Some maesters dismiss such stories as fanciful inventions, but the reports are numerous enough to make some think otherwise.* Sailors also, curiously, report that immense ribbons of shifting light can be seen in the skies over the uttermost north. Northern sailors claim that huge ice dragons can be found in these lands and offshore, and screaming mountains can be seen from the sea (although whether these are actual inland mountains or ice formations remains unknown). Furthermore, the entire northern polar region appears to be surrounded by a vast mass of ice, known as the White Waste. Repeated voyages by some of the greatest mariners in history (such as the voyage by Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake, two centuries ago in search of the fabled Northern Passage) have failed to find a path through the ice, apparently confirming that the continent of Westeros extends up over the top of the world. Crossing such a freezing landscape alive is simply not possible.Įven the coasts are hard to chart, for the water freezes and vast floes of ice dominate the Shivering Sea and the northern Sunset Sea, threatening ships with destruction. But from the treeline to the north pole lies a staggering 1,500 miles (or more) of cold and wilderness. The treeline lies along the northern edge of Thenn and the shadow of the northern Frostfangs, near the northern-most edge of the detailed maps of the lands beyond the Wall. Some maesters estimate that it is approximately 600 miles from the Wall to the treeline, the part of the world where it gets too cold for trees to grow. Very little can survive in this region and few, if any, geographic details are known. The Lands of Always Winter consist of vast, frozen tundra and plains, covered in snow, extending for hundreds upon hundreds of miles from the northern-most foothills of the Frostfangs all the way to the north pole, perhaps even beyond into the opposite hemisphere of the world. The snow never melts, the ice never breaks and even in the warmest and longest summers the lands are still freezing, cold and inhospitable. The Lands of Always Winter are so-called because they lie in the shadow of permanent cold, ice and snow. The Lands Beyond the Wall, which are divided into three general regions: the Lands of Always Winter in the far north and extending for over a thousand miles to the north pole the Ice River and Frozen Shore regions on the open, cold plains west of the Frostfangs and the better-populated lands of the Milkwater Valley and the Haunted Forest to the east.
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