Waking Wun Wun

 Of the giants beyond the Wall in A Song of Ice and Fire, Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun is the most heavily featured. After being found at the weirwood grove of nine, the giant also called Wun Wun comes to live in a tower at Castle Black by the end of A Dance with Dragons.

The imagery used around the giants is very evocative, and it can help highlight some of the subtext in their depiction. There are two occasions when people attempt to sneak up and cut Wun Wun, which could be read as comments on the legitimacy of Tormund’s “giant’s babe” story:

“So I found me a sleeping giant, cut open her belly, and crawled up right inside her.”
A Storm of Swords, Jon II

 

Jon and Wun Wun by Marc Fisher

 

The Weirwood Grove of Nine

 

We first meet the giant Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun when Lord Commander Jon Snow takes a party of new recruits to say their vows before the weirwood trees in the grove of nine.

A few moments later Tom [Barleycorn] was there. "Wildlings," he told Jon, softly. "In the grove."

Jon brought the riders to a halt. "How many?"

"I counted nine. No guards. Some dead, might be, or sleeping. Most look to be women. One child, but there's a giant too. Just the one that I saw.”
A Dance with Dragons, Jon VII

There are nine “wildlings”, free folk, at the weirwood grove of nine, and one giant.

Ahead he glimpsed a pale white trunk that could only be a weirwood, crowned with a head of dark red leaves… The weirwoods rose in a circle around the edges of the clearing. There were nine, all roughly of the same age and size.
A Dance with Dragons, Jon VII

There are nine weirwoods, but at first Jon only sees one, like the one giant rather than the nine free folk. There is a symbolic association between weirwoods and giants that we will see recur.

"Spread out and form a crescent. I want to close in on the grove from three sides. Keep the men to your right and left in sight, so the gaps do not widen. The snow should muffle our steps. Less chance of blood if we take them unawares."
A Dance with Dragons, Jon VII

They plan to approach the free folk as quietly as they can. Will they wake the sleeping giant?

Jon Snow reached back and pulled Longclaw from his sheath. He looked to right and left, gave Satin and Horse a nod, watched them pass it on to the men beyond. They rushed the grove together, kicking through drifts of old snow with no sound but their breathing. Ghost ran with them, a white shadow at Jon's side.

The fire in the center of the grove was a small sad thing, ashes and embers and a few broken branches burning slow and smoky. Even then, it had more life than the wildlings huddled near it. Only one of them reacted when Jon stepped from the brush. That was the child, who began to wail, clutching at his mother's ragged cloak. The woman raised her eyes and gasped. By then the grove was ringed by rangers, sliding past the bone-white trees, steel glinting in black-gloved hands, poised for slaughter.

The giant was the last to notice them. He had been asleep, curled up by the fire, but something woke him—the child's cry, the sound of snow crunching beneath black boots, a sudden indrawn breath. 
A Dance with Dragons, Jon VII

Here we are given three sounds that might have woken the giant. Jon thought they were making no sound but their breathing, and a gasp is not very loud. If one of these sounds woke Wun Wun I’d guess it was the child’s cry.

When he stirred it was as if a boulder had come to life.
A Dance with Dragons, Jon VII

This line reminds me of the trolls in ‘The Hobbit’ that turn to stone in daylight. It's also reminiscent of the legend of the Horn of Winter:

And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter, and woke giants from the earth.
A Storm of Swords, Jon II, A Dance with Dragons, Jon III, & A Dance with Dragons, Jon XIII

And when you consider the Night’s Watch vows, it only makes sense they would be the ones to wake the giant up:

I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men.
A Clash of Kings, Jon VIII

Let's go back to the waking giant:

He heaved himself into a sitting position with a snort, pawing at his eyes with hands as big as hams to rub the sleep away … until he saw Iron Emmett, his sword shining in his hand. Roaring, he came leaping to his feet, and one of those huge hands closed around a maul and jerked it up.
A Dance with Dragons, Jon VII

Wun Wun slept through the Night’s Watch’s approach and noticed them later than the humans, but he did wake up, and as soon as he saw Iron Emmett with a knife, he was on his feet and roaring.

Perhaps it was the smell that woke him; giants seem to have a strong sense of smell:

Rats' eyes no larger than beads were almost lost within folds of horny flesh, but they snuffled constantly, smelling as much as they saw.
A Storm of Swords, Jon II

The giants have that in common with Ghost. Through Ghost’s nose, Jon can smell his black brothers:

Jon smelled Tom Barleycorn before he saw him. Or was it Ghost who smelled him? Of late, Jon Snow sometimes felt as if he and the direwolf were one, even awake… He could smell Horse's unwashed breeches, the sweet scent Satin combed into his beard.
A Dance with Dragons, Jon VII

Whatever it was that woke him, Wun Wun is awake now and roaring.

