-reinforced concrete and lined with machineguns and spotlights. A British commando team is sent in years later to investigate after satellite images show signs of life. HilarityEnsues.

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*** Although this led to MisaimedFandom assuming it represented Soviet Russia, and Tolkien angrily wrote letters educating them about this trope and how he put Mordor there as a subversion of the more classic 'evil in the cold north'.

* Even in the Finnish national epic ''[[TheKalevala Kalevala]]'', the northerners are the bad guys. Well, from the contemporary viewpoint. Most of the bad things they do are in retaliation to the bad things done by the protagonists. They're just the enemies, because they're ''[[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman foreigners]]''.
** This probably was an echo of the conflicts that the Finns had with the indigenous Sami-folk who they robbed much of their lands from, forcing them to retreat to the northernmost reaches of the land.
* JV Jones' ''Sword of Shadow''. Pretty much the whole series takes place in what the rest of the world would consider to be the grim north, though even beyond that you get to "the Great Want", frozen {{Mordor}} and EldritchLocation ''par excellence''.

* ''HisDarkMaterials'': The baddies' fortress of Bolvangar in the first book, ''Northern Lights''.
** Although they are just intruders there; the land actually belongs to the more or less good Panserbjørner (armoured polar bears!) and witches.

* In ''WorldWarZ'' and the worldwide ZombieApocalypse, the Arctic Circle actually fares better than most areas as zombies freeze solid in the winter. Mind, "better than most" still means that most evacuees are completely unprepared for winter survival and die anyway. Those who do survive and set up fortifications are able to scavenge unimpeded during the winter and hole up during the summer.
** Later it makes the cleanup process far more difficult than in the south however, as the zombies freeze for winter, and are easily overlooked under the snow. Finland is shown still to be struggling to make itself habitable, while Iceland is one of the worst White Zones (areas completely overrun) on the map.

"Little wonder men grow moody there," quoth Prospero with a shrug of his shoulders, thinking of the smiling sun-washed plains and blue lazy rivers of Poitain, Aquilonia's southernmost province.\\
"They have no hope here or hereafter," answered Conan. "Their gods are Crom and his dark race, who rule over a sunless place of everlasting mist, which is the world of the dead.''
* In ''MemorySorrowAndThorn'', while there are the sympathetic Rimmersmen and Qanuc civilizations in the north, go a bit further and you start running into the deeply unpleasant Black Rimmersmen- and further than ''that'' you come to Stormspike, mountain citadel of the Norns (the AlwaysChaoticEvil variant of the FairFolk) and base of operations for [[BigBad the Storm King]]. [[{{Understatement}} Not a nice place]].

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* In many of the "Alexander Romances"--legends and folkloric embellishments of the life and exploits of Alexander the Great--a land beset by "unclean" nations to the north is encountered by Alexander during his conquests. Recognizing their need, Alexander has his army construct the "Gates of Alexander" across the mountain pass which served as the border between the peaceful southern tribes and their warlike neighbors to the north; these nigh-impenetrable gates, often said to be constructed of the mythical substance "adamantium", effectively severed the north's capacity to reach the south, therefore preserving the southerners safety and way of life. ''Note'': in many cases, these barbarous and unclean northern tribes are identified as none other than Gog and Magog--mentioned in the various Abrahamic religions, where they are invariably portrayed as bad or evil or at the least "unclean", and who in extra-Biblical tradition become the BigBad who are said to one day rise up and make war on the rest of the world, bringing about Armageddon.

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* ''DoctorWho'' ("The Ribos Operation"). On the planet Ribos the locals assume that aliens, with their advanced technology, are from The Great North. A local heretic who holds the unpopular belief that the stars are not ice crystals but other worlds scoffs at this, as he's travelled to the north and knows there's no mighty empire there.

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* The genre of {{black metal}}, owing to its origins in Norway, has a fondness for imagery involving the cold north. A particularly notable example is the band Immortal, whose song titles include ''Grim and Frostbitten Kingdoms'', ''Sons of Northern Darkness'' and ''In My Kingdom Cold''.
** Parodied by the "acoustic black metal" joke band ''Impaled Northern Moonforest'', with songs like ''Grim and Frostbitten Moongoats of the North'' and ''Lustfully Worshipping the Inverted Moongoat While Skiing down the Inverted Necromountain of Necrodeathmortum''. They even have an [[http://www.inm.acousticblackmetal.org/downloads.htm Impaled Northern Moonforest song title generator]] that lets you create your own grim and frostbitten song titles.

