The Old Way is a term used by the ironborn when discussing their ancient tradition of reaving and plunder.
Customs
[edit]Plunder
[edit]
In the Old Way, only women were allowed to buy ornaments (e.g. jewelry), whereas warriors were only allowed to wear the jewelry if they had paid the iron price for it, i.e. if they had acquired it from the corpses of enemies they had slain himself.[1]
Labor
[edit]Under the Old Way, farming and mining are derided as unsuitable for free men, but fishing is respected.[2]
Military
[edit]Under the Old Way, the ironborn lived by the axe[1] and the sword.[3] Under the Old Way, the usage of catapults and siege engines, with the goal of starving a castle out, was considered to be without glory.[3]
Execution
[edit]The Old Way dictated that a captive would have to be executed by giving him to the Drowned God, thus drowning him in salt water.[3]
Thralldom
[edit]
The Old Way allowed the ironborn to capture men and women on their raids, bringing them back to the Iron Islands. These captive thralls[3] were put to work on the isles, serving as farmers and miners. Captured women served as scullions, cooks, seamstresses, weavers, and midwives, and the prettier and younger women became serving girls, whores, household drudges, or wives to other thralls.[2]
While thralls are made to perform labor on the Iron Islands for those by whom they have been captured,[2] they are not considered to be slaves. Taking slaves is not considered to be the Old Way.[4]
Salt wives
[edit]The fairest, strongest, and most nubile captured women became salt wives,[2] marrying ironmen in a ceremony preformed by a priest of the Drowned God.[1][2] A man can join himself to multiple salt wives, the number of which speaks to his power, wealth, and virility.[2] The children born from such a marriage are not considered to be bastards, but can inherit should their father have no surviving sons by his true, freeborn rock wife from the Iron Islands.[2]
Medicine
[edit]Healing a person's wounds the Old Way meant healing the wound with fire and seawater.[5]
History
[edit]
Under the Old Way, many a kingsmoot was held to elect the High King of the Iron Islands.[5]
During his Conquest, Aegon the Conqueror pacified the ironborn and outlawed the custom, at least within the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, as the ironmen were allowed to prey on the shipping and settlements of the Free Cities and faraway places. Those that continue to act in such a manner are said to be keeping to the Old Way.[6]
Stealing women was made a crime throughout the Seven Kingdoms by Aegon, and reavers were forbidden to prey upon the king's domains, although these prohibitions have only been sporadically enforced by Aegon's successors.[2] Thralls are still present on the Iron Islands today.[1] Regardless, following the acquisition of primacy on the Iron Islands, the lords of House Greyjoy did not allow reaving close to home.[7]
Dagon Greyjoy[8] attempted to restore the Old Way to the islands, but he was eventually defeated by House Targaryen.[8] Balon Greyjoy tried the same with Greyjoy's Rebellion, but he was subdued by King Robert I Baratheon.[1]
Recent Events
[edit]A Clash of Kings
[edit]During the War of the Five Kings, Lord Balon Greyjoy attacks the north and declares himself King of the Isles and the North.[9]
A Feast for Crows
[edit]After being chosen to succeed the late King Balon through the kingsmoot on Old Wyk, Euron Greyjoy attacks the Reach.[4][10]
A Dance with Dragons
[edit]Victarion Greyjoy plots against his brother Euron.[8]
Quotes
[edit]When we still kept the Old Way, lived by the axe instead of the pick, taking what we would, be it wealth, women, or glory. In those days, the ironborn did not work mines; that was labor for the captives brought back from the hostings, and so too the sorry business of farming and tending goats and sheep. War was an ironman's proper trade. The Drowned God had made them to reave and rape, to carve out kingdoms and write their names in fire and blood and song.[1]
—thoughts of Theon Greyjoy
In the Old Way, women might decorate themselves with ornaments bought with coin, but a warrior wore only the jewelry he took off the corpses of enemies slain by his own hand. Paying the iron price, it was called.[1]
—thoughts of Theon Greyjoy
Yet in the dawn of days the ironborn chose their own kings, raising up the worthiest amongst them. It is time we returned to the Old Way, for only that shall make us great again.[5]
The Old Way served the isles well when we were one small kingdom amongst many, but Aegon's Conquest put an end to that. Balon refused to see what was plain before him. The Old Way died with Black Harren and his sons.[11]
My brother Balon was a great man, but I shall do what he could not. The Iron Islands shall be free again, and the Old Way will return. Even Dagon could not do that.[8]
—Victarion Greyjoy to the dusky woman
References
[edit]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 A Clash of Kings, Chapter 11, Theon I.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 The World of Ice & Fire, The Iron Islands.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 A Clash of Kings, Chapter 37, Theon III.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 A Feast for Crows, Chapter 29, The Reaver.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 A Feast for Crows, Chapter 1, The Prophet.
- ↑ A Clash of Kings, Chapter 24, Theon II.
- ↑ The World of Ice & Fire, The Iron Islands: The Greyjoys of Pyke.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 63, Victarion I.
- ↑ A Clash of Kings, Chapter 49, Tyrion XI.
- ↑ A Feast for Crows, Chapter 45, Samwell V.
- ↑ A Feast for Crows, Chapter 11, The Kraken's Daughter.