The giant bellowed again, a sound that shook the leaves in the trees…
A Dance with Dragons, Jon VII

Shaking the leaves in the trees reminds us of how the Old Gods communicate through the weirwood trees. Osha explains this to Bran by the weirwood heart tree in the Winterfell godswood:

"Tell me what you meant, about hearing the gods."

Osha studied him. "You asked them and they're answering. Open your ears, listen, you'll hear."

Bran listened. "It's only the wind," he said after a moment, uncertain. "The leaves are rustling."

"Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?... They see you, boy. They hear you talking. That rustling, that's them talking back."
A Game of Thrones, Bran VI

Shaking the leaves of weirwood trees with wind is how the gods talk, and the giant’s bellow shakes the leaves of the trees in a weirwood grove. Giants are associated in a symbolic way with the Old Gods of the weirwood trees.

[The giant] slammed his maul against the ground. The shaft of it was six feet of gnarled oak, the head a stone as big as a loaf of bread. The impact made the ground shake.
A Dance with Dragons, Jon VII

The long wooden part of a maul is actually called a handle, but the author chooses the word “shaft” alongside “head” and “gnarled oak” to evoke a ‘giant’ morning erection – Wun Wun has just woken up.

Comparing the head of the maul to a loaf of bread reminds me of the giant’s rhyme from the folk story, ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’: “be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread”.

Most obviously, though, the oak-handled maul against the ground is like an oak tree. This is taken even further when Jon later dreams of giants.

That night he dreamt of wildlings howling from the woods, advancing to the moan of warhorns and the roll of drums... Giants lumbered amongst them, forty feet tall, with mauls the size of oak trees.
A Dance with Dragons, Jon XII

The mauls in the dream not only resemble oak trees, they are the size of them too.

Eddard Stark had taken the girls to the castle godswood, an acre of elm and alder and black cottonwood overlooking the river. The heart tree there was a great oak, its ancient limbs overgrown with smokeberry vines; they knelt before it to offer their thanksgiving, as if it had been a weirwood.
A Game of Thrones, Eddard V

There’s an oak tree in place of a weirwood as a heart tree in the Red Keep godswood. Giants, weirwoods, and oak trees all share a symbolic association.

 

Hardin’s Tower  

 

The Night’s Watch are able to calm Wun Wun down, and bring him back to Castle Black with them:

Wun Wun gaped at [Patchface] with fascination, but when the giant reached for him the fool hopped back away, jingling. "Oh no, oh no, oh no." That brought Wun Wun lurching to his feet. The queen grabbed hold of Princess Shireen and pulled her back, her knights reached for their swords… the boldest of the queen's knights moved forward, steel in hand. Jon raised an arm to block his path. "You do not want to anger him. Sheathe your steel, ser.”
A Dance with Dragons, Jon IX

After seeing Wun Wun’s reaction to Iron Emmett's knife in the grove, Jon is rightly concerned about sharp blades being drawn around the giant.

“Perhaps m'lord could send out some wine to warm us?"

"For you. Not him." Wun Wun had never tasted wine until he came to Castle Black, but once he had, he had taken a gigantic liking to it. Too much a liking. Jon had enough to contend with just now without adding a drunken giant to the mix.
A Dance with Dragons, Jon IX

Jon tells Leathers not to give Wun Wun any, but we know the giant likes to drink wine.

My own men guard Hardin's Tower, not the queen's. And Wun Wun sleeps in the entry hall."
A Dance with Dragons, Jon XI

Wun Wun sleeps in Hardin’s Tower. He was probably sleeping when he was attacked:

The screaming had stopped by the time they came to Hardin's Tower, but Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun was still roaring. The giant was dangling a bloody corpse by one leg... The dead man's sword arm was yards away, the snow beneath it turning red.

"Let him go," Jon shouted. "Wun Wun, let him go."

Wun Wun did not hear or did not understand. The giant was bleeding himself, with sword cuts on his belly and his arm. He swung the dead knight against the grey stone of the tower, again and again and again, until the man's head was red and pulpy as a summer melon.
A Dance with Dragons, Jon XIII

Somebody was able to sneak up on Wun Wun, likely while he was sleeping, possibly drunk on wine, and cut him on his sword and belly. But the giant woke up and reacted violently, easily smashing the knight’s head to a pulp.

