This is a listing of species and beings that live in Westeros Beyond the Wall in A Song of Ice and Fire.
For the main character index, see here
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Giants
"The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers."
—Leaf
Giants are a legendary Dying Race that still lives beyond the Wall. They too have joined Mance Rayder's army.
In General
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Described as resembling towering, shaggy, and upright apes, the giants of A Song of Ice and Fire are in many ways more similar to oversized versions of Bigfoot and the Yeti than to classic fantasy giants. Nevertheless, they are sapient enough to be capable of speech, animal husbandry, and crude tool-making.
- Dying Race: Like most of Westeros' magical races, the giants are on their way out, and have been for a long time. There's even a song about this, "The Last of the Giants".
- Giant Mook: For Mance Rayder and the Wildling army.
- Horse of a Different Color: Due to their great size, they can ride their domesticated mammoths like horses.
- The Nose Knows: Their eyesight is poor, so they snuffle constantly, smelling as much as they see.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: And hairier. And more apelike, though they are still capable of speech. It's mentioned they have proportionally larger and more muscled hips and legs than humans, to hold up their own weight.
- Primitive Clubs: They wield huge, crude clubs as their only weapons, fitting their characterization as a lingering remnant of prehistoric times.
- Smarter Than You Look: They're primitive and apelike, but Jon is surprised to learn they're capable of not just spoken language, but jests when Mag and Tormund exchange friendly insults.
- Super-Strength: They are much stronger than humans.
- To Serve Man: Defied. A lot of legends have them eating people, but in reality they are herbivorous and specifically seem to prefer root vegetables. The whole eating humans thing is due to general ignorance on the humans' part.
- War Elephants: They ride mammoths into battle.
Mag the Mighty
Mag Mar Tun Doh Weg
Mag the Mighty
- Due to the Dead: Tormund drinks to Mag's memory when Jon Snow tells him of Mag's death in battle.
- In-Series Nickname: Mag the Mighty.
- The Patriarch: The oldest of the giants, with a grey and white pelt, and the closest thing they have to a leader.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: Well, maybe. Mance Rayder explains that giants don't have kings or chiefs any more than mammoths do, but the truth is even Wildlings know practically nothing about giant social structure (assuming such a thing even exists) and it isn't really clear if Mag is some kind of hereditary chieftain, or a chosen chieftain, or if he has any formal leadership position at all, or if the other giants simply tend to follow his lead. The Wildlings informally refer to him as "king of the giants" as a simplification.
- Super-Strength: Even by the standards of giants, he's considered very strong.
- Taking You with Me: He perishes fighting and killing Donal Noye in the tunnel leading to the gate of Castle Black.
Wun Wun
Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun
Wun Wun
A giant that is discovered by a ranging during A Dance With Dragons. He eventually joins the Night's Watch, albeit unofficially.- The Alcoholic: He develops a taste for wine while staying with the Night's Watch, and Jon fears that he will become this and therefore tries to keep him away from alcohol.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Subverted, as he gets talked out of fighting the Watch.
- Badass Adorable: He has the attitude of a child and can easily rip you to pieces if you should insult or threaten him.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The end of ADWD has him bleeding, and dangling a dead Ser Patrek of King's Mountain from one arm, just as a fight breaks out and the Night's Watch try to murder Jon.
- Can't Hold His Liquor: Subverted by human standards, but by giant standards he seems to be something of a lightweight. This is why Jon tries to keep him away from wine.
- Dumb Is Good: Not terribly bright. Still a heroic character.
- Dumb Muscle: He's not very intelligent, at least from what we gather.
- Expert Consultant: No one would call him an expert, but Jon frequently speaks with Wun Wun, with Leathers to translate, to learn more about giants, their culture, and beliefs.
- Heel–Face Turn: Initially a hostile giant, the ranging party is able to talk him down and he joins the Night's Watch.
