#rosesandrenaissance

[joannalannister]

I'm not sure who to ask this question, and I tried Googling, but came up with no answers. Why is it that iron is so prominent in ASoIaF? There's the Iron Throne, Iron Islands, Ironborn, Iron Price, Iron Bank, Ironwood, etc. So just curious why that's the element GRRM chose to use/focus on so much. BTW, I love all your lovely blogs! 😊

Thank you so much! I love these kinds of questions! We would probably have to ask GRRM to know for sure why iron inspired him in ASOIAF, but we can speculate!

Iron features prominently in folklore, including in-world westerosi folklore: “A child’s rhyme echoed in his head. Oak and iron, guard me well, or else I’m dead, and doomed to hell.” Interestingly, this rhyme is not invoked by any highborn POV, only by Dunk. And Davos remembers something similar: “A knife in the heart, though…even demons can be killed by cold iron, the singers say.” Even lowborn Will of the Night’s Watch, from the AGOT prologue, takes comfort in cold iron.

Perhaps it’s only a smallfolk superstition, but I’m inclined to believe the smallfolk remember a truth the nobility have forgotten. Whether they remember or not, lords often build their gates and doors of oak and iron. For example, one enters the Great Hall of Winterfell by “wide oak-and-iron doors,” big enough to ride a horse through. More importantly, Winterfell is guarded by “massive oak-and-iron gates” though by the end of ACOK they’re hanging “charred and askew”. Combine this with @racefortheironthrone​‘s idea that Winterfell was built as an engine to fight the Others, and I think GRRM’s grand design might be getting a little clearer. All the stuff listed here is going to be important in the War for the Dawn:

“Winterfell…grey granite, oak and iron, crows wheeling around the towers, steam rising off the hot pools in the godswood, the stone kings sitting on their thrones…how could Winterfell be gone?” 

Winterfell isn’t gone. Just dormant. 

Winterfell lies dreaming, waiting to be reborn in oak and iron and granite. There’s magic in Winterfell’s walls. (More about Winterfell here.) 

I know you didn’t ask this part, but I think we need to explore the question of “Why oak?” before we tackle “Why iron?” Oak trees represent strength and steadfastness, endurance and long life. The oak is considered a holy tree, closely associated with pagan gods of Northern Europe, and GRRM is aware of this association. In King’s Landing, “The heart tree was an oak, brown and faceless, yet Ned Stark still felt the presence of his gods.” The Ghost of High Heart also associates oak with the old gods. 

“Oak-trees have always been regarded as great protectors and guardians of the virtuous.” A fitting tree for Duncan the Tall to be invoking. Arya herself is called an oak tree. The oak has a duality to it, with “deep roots [that] penetrate as deep into the Underworld as its branches soar to the sky.”  

“The Sanskrit word, ‘Duir’, gave rise both to the word for oak and the English word ‘door’, which suggests that this tree stands as an opening into greater wisdom, perhaps an entryway into the otherworld itself.” [x]

I don’t know if there will be a connection between oak and the Others, or if oak is just symbolically important in the War for the Dawn, but it will be interesting to find out. 

“Of all the trees in Britain and Ireland the oak is considered king” and we know what GRRM thinks of kings: “a king protects his people, or he is no king at all.” Oaks are a popular fantasy element. C.S. Lewis used oaks and other trees to fight alongside the Narnians in Prince Caspian and of course Tolkien had the Ents, some of which resembled oaks. I don’t think GRRM’s trees are going to get up and start walking around, but I think ASOIAF themes support the idea that even the trees oppose those who would seek dominion over you. The Others are certainly seeking dominion over the earth. The walls of Winterfell are going to fight against them, oak and iron and granite, and protect people. 

So, what about iron? Because you’re completely right to pick up on the iron motif. GRRM references iron from the very beginning. In the prologue of AGOT, when Wymar Royce battles the Other while Will climbs a tree (not an oak but something GRRM calls a sentinel … which is not a real type of tree but GRRM’s own fantasy brand of evergreen) … Will is mentioned to have “cold iron”. 

He whispered a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort.

He’s unwittingly invoking oak and iron. And remember, the Others leave Will to be killed by wight!Wymar. Could the Others have killed Will? Did Will’s iron make any difference? idk, GRRM isn’t saying, but I hope we get more definitive information in future books. “Cold iron” in literature has historically meant any weapon designed to draw blood, but I don’t know if GRRM is making a distinction between iron and steel. 

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ASIDE: What is the difference between iron and steel? I didn’t know so I had to look it up: 

Steel is a mixture of several metals (this is called an alloy) but most of it is iron and often some carbon. Steel is harder and stronger than iron. Steels are often iron alloys with between 0.02% and 1.7% percent carbon by weight. Alloys with more carbon than this are known as cast iron. Steel is different from wrought iron, that has little or no carbon.

Something made of pure iron is softer than steel because the atoms can slip over one another. If other atoms like carbon are added, they are different from iron atoms and stop the iron atoms from sliding apart so easily. This makes the steel stronger and harder.