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* The elves of the IronKingdoms sealed the heart of the dragon Everblight on the top of the highest mountain they could find. Guess which direction a horde of monstrous BodyHorror dragonspawn is pouring out from?

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* ''{{Bionicle}}'''s Bara Magna arc has the villainous Skrall tribe coming from the mountainous north to conquer the planet, though they themselves were driven south by an even nastier group of [[ShapeShifter shapeshifting]] warriors.

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* The [[strike:Witch]] Lich King of the ''{{Warcraft}}'' fame, whose realm of [[MeaningfulName Northrend]] lies in the far north of the world.

** In ALinkToThePast, Link is a lefty when he swings his sword -- ''except'' when he's facing east. Due to sprite-mirroring, it looks like he's suddenly switched hands. One of [[AllThereInTheManual strategy guides]] justifies this by saying that there's a Hyrulean superstition to hold one's shield towards Death Mountain in the north, which may also explain why Link is often depicted wearing the shield on his back.

** Also, the mountains may be snowy but they're apparently closer to the middle of the world than the north. And they exploded.

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* Inverted in the Krynn D&D setting, as Ansalon, the main continent for {{Dragonlance}} stories and adventures, is in the southern hemisphere.

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This trope may stem from how generally inhospitable the North often is to human (and other) life. While a gentle cover of snow can imply [[SnowMeansLove romance]], and snow can often be used to create an incredibly beautiful and peaceful otherworldly air, when taken to blizzard-level extremes it becomes [[HailFirePeaks an icy hell]]. As many forms of AlwaysChaoticEvil creatures are somehow protected from extreme cold- for example, the undead simply don't care about temperatures- the North is an environment where the Forces of Good are often at a disadvantage. It might also have its roots in Medieval history, as the Vikings would often come from Scandinavia to the European coastlines for some good ol' pillage and burn; hey, beats fishing. [[OlderThanTheyThink Even before that]], one of the constant threats to the [[AncientRome Roman Empire]] were the Celtic and Germanic barbarians to its north. History repeats the pattern elsewhere; in Asia, the Mongol hordes were from the frigid steppes and the surprisingly cold Gobi Desert, north of China proper. In Africa, the colonial invaders of the 17th-20th centuries were mysterious pale people from a land far to the north. In the ColdWar, the enemy that represented the greatest threat to your way of life was so far north that they were over the pole and on the other side, a bit of geography that's true for American and Soviet alike!

This trope may stem from how generally inhospitable the North often is to human (and other) life. While a gentle cover of snow can imply [[SnowMeansLove romance]], and snow can often be used to create an incredibly beautiful and peaceful otherworldly air, when taken to blizzard-level extremes it becomes [[HailFirePeaks an icy hell]]. As many forms of AlwaysChaoticEvil creatures are somehow protected from extreme cold- for example, the undead simply don't care about temperatures- the North is an environment where the Forces of Good are often at a disadvantage. It might also have its roots in Medieval history, as the Vikings would often come from Scandinavia to the European coastlines for some good ol' pillage and burn; hey, beats fishing. History repeats the pattern elsewhere; in Asia, the Mongol hordes were from the frigid steppes and the surprisingly cold Gobi Desert, north of China proper. In Africa, the colonial invaders of the 17th-20th centuries were mysterious pale people from a land far to the north. In the ColdWar, the enemy that represented the greatest threat to your way of life was so far north that they were over the pole and on the other side, a bit of geography that's true for American and Soviet alike!

* JV Jones' ''Sword of Shadow''.

* In ''TheSilmarillion'', Morgoth's fortress is in the north extreme of Beleriand.

* {{Morrowind}} has Solthsheim, and to a lesser extent, Sheogorath.

The roots of this trope could also lie in the fact that most major religions originated in warm locations: the monotheistic ones in the Middle East; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; Taoism, Confucianism, and Chinese folk religion in mostly-temperate China; and Shintoism in temperate Japan. These were all locations where cold weather was associated with winter and its connotations of the "death" stage of the seasonal cycle rather than being the simple fact of life it becomes when actually ''living'' Up North.

*SnowW.Wwhite's entire concept is based heavily on this theme.
*The song "It's Grim Up North" by The KLF. Need I say more?