- Licked by the Dog: Princess Shireen takes a shine to him, showing she must be a kind individual and also that Wun Wun must be a noble character. In contrast, Queen Selyse considers him a filthy beast.
- Shout-Out: His name is a nod to New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms, who wore number 11 (one-one).
- The Unintelligible: He doesn't speak the Common Tongue, though he picks up a few words. Leathers speaks to him in the First Tongue.
- You Remind Me of X: His Gentle Giant tendencies put Jon in mind of Hodor, though he recognises that unlike Hodor, Wun Wun has the capacity to do a lot of damage if provoked.Jon's thoughts: Hodor twice as big, twice as strong, and half as clever.
The Children of the Forest
- "They were a people of the Dawn Age, the very first, before kings and kingdoms; in those days, there were no castles or holdfasts, no cities not so much as a market town to be found between here and the sea of Dorne. There were no men at all. Only the children of the forest dwelt in the lands we now call the Seven Kingdoms."
The Children of the Forest, sometimes referred to simply as the "Children", are a mysterious non-human race that originally inhabited the continent of Westeros long before the arrival of the First Men during the Dawn Age more than 12,000 years ago. The giants call them woh dak nag gram ("little squirrel people"). They call themselves Those who Sing the Song of Earth in the True Tongue.
In General
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Although fairly friendly and approachable once you work out how to 1) find them where they primarily live or 2) spot them when various individuals are all glamoured-up while wandering out and about on their own business... they just don't think along human lines, although there is enough overlap to get really disconcerting when they go obvious with it. Sure, they take a long, fairly detached view to just about everything, but their aesthetics and priorities are just a bit weirder than that, if hard to pin down. Leaf's power-with-a-shrug is bad enough, but if the Ghost of High Heart is actually another example of the breed, Leaf's got competition in the strange priorities stakes.
- Dying Race: Although they're not completely extinct like most claim, there's only a single village of them left, and Leaf states they're heading for extinction anyway. The Children are very accepting -- some might argue far too accepting -- of their fate. Bran notes that Men would not be so tacit.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: If Westeros is England, then the Children can be seen as a counterpart to the Celtic Britons who originally inhabited the land before being conquered in a Roman invasion.
- Alternatively, if viewing the First Men as the Celtic Britons and the Andals as the Anglo-Saxons, the Children can be seen as similar to the Tuatha Dé Danann as described in the Irish Book of Invasions. Initially, the Tuatha Dé Danann warred with the Milesians (the ancestors of the Celtic Irish) before eventually making peace with them and dividing the land between them, with the supernaturally gifted Tuatha Dé Danann taking command of the Otherworld, and the Milesians taking command of the temporal world. This mirrors the initial violence and then coexistence between the Children and the First Men.
- Four-Fingered Hands: The Children have four fingers rather than five, which end in black claws.
- Green Aesop: They are vanishing thanks to Man's encroachment and the destruction of the environment.
- Long-Lived: They have naturally much longer lifespans than humans, of a few centuries or more.
- No Mere Windmill: Maesters and septons have spent considerable time downplaying their existence, as well as the extent of their powers and influence. Wildlings and those who follow the old ways know rather better, even if they, too, often distort the reality. This is likely to bite people.
- Not So Extinct: Eventually revealed as still being around, if just barely.
- Our Elves Are Different: They are shorter and slighter of build than humans, but quicker and very long-lived. They have some traditional fantasy elf traits (being a mystical Dying Race that has been displaced by humans, being figures of legend to most modern people, and having a stronger connection to the natural world than humans have), but Martin specifically avoided most of the other stereotypical elf tropes, such as Inhumanly Beautiful Race and Can't Argue with Elves, as he feels that "elves have been done to death" and he doesn't consider them to be his version of elves, even if they largely fill the same niche.
- Pointy Ears: All the Children of the Forest have them.
- Real After All: Their culture and abilities have become myth.
