The First Men
Some twelve thousand years before the Conquest, men crossed into Westeros from the east over the Arm of Dorne, which was then a bridge of land. They came with horses, bronze swords and axes, and shields of leather. They cleared the land, and in clearing it they cut down the weirwoods, and the children of the forest went to war with them.
The war was long. The children are said to have broken the Arm of Dorne with the hammer of the waters to keep more men from coming. At last the two made the Pact on the Isle of Faces: the First Men took the open lands, the children kept the deep forest, and in time the First Men took up the children’s gods.
The Andals came later and broke the First Men’s kingdoms one by one, everywhere but the North. There the old blood still runs in nearly every house, the old gods are still kept, and the dead still go into barrows and into crypts beneath the castles. The First Men left no books. They cut their runes into stone.
Read next
The Old Gods
The nameless gods of stone, stream and tree, first kept by the children of the forest and still kept in the North.
Barrowton
A timber-walled town around the Great Barrow, where the First King of the First Men is said to lie.
Moat Cailin
The ruined stronghold of the First Men where the Neck opens into the North; three towers still hold the causeway.
The Long Night
A winter that lasted a generation, some eight thousand years ago, when the Others came out of the dark.