Changing the amount of carbon added to steel will change its properties:

Hardness

How easily it bends

Ductility: can it be made into thin wires

Strength

Is it magnetic

Will it rust (or corrode)

Steel with more carbon is harder and stronger than pure iron, but it also breaks more easily (brittle).

Iron is an element and a metal. It is the second most common metal on Earth, and the most widely-used metal. It makes up much of the Earth’s core, and is the fourth most common element in the Earth’s crust.

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I’m out of my depth here, but I would like a chemist or metallurgist to discuss the potential carbon-content of Valyrian steel and relate that to the fact that all known life on Earth (and probably Terros - with the exception of the Others, probably) is carbon-based, and then tie that into ASOIAF’s life-affirming themes in the War for the Dawn. 

something something carbon as a life force in the Valyrian steel being anathema to the Others something something steel made with human blood sacrifice something something…

Has someone already written an essay about this? If so, please link me. 

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In the meantime, we can consider iron in folklore. Iron is believed to repel fairies. GRRM has said that the Others are like “the Sidhe made of ice” and the Sidhe are the fairy folk of Ireland. So when Westerosi invoke “oak and iron" to guard them, I think this is a remnant of the cultural memory of the Long Night. (I’ve talked about the Others here and in my tag for #the Others.)

(There are other scraps of cultural memory that recall the Others. For example, in TSS, Egg hears vicious rumors about Rohanne Webber from the smallfolk:

“Four,” said Egg, “but no children. Whenever she gives birth, a demon comes by night to carry off the issue. Sam Stoops’ wife says she sold her babes unborn to the Lord of the Seven Hells, so he’d teach her his black arts.”

Obviously these rumors about Rohanne were not true, but demons coming by night to carry off babies is eerily similar to the deal Craster has with the Others in exchange for protection.) 

What’s special about iron? Pliny the Elder, who lived in the first century, believed that iron could protect and heal people, and some of these ideas persisted well into the 20th century. 

I don’t know if the potential magnetism of iron is important but idk, the heroes probably have to go to the North pole, that might be important. 

Also, “iron can attract and conduct electricity, focus and release it, store it as magnetic energy, or disperse it by returning it to the earth. Iron can change form. It can be made molten, fluid, and malleable, and then set into unbending forms of our design.” Considering that ASOIAF is about rebirth and duality and transformation and shapeshifting (please see this post about Tyrion - please click), iron is thematically important to ASOIAF, to our malleability, our rebirth. 

Victorians believed that the first iron found was in meteorites. “Of course, even today, iron still seems magical in many respects. It is the most plentiful metal in the universe. All iron was initially forged in the hearts of stars, and only gifted to the cosmos when they exploded in supernovae. This stardust is in each of us; it is what makes our blood red.”

Consider:

Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. 

The Daynes of Starfall are one of the most ancient houses in the Seven Kingdoms, though their fame largely rests on their ancestral sword, called Dawn, and the men who wielded it. Its origins are lost to legend, but it seems likely that the Daynes have carried it for thousands of years. Those who have had the honor of examining it say it looks like no Valyrian steel they know, being pale as milkglass but in all other respects it seems to share the properties of Valyrian blades, being incredibly strong and sharp.

The iron content in Dawn is probably important. 

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(GRRM has said that, while the Daynes share the violet eyes of the Targs, they’re not the same ancestry. I’m guessing that Dawn and Valyrian steel are like that too, parallel in their formation but different. (There is a term for parallel evolution in biology but from completely different ancestors. Biologists, help me out!))

EDIT: @victorvontooms supplied the term I was looking for: convergent evolution. That’s how I think of Daynes vs Targs and Dawn vs Valyrian steel, both made to fight the Others but forged completely differently.

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Also, Tyrion tells us:

Dragonbone is black because of its high iron content

(No one shows the dragon bone in ASOIAF as black!! But it is!! Dragonbone is black!!! 

^^Detail of art I commissioned from @bidonica, showing the dragonbone as black!! Will I ever stop screaming about this? No!! It’s my desktop, it’s so important to me!!! Not that I ever see my desktop through my tab forest but it’s the principle of the thing…)

Anyways, “Dragonbone is black because of its high iron content”. If that doesn’t set off the Others’ alarm bells, it should. I really think the Others dislike iron, not just Valyrian steel, and we have these giant high-iron content, fire-breathing beasts coming for them. 

In terms of the setting, I think GRRM might be invoking a lot of iron imagery to suggest humanity’s Iron Age, a period that extended into the early Middle Ages in Northern Europe. All this iron carries connotations of a time long, long ago.

TV tropes actually has a great little article on cold iron, suggesting that iron is part of some magic vs technology symbolism.