After reviewing two attempts to sneak up and cut Wun Wun while he slept, we have seen that it might be easier to sneak up on a giant than a human, especially if you don't have a prominent scent. It might even be possible to cut the giant before waking them up, especially if the giant is drunk or sleeping. However, the giant will wake up and start smashing. Climbing inside the giant's still breathing body to keep warm during the winter does not seem to be possible. Based on these scenes, the author seems to be illustrating that it is not possible to sneak up on a living giant, slice them open, and climb inside without waking and angering them. Thus, the evidence in the text shows Tormund's “giants babe” story can't be the full truth.

There also appears to be symbolic connections between giants and weirwoods in the narrative, that may also link to the Old Gods, oak trees, and a metaphorical erection.

In future articles I will further examine Tormund’s surreal origin stories, and try to piece together their meaning.

How magic are the children of Garth?

A scene from my dream by TomTC | CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

The history of the world of ASOIAF describes several legendary figures presented as the founders of noble families, particularly in the Reach, that are said to be the children of Garth Greenhand, a fertility god. While we should expect the stories as presented might be misconstruing the cultural memory of these figures, I think by comparing the magic described to things we have seen happen in the main story, we can speculate on what else it implies about the world.

Garth the Gardener
Despite the father allegedly being a god, there doesn’t seem to be any claims that his namesake son had any supernatural abilities.

❌ Not magic

John the Oak
Apparently his mother was a giantess, and he was somewhere between 8 and 12 feet tall. If the giantess thing is not true, the fact that he is supertall could be due to magic, but no active abilities cited.

❌ Not magic

Gilbert of the Vines
Knew how to make wine. Cool. I don't believe we have had any examples of magic that can make plants more fruitful in the present day story. This seems like maybe agricultural knowledge passed down from “Garth Greenhand", not magic.

❌ Not magic

Brandon of the Bloody Blade
We want to believe that as a Stark ancestor, this guy was a warg, but there is no evidence for that in the text.
    
❌ Not magic

Foss the Archer
Really good at shooting arrows. Possibly just well-practised. It seems like a William Tell reference, and William Tell was talented, not magic.

❌ Not magic

Owen Oakenshield
Drove selkies and merlings off of the Shield Islands. He's a warrior, but nothing about magic powers.

❌ Not magic

Harlon the Hunter and Herndon of the Horn
These lads were said to live an extraordinarily long time, but only if they both fuck their woodswitch wife under a full moon [like, one after the other? Or… nevermind, forget I asked]. We have seen Melisandre apparently take some of Stannis's lifeforce to birth the shadow baby, he seems older and drained because of it. We also see a kiss being used to magically bring people back from the dead with Berrick Dondarion and Lady Stoneheart. So there does seem to be some sexy magic, it's not too much of a stretch to believe this story is fairly accurate.

But what it shows is the lads apparently did not have extraordinary abilities of their own, and it was the lady's witchcraft that kept them alive.

❌ Not magic

Bors the Breaker
Drank nothing but bull's blood, gained the strength of 20 men, grew black horns.

The horns are interesting; Old Nan describes green men having antlers.

The idea of eating something to consume its power is present in the story: Danelle Lothston, Daenerys eating a horse heart, Bran (probably) eating Jojen.

Whatever is the case with Bors, it seems if he had magical abilities at all, he needed to drink blood to activate them.

⏺️ Maybe magic, but needs sacrifices

Rose of Red Lake
A skinchanger who can transform into a crane. We know from hearing other tales of skinchangers that turn into animals and seeing them in action, that they don’t actually transform, it’s more like a psychic possession. But yeah, this sounds like real magic of the kind we’ve seen in the present / main story.

✅ Could be magic

 

Interesting to note that it is some women of Rose's descendants, House Crane, who are rumoured to be able to skinchange cranes too.

Ellyn Ever Sweet
Sought the King of the Bees in his vast mountain hive and made pact with him, to care for his children and his children's children for all time, becoming the first beekeeper.

Firstly, this whole story is a reference to Hittie mother goddess Ḫannaḫanna, who speaks to bees in myths like the Vanishing of Telipinu.

While it’s possible to interpret this as just “she knew how to do beekeeping” in the same way I have suggested with Gilbert of the Vines and wine, the specifics of the story hint at another possibility:

A beehive couldn't really be considered a "vast mountain" unless you're looking at it from a bee's perspective. The tale does seem to imply communicating with these bees is what tamed them, so it's possible that Ellyn was skinchanging into the bees.