- The Remnant: The single underground village Bran and his companions find is the very last remnant of a race that ruled most of Westeros before being driven out by the First Men and the Andals.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: They're generally considered to be extinct, and to have been for centuries at least. In reality, a single village of them has survived underground into the present day.
- Super-Senses: They have better sight and hearing than men.
Leaf
Leaf
One of the Children of the Forest, living in the Cave of the Three-Eyed Crow with the Last Greenseer.- Mr. Exposition: She answers some of Bran's questions about the Children of the Forest, providing a substantial portion of the available information regarding her species and culture as of A Dance With Dragons.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: Combined with Animal Eyes. Her irises are gold, with vertical pupils like a snake or cat. The supernatural is taken to a higher level with red or green eyes, as children with those colors are much more likely to be able to become greenseers.
- Walking Spoiler: Her and her fellow Children's mere continued existence is a massive spoiler.
The Others
- "In that darkness the white walkers came for the first time. They swept through cities and kingdoms, riding their dead Horses, hunting with their packs of pale spiders big as hounds…"
A mysterious, monstrous race from the Lands of Always Winter. Eight thousand years ago they caused the Long Night, a period of time where the dead rose and attacked the living, laying waste to the world. According to legend they were driven back by Azor Ahai and locked away behind the Wall, where the Night's Watch was established to safeguard the world from their return. Though most believe the Others are simply a myth, the monsters have returned and are once again trying to plunge the world into a never-ending Winter.
The Others
- Always Chaotic Evil: Or, at the very least, always hostile, implacable, and very dangerous to mere mortals.
Martin has hinted that there may be more to them than meets the eye, and that they can be bargained with is shown with Craster's sons. The Children of the Forest don't fear them, either.
- Big Bad: Probably for the series as a whole, that is if they actually get to the other side of the Wall.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: What is probably going on, seeing as the Children of the Forest don't seem to mind them much (not that they are particularly solid yardsticks to use, themselves). But, as far as humans are concerned, it's probably safest to think Always Chaotic Evil when dealing with them.
- Creepy Blue Eyes: Their signature, be they on a wight or one of them.
- The Dreaded: The members of the Night's Watch and the Free Folk are terrified of them for good reason, but the rest of Westeros only thinks of them as a myth.Tormund Giantsbane: A man can fight the dead, but when their masters come, when the white mists rise up... how do you fight a mist, crow? Shadows with teeth... air so cold it hurts to breath, like a knife inside your chest... you do not know, you cannot know... can your sword cut cold?
- Enemy to All Living Things: They are uniformly hostile to all forms of life. They target the surviving giants the same as they do human tribes, and warred against the Children during their original invasion. They even target animals, killing them and raising them as wights, and forcing the herds and flocks of the north to flee southwards alongside the human and giant refugees.
- Eminently Enigmatic Race: The Others are frighteningly inscrutable even after all the books released so far. Commonly depicted as an eerily beautiful ice-themed version of The Fair Folk, it's known that they have their own language and culture, that they can make bargains with humans, and are probably returning to bring the apocalypse; legends also suggest that they may be capable of taking husbands and wives from humankind... but their origins, the details behind their culture, and their true motivation for the nightmarish things that they do has yet to be revealed. For good measure, it's almost impossible to get within spying distance of them without being horribly murdered.
- Evil Is Deathly Cold: Their bodies radiate cold, and it has been suggested that maybe they don’t just show up during winter storms, maybe they cause them. Even their weapons and armor are made of ice.
- The Fair Folk: Of the terrifyingly dangerous sort. Notably because, in their role as mankind's enemies, they resemble more the medieval version, which, as you may guess, equates them with demons.
- Giant Spider: Old Nan and some of the books Samwell reads say that they had "giant ice spiders" at their disposal during the Long Night but it has yet to be confirmed if they ever existed or if the Others still have them.
- Greater-Scope Villain: They serve as antagonists to the series as a whole even if most characters are unaware of their existence. The Great Other that Melisandre fears may possibly serve as one as well.
