Hardhome

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Hardhome
Town ruins
Westeros - Byound the wall.jpg
Map - Click to zoom
Location Westeros, Beyond the Wall
Destroyed 600 years ago.

Hardhome is a ruined free folk settlement that lies north beyond the Wall. It is on the tip of the peninsula Storrold's Point on the Shivering Sea.[1]

About

Hardhome sits on a sheltered bay and has natural harbour deep enough for the biggest ships afloat. Wood and stone are plentiful near there. The waters teem with fish, and there are colonies of seals and sea cows close at hand. A great cliff looms above the settlement, pocked with cave mouths.

Nowadays there is no shelter there for people but for the caves, dubbed the screaming caves by the men of the Night's Watch.

History

Hardhome was close to becoming the only true town north of the Wall, until the night 600 years ago (about 300 years before Aegon's Landing) when hell had swallowed it.[2] Something terrible happened that night; what exactly is uncertain. Its people are said to have been carried off into slavery or slaughtered for meat, depending on the tale one chooses believe.

The homes of the inhabitants of Hardhome were said to have burned with flames so high and hot that the watchers on the Wall far to the south thought that the sun was rising in from the north. Afterwards, ashes rained down on the haunted forest and the Shivering Sea alike for almost half a year.

Traders reported only nightmarish devastation where Hardhome had stood, a landscape of charred trees and burned bones, waters choked with swollen corpses and blood-chilling shrieks echoing from the cave mouths that pock the great cliff that looms above the settlement.

After that Hardhome was shunned. The wildlings never settled the site again, and rangers roaming north of the Wall told tales of the overgrown ruins of Hardhome being haunted by ghouls, demons, and burning ghosts with an unhealthy taste for blood.

Recent Events

A Dance with Dragons

Mother Mole leads thousands of free folk or wildlings to Hardhome after Mance Rayder's force trying to get south of the Wall is defeated by Stannis Baratheon and the Night's Watch in the Battle of Castle Black. Mother Mole preaches to the free folk that they will find salvation where they once found damnation and she had a vision of ships coming to Hardhome to sail them south.[3]

Melisandre may have seen a vision of Hardhome when she looks into the fire in her chambers at Castle Black:

Snowflakes swirled from a dark sky and ashes rose to meet them, the grey and the white whirling around each other as flaming arrows arced above a wooden wall and dead things shambled silent through the cold, beneath a great grey cliff where fires burned inside a hundred caves. Then the wind rose and the white mist came sweeping in, impossibly cold, and one by one the fires went out. Afterward only the skulls remained.[4]

Lord Commander Jon Snow sends Cotter Pyke with eleven ships from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea to bring the wildlings south from Hardhome. Many ships are wrecked by storms during the voyage. When Cotter arrives at Hardhome with six ships left, the situation has grown very bad. Wildings are eating their own dead and there are presumably wights in the forest and in the sea. Slavers have already taken some of the wildlings to Braavos, and the wildlings try to take Storm Crow by force which costs Cotter six of his crew. Cotter sends a raven to plead for help via land from Jon, since traveling by the sea is far too dangerous.[2]

In Braavos, Arya Stark tells the Kindly Man that she knows why the Sealord seized the Goodheart and that the slaves on the ship are wildlings from Hardhome. She tells him that it is an old ruined place, accursed. Arya remembers Old Nan’s tales of Hardhome.

While Selyse Florent and Bowen Marsh advocate letting those at Hardhome die, Jon intends to lead a ranging by land. After Jon receives a letter, Tormund instead receives command of the planned ranging.[5]

Quotes

Hardhome is an unholy place, it’s said. Cursed.[2]

- Othell Yarwyck to Jon Snow


References and Notes