The Iron Age is generally understood as the period during which the technology to make iron items — particularly weapons — spread from the Hallstatt culture in western and eastern Europe during the 8th century BCE. […]

Clearly, the peoples of this extended period did not one night go to sleep in the Bronze Age and awaken the next morning in the Iron Age. There were considerable overlaps as the technology of iron developed and travelled throughout the European continent by way of trade. This also appears to coincide with a violent period of history, with hill forts springing up all across the British Isles, particularly in the southern regions. […]

The Britons had a reputation for being small in stature yet fierce warriors, and possibly adept at magic. They seemed to be able to appear and vanish at will from among the trees of the forests and among the hills. According to some early Roman accounts, the Britons would spike their hair with white lime and cover their bodies in swirling patterns of blue woad for battle, possibly to enable them to vanish into the pattern of clouds in the sky or reflected on the surface of lakes. This resulted in a belief that they could appear out of thin air and make their getaways via ‘portals’ in lakes and rivers. Some have suggested that this is where the myth of the fairy folk began. These ‘fairy folk’ who used ‘magical’ tactics were armed with bronze, which was no match for the iron blades of the invaders. Therefore, iron became known as the enemy of the ‘fairy folk.’ [x]

I’m not sure that the magic vs technology war applies to ASOIAF (idk maybe it does!) but what I would say applies to ASOIAF is a war between the Old Way and the New, obviously a reference to Ironborn culture, but something I think applies much more broadly to ASOIAF as a whole. 

Right now in ASOIAF there is a war between the Old Way of doing things by dehumanization, led by men like Tywin and Randyll and Roose, and the New Way of doing things by valuing people’s humanity, spearheaded by people like Jon and Dany and Brienne. 

So people paying the iron price in blood, sitting the iron throne … I think that’s all representative of the Old Way, something outdated and tired and without forward motion or progress. Something that is (hopefully) on its way out. 

Just as the early Britons’ bronze swords yielded to iron, I think we’re witnessing in ASOIAF the iron Old Way (metaphorically) yielding to … I don’t know yet…kindness? valyrian steel? idk, ask me when the books are done. 

Whatever it is, we have to be careful. Iron can be a force of good (repelling the Others), but it can be terrible too. We have to be careful. Because the iron is in our blood. The potential to dehumanize is inside all of us; as Professor Moody would say, “Constant vigilance!” Or as GRRM might say, the war is inside us. We’re all capable of great acts, and terrible ones. We have to choose. And we have to be careful. 

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“There are more esoteric explanations, like iron being seen as the lifeforce of the earth, or associated with lifeforce because blood smells like iron.“

“All iron was initially forged in the hearts of stars, and only gifted to the cosmos when they exploded in supernovae. This stardust is in each of us; it is what makes our blood red.”

The War for the Dawn is a war between life and death … a war between life and something worse than death. 

It’s a war for our humanity, it’s a war for the earth itself. It’s a war for our flesh and blood and bone. 

I said … way up above now … I said the trees are fighting for us against the Others’ dominion. Not the way Tolkien’s trees fight, but still they’re fighting. 

GRRM likes to trick casual readers into thinking his world is nihilistic … but deep down, it’s not. The Magic wouldn’t have saved Daenerys from the flames if it was truly uncaring. 

In this war, (almost) everyone’s pulling for us, I think. We’re all in this together. The weirwoods and the ravens and the Children of the Forest and all the elements of life, all the way down to the iron in our blood … it’s all rooting for us. Winterfell is rooting for us, with its fires deep within the earth and its life-giving waters rushing through its walls “like blood through a man’s body” and the earth is rooting for us, lending us its lifeforce of iron to oppose the Others. 

But we have to stand. We have to fight for it. 

*****

So there’s lots of possibilities right now in terms of what Iron means as a motif. Ask me again when we have more books and maybe I can talk more. 

PS - I think those bankers are gonna fuck people over in twow. Watch out for them. This might be my Lannister bias tho. 

EDITED TO ADD: 

@essayofthoughts replied to your post:

Iron swords were the first really meaningful weapons (bronze dulled too quickly) and would sometimes by ritually broken and sacrificed due to their value. An iron or steel sword that has been used and let get rusty, when polished will “bleed” the bloodiron back out. 

Oak and Yew have significance as life/death dichotomies in tree folklore. Without English Oak the British Empire and Navy wouldn’t have happened. Oak mistletoe is sacred bc Oak as a hardwood would almost never grows mistletoe, also ties into its status as kings of the forest. Oak once cut and aged is one of the hardest woods out there and even a modern steel knife can’t easily cut aged oak (speaking from experience; my home is made with century old oak beams). Oak also ties to dryads and hamadryads - life from trees in myth -and technically all dryads are of oaks. idk why but the dryads thing makes me think of the children of the forest

@nobodysuspectsthebutterfly replied to your post:

re the first war against the Others– the First Men didn’t have iron as such, they were bronze users. Iron and steel only came to Westeros in sufficiency with the Andals. (Possible proof of the theory that Ironborn are not First Men, but from somewhere else? As their islands are a great source of ore.) What little iron the First Men had was rare and treasured, almost magic to them probably. See Jon’s description of similar among the wildlings today (including the bronze-working Thenns).

Think of the First Men fighting the Others with their bronze, failing. Except for the few who have help from the CotF and are using dragonglass too. And the very few with their rare iron, they must have considered it magic– no wonder it became part of a crown! And then the Last Hero somehow got a sword of dragonsteel– even more magic–and saved the world.

Though interestingly the Others may hate cold iron, but it can’t kill them. See them checking out Waymar Royce’s sword before approaching him, it’s only regular steel. Iron defends, but dragonsteel, Valyrian steel, that’s the game-changer.