- Horrifying the Horror: A full grown dragon is nigh-unbeatable, the terror of all who see it. And yet, Queen Alysanne's dragon refused to go past the Wall.
- Humanoid Abomination: They look human, but they have milk white skin and Occult Blue Eyes. Not to mention all their other traits.George R. R. Martin: They are strange, beautiful… think, oh… the Sidhe made of ice, something like that… a different sort of life… inhuman, elegant, dangerous.
- Human Sacrifice: Craster gave them his sons. This is currently the only way known to stop them from attacking you on sight. Craster's wives describe the Others coming for Gilly’s son as the baby's "brothers."
- An Ice Person: Their weapons, armour, powers, and legendary steeds all have a basic theme: deadly ice and snow shaped and used in various ways. Even their necromancy benefits from their chill-factor, as wights last longer when refrigerated.
- Implacable Man: Stab an Other with conventional weaponry all you want, they’ll just keep getting up again and again (your metal will give out far sooner than they will). Wights will also keep coming unless set alight, though they at least retain damage done to them, even if the body parts cut off of them still move.
- Kryptonite Factor: Dragonglass (or obsidian) and Dragonsteel (which is thought to be Valyrian steel), is the only thing that can harm an Other, according to legend. As it turns out, obsidian has been confirmed to work, while Valyrian steel remains untested. This doesn’t work on wights though.
- Necromancer: The Others raise the dead to act as their army. Jon becomes convinced that the Others can reanimate any corpse they find, whether or not they made it a corpse in the first place.
- No Body Left Behind: When Sam stabs an Other with a dragonglass dagger, the creature's skin and bones melt away into an icy puddle.
- Occult Blue Eyes: The wights raised by the Others gain this even if it wasn’t their natural color in life.
- Our Elves Are Different: As part of their Sidhe similarities. The Others are mysterious, beautiful beings whose motives are incomprehensible to Men, seem almost immortal, and whose women (if the rumors about the Night King's consort are true) can seduce human males.
- Outside-Context Problem: While everyone knows of their legend, in Westeros most people either believe they never existed or they all died out. The Night's Watch are the only group that really knows they exist, but even then they don't have a lot of details about the creatures.
- Real After All: The Others are dismissed by many in Westeros as being mere legend, and to be long gone from the world if they ever existed at all. As it turns out, they're very much real and far from gone, to the intense regret of those who find out.
- Shrouded in Myth: What they are and what they want is still a mystery. Most people they encounter they kill, but apparently they can be reasoned with on some level since Craster is able to keep them at bay by sacrificing his sons to them.
- The Unintelligible: The only time one of them was heard speaking, the noise was described like cracking ice.
- Zombie Apocalypse: During the Long Night thousands of years ago they brought one of these about, and are now currently trying to do it again in Westeros. That people did manage to survive this (however much it sucked) is an interesting fact to keep in mind.
Wights
The Others' primary footsoldiers in their war against life, wights are the corpses of humans and animals transformed into murderous, nearly unkillable undead.
- Animate Body Parts: The severed limbs and heads of wights remain animated independently of their bodies, and continue to wriggle, grasp and bite until burned.
- Burn the Undead: Fire appears to be the only guaranteed method of killing wights once they rise, since even hacked-off limbs will continue attacking. Wildlings traditionally burn their dead to prevent them from rising as wights.
- Creepy Blue Eyes: One of the primary shared traits of wights is that their eyes are bright blue, regardless of what color they had in life.
- Night of the Living Mooks: They serve as the main army that the Others are using in their push southwards.
- Our Wights Are Different: "Wight" is a term used to refer to all corpses reanimated by the Others. They have blue eyes, black hands and can only be killed by fire.
- Raising the Steaks: Animals can be raised the same as humans, and often are. The Others usually ride on wighted horses or elk, and the husks of creatures such as bears are seen as part of wight hordes.