✅ Could be magic

It's also worth noting she is said to meet the King of the Bees. Honey bees don't have a King, they have a Queen. I think this was put in to remind us that the legends and histories of Westeros are distorted by the patriarchal views of their society, causing a bias in interpreting the sources, and the accomplishments of women are underreported, undervalued, or misattributed to men. (Just like in the real world!)

Yggdrasil by ChasingTerciel | CC BY-SA 3.0

Florys the Fox
Apparently Garth's cleverest child, she had three husbands, all of whom didn't know about each other.

How was this achieved? Did she use a glamour to look like three different people? Was she a skinchanger capable of possessing three people at the same time? Did she live an extraordinarily long time and the three husbands were actually successive and not concurrent?

Possibly, but we don't have enough information to say

❌ Possibly magic, but not clear

Maris the Maid
Maris's story has some similarities to Helen of Sparta from the Iliad. Menelaus won Helen's hand in marriage in a sporting contest against the other Greek kings, but she was stolen by her lover Paris and taken to the city of Troy, leaving Menelaus to rage outside the city walls.

Menelaus + Paris = Maris

Nothing strongly suggests that Maris had extraordinary abilities.

❌ Possibly magic, but not clear

Her spurned husband, Argoth Stone-Skin is interesting though. Known as the Grey Giant he spent his days "roaring" for Maris outside the city gates. It is apparently unconfirmed whether he was human or giant. But "roaring"? Are we sure Argoth wasn't a dragon?

Rowan Gold-Tree

Rowan was said to have wrapped an apple in her golden hair, planted it on a hill, and grown a tree with yellow gold bark, leaves, and fruit. This doesn’t sound like any magic we have seen in the story, but I don’t have a mundane explanation for this either.

❌ Possibly magic, but not clear

Lann the Clever

Lann’s parentage is uncertain. He may be the son of Rowan Gold-Tree or Florys the Fox, or he may be an Andal adventurer. If he’s an adventurer and he is magic then we’ve no idea where it came from, so let’s explore the idea that he is a grandson of Garth Greenhand. What are the claims made about him?

Claim	Possible explanation
Filled Casterly Rock with mice, rats, and other vermin to drive the Casterlys out	Could be skinchanging ✅
Smuggled lions into the Rock that killed the Casterly men	Could be skinchanging ✅
Sleep-sex with the Casterly maidens	Perhaps this is entering dreams; Quaith, Euron, and the Three Eyed Crow seem to have that ability, but it wouldn’t really explain how the maidens became pregnant with blonde children. Although I think there is more to the story, it’s possible that these girls were drugged and raped ❌
Stole gold from the sun to brighten his hair	This sounds like a mythic way of saying he is blonde and a thief ❌
Died aged 312	Melisandre seems to have lived an unnaturally long life so this is possible ✅
100 sons and 100 daughters, all good looking and blonde	Exactly 100 of each unlikely but could he have had about 200 kids in 312 years? Perhaps ✅
Squeezed through a secret cleft, naked and buttered	Is this a reference to butt sex? Well, either way it’s a mundane claim ❌
Confused the sleeping Casterlys with whispered threats and demonic howling	When Bran speaks through the weirwoods, it seems to be heard like a whispers on the wind or a rustling of leaves. Howling could also come from animals, pointing to potential skinchanging ✅
stealing treasures from one brother and placing them in the bedchamber of another, and rigging traps	I don’t recall any poltergeist-y activities that we’ve seen in the main timeline having magical explanations, so the most likely explanation is night-time sneakery ❌

 

Overall it seems like Lann could have an extended lifespan and skinchanging abilities.

✅ Could be magic

What is the pattern?

Based on what we’re told of the 9 sons of Garth, and of the magic we have seen in use in the main ASOIAF story, none appear to have magical abilities without something or someone to enhance them. 2 of the 5 daughters of Garth do seem to have skinchanging abilities, and Lann, who appears to be the son of a daughter of Garth, also does. This suggests to me that:

Magical abilities like extended life and skinchanging pass to female children easier than male

Is there other evidence of this?

• None of Varamyr Sixskins' children were born with "the gift" of skinchanging.
• It seems like dragon-riding and hatching are X-chromosome traits following Mendelian inheritance. Dwarfism, albinism, chimerism, webbed fingers, and perhaps even Klinefelter syndrome appear in the story, and all are related to Mendelian inheritance.

Why is this interesting or important?

Male primogeniture succession, as practised by the Faith of the Seven and upheld by the Maesters of the Citadel, would ensure that leaders were less likely to have magical abilities over time. Incest, though, might make it more likely that these shared genetics traits are passed on.