- Who Needs Their Whole Body?: Wights are exceptionally resistant to damage, and will continue to try to move and attack even when missing their legs, their arms, or large chunks of meat and bone.
Other Entities Beyond the Wall
The Three-Eyed Crow
The Three-Eyed Crow
- "Never fear the darkness, Bran. The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother’s milk. Darkness will make you strong."
The mysterious being that haunts Bran Stark's dreams. It sends him and his companions to find it beyond the Wall.
For more information about Bloodraven, see here.
- Age Without Youth: By the time Bran meets him, he is in his mid-120's and looks it. While his life was extended by Children magic and a possible fusion with a tree, Bran thinks he looks more corpse than man.
- Ambiguously Evil: So ambiguous, it's hard to say where he stands even now he's mostly a tree, even after the events in the current series he's triggered. Melisandre most certainly considers him evil, or at least a threat, but she's not exactly in a position to talk.
- Ambiguous Situation: When meeting Bran, he makes a passing mention of a brother whom he loved. Unlike Bittersteel who he hated and Shiera who he desired, who Brynden was referring to is never revealed thus far. One obvious possibility is Daeron II, who he supported against the Blackfyres. But another possibility is ironically Daemon Blackfyre, which would add a layer of tragedy to Brynden considering that he killed Daemon in order to put down the rebellion.
- Arc Words: "Fly".
- Body Horror: Physically, he's little more than a decaying corpse fused with a tree.The sight of him still frightened Bran — the weirwood roots snaking in and out of his withered flesh, the mushrooms sprouting from his cheeks, the white wooden worm that grew from the socket where one eye had been. He liked it better when the torches were put out. In the dark he could pretend that it was the three-eyed crow who whispered to him and not some grisly talking corpse.
- Gambit Roulette: He tells Bran that he's been watching him for a long time, and it's
creepily implied he accomplished this by causing Bran's fall (Bran climbed that fateful wall attracted by ravens) and by sending prophetic dreams along the way. - Humanoid Abomination: His appearance in A Dance with Dragons, having become fused with a weirwood tree beyond the Wall, with roots shooting out of his open eye socket and growing beneath his skin.
- Meaningful Name: Appears in Bran's visions in the form of a raven or crow. As Brynden "Bloodraven" Rivers, he was once Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, whose members are known as crows.
- Rule of Three: It's three eyes. What would you expect from a Targaryen bastard?
- Talking Animal: In Bran's dreams, he appears as a talking three-eyed crow. In reality, he's a... mostly normal human.
- Was Once a Man: He was once Brynden "Bloodraven" Rivers, a bastard son of King Aegon IV. He served under his half-brother Daeron II and nephews Aerys I and Maekar I before being exiled to the Night's Watch by his great-nephew Aegon V for murdering a Blackfyre (who was also yet another of his half-nephews) who arrived in King's Landing under diplomatic safe conduct. There, he rose to the rank of Lord Commander before disappearing beyond the Wall to become the Three-Eyed Crow about 50 years before the series began.
Coldhands
Coldhands
"Let his bones lie undisturbed. We want no seekers coming after us. Swear it, Samwell of the Night's Watch. Swear it for the life you owe me."
"Once the heart has ceased to beat, a man's blood runs down into his extremities, where it thickens and congeals. His hands and feet swell up and turn as black as pudding. The rest of him becomes as white as milk."
Coldhands is a mysterious figure from beyond the Wall, in league with the Three-Eyed Crow and Children of the Forest. He appears to be a ranger from the Wall reanimated as a wight, but is intelligent and seemingly benign.
- Badass Cape: Appears clad in the black cloak and Night's Watch uniform, and may have been one of them in life.
- Big Damn Heroes: He saved Samwell, Gilly and her newborn baby from wights, returning them to The Wall.
- Curbstomp Battle: The Night's Watch traitors seem to have been quite outclassed.
- Dark Is Not Evil: He's quite clearly some kind of grim-mannered, intimidating undead creature, yet he's also a (seemingly) heroic figure helping the heroes of the story.
- The Faceless: His face is almost completely concealed by a scarf and a hood, save some milk white flesh and a pair of black eyes.
- Feathered Fiend: A protective swarm of crows and ravens follows him about. He is seen interacting with the birds when they perch on his shoulder. Likely speaking with the Three Eyed Crow, whose magic may be influencing them. They will viciously attack any hostiles, living or dead, quickly tearing them apart.
- Humanoid Abomination: It's made abundantly clear that, however much he appears so, Coldhands is not human and he hasn't been one for a long time. He needs neither sleep nor food, fears fire, and the intense cold Beyond The Wall doesn't effect him in the slightest. And as Bran and Meera observe, he doesn't even breathe.
- I'm a Humanitarian: It is heavily implied that he butchered the Night's Watch traitors and fed them to Bran and the rest of his starving companions. For his part, Coldhands didn't eat any of it, nor does he clearly need to anymore.
- In the Hood: Wears a hood over his head that helps conceal his face.
- The Marvelous Deer: He rides a great elk. It eventually gives out during the journey to reach the three-eyed crow, and is ultimately butchered and eaten.
- Mysterious Past: Coldhands is dressed in the manner of a Night's Watchman; whether he was related to the order is a matter of speculation. He also looks like a wight, but has sentience and reason unlike them, as well as black eyes instead of blue. It's clear that he is a magical being, and he is somehow bound not to pass neither the threshold south of the Wall nor the cave of the Three-eyed Crow. He also speaks either the ancient Old Tongue or the Children's own language, as evidenced by his prayer before mercy killing his elk. According to Leaf, Coldhands has been dead for a long time, a fact that has opened the Epileptic Trees among the fandom about his true identity. One such theory includes The Night's King of legend. Word of God states he's not Benjen Stark.
- One-Man Army: He can effortlessly fight off large numbers of human or undead attackers at once, including slaughtering the remaining Night's Watch traitors who betrayed Lord Commander Mormont. And he has apparently been operating almost entirely alone in the hostile territory north of the Wall for a very long time.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Suffice to say, 'Coldhands', given to him by Gilly, is not his real name. Whatever it is he isn't saying, even when prompted repeatedly by Meera Reed.
- The Promise: Extracted one very seriously from Samwell Tarly, to not tell anyone about Bran still being alive and Beyond The Wall. He even makes Samwell swear it on 'the life you owe me'.
- Revenant Zombie: Unlike the wights, Coldhands seems fully capable of independent thought and personality.
- Spanner in the Works: What he seems to be to the Others, provided the horn Sam is keeping is the legendary Horn Of Winter. In saving Sam's life and getting him south behind the Wall with the Horn, it means he will have delayed the collapse of the Wall for quite awhile, buying precious time for the heroes to prepare for the Others. Had the Others recovered it from Sam's corpse they could have invaded and destroyed Westeros at any time.
- Was Once a Man: Very likely to be the case with him, that he was killed by the Wights/Others and brought back somehow. According to Leaf's words about him along with his own.
Grumpkins and Snarks
Grumpkins and Snarks
Grumpkins and snarks are creatures from Westerosi folklore and fairy tales which supposedly live beyond the Wall. Nobody believes in them seriously, and nobody ever explains what they are (grumpkins are supposedly little crafty creatures similar to gnomes or goblins, which have magical powers, and snarks are completely mysterious).- The Ghost: If they aren't completely fictional in-universe, then they haven't appeared once.
- Inconsistent Spelling: Grumpkins or grumkins? The book has both variants of spelling.
- No Mere Windmill: So far averted: they are notably the only mythical beings from beyond the Wall which stay mythical.
- Shout-Out: Snarks, along with their principal quality of indescribability, are obviously derived from Lewis Carroll's humorous poem The Hunting of the Snark.
