You’re quite welcome! And, well, whatever happened at Hardhome was really really weird:
Hardhome had been halfway toward becoming a town, the only true town north of the Wall, until the night six hundred years ago when hell had swallowed it. Its people had been carried off into slavery or slaughtered for meat, depending on which version of the tale you believed, their homes and halls consumed in a conflagration that burned so hot that watchers on the Wall far to the south had thought the sun was rising in the north. Afterward ashes rained down on haunted forest and Shivering Sea alike for almost half a year. Traders reported finding only nightmarish devastation where Hardhome had stood, a landscape of charred trees and burned bones, waters choked with swollen corpses, blood-chilling shrieks echoing from the cave mouths that pocked the great cliff that loomed above the settlement. –ADWD, Jon VIII
Hardhome was once the only settlement approaching a town in the lands beyond the Wall, sheltered on Storrold’s Point and commanding a deepwater harbor. But six hundred years ago, it was burned and its people destroyed, though the Watch cannot say for a certainty what happened. Some say that cannibals from Skagos fell on them, others that slavers from across the narrow sea were at fault. The strangest stories, from a ship of the Watch sent to investigate, tell of hideous screams echoing down from the cliffs above Hardhome, where no living man or woman could be found. –TWOIAF
So… 600 years ago there was a mysterious fire that burned a wildling town, left its people entirely missing or found dead, caused ashes to rain down for months… and caves full of screams, but no people. A big mystery laid out in ADWD, coming out of nowhere, with no apparent purpose relevant to the plot. Except for the fact that now, thousands of wildling refugees from the battle at the Wall have escaped to Hardhome; and in fear that they would all be turned into an army of wights by the Others, Jon Snow sent a large (and probably doomed) delegation of Night’s Watchmen to save them.
So what the heck happened at Hardhome 600 years ago? And how could it affect upcoming events in the story?
Well… I should first mention that there was a popular
theory
a few years back that the Hardhome Event was some kind of experiment by the Faceless Men, a trial run for what they did to Valyria. However, I was always skeptical of this theory, because
- If the Hardhome Event was 600 years ago and the Doom of Valyria was 400 years ago, what the heck were the FM doing for 200 years?
- If the FM spent 200 years perfecting their methods, how come there was only one “trial run” and we haven’t heard of other mass destructive events of this type elsewhere in the world?
- Why on earth would they pick Hardhome of all places to do this? Surely innocent wildlings didn’t deserve death like Valyrian slavers did?
- This whole thing really does not feel like it fits with the philosophy of the Faceless Men.
And, well, ever since TWOIAF revealed that the Fourteen Flames, the volcanoes of the Valyrian peninsula, were kept under control by Valyrian fire-sorcerers… and some believe that because of court intrigue, too many of these mages were assassinated, leading to the loss of control of the Fourteen Flames and the massive volcanic event that split the peninsula and destroyed Valyria… I’ve come to believe that’s how the Faceless Men brought the gift of the Many-Faced God to the slave masters. Which would require no “trial run”, therefore I don’t think the Hardhome Event was related to the Faceless Men at all.
Nevertheless, I think the Hardhome Event might still have something in common with the Doom of Valyria.
It is known that Westeros is a geothermally active continent. Besides the volcanic island of Dragonstone (with its active volcano Dragonmont, lava tunnels, and obsidian), there’s the hot springs below Winterfell, heating the ground and the walls and providing hot pools in the godswood. There’s hot springs beyond the Wall as well. And far south, there’s the Brimstone river in Dorne, stinking of sulfur.
So… I think it’s possible that what happened at Hardhome was some kind of massive geothermic event, like the Doom of Valyria. There may have been some kind of volcanic explosion, or geyserous release of chemicals that set the town on fire; burning intensely hot, killing everyone. The half-year rain of ashes sounds like the results of a volcanic eruption, as well. And as for the shrieking caves:
Just beyond Waikanapanapa, we entered a rocky, desolate gorge, seamed and fissured in every direction with streams of hot water, while jets of hissing steam, bursting from its sides, marked the site of subterranean fires. The heated, quaking soil was covered with thick deposits of silica, sulphur, oxide of iron, pumice, obsidian, scoria, and other volcanic products, and with its sulphurous atmosphere, fierce heat, and shrieking sounds, it appeared as we entered it like a short cut to Pandemonium… One of the most remarkable wonders of this region was Te Ana Taipo, or the “Devil’s Hole,” a deep circular aperture in the rocky gorge, from which a column of transparent steam burst from a small aperture at the bottom of the deep funnel shaped hole with a deafening screeching sound like the voices of a thousand fiends. Never was heard anything so wild and so dismal as the human-like wailings of Te Ana Taipo; and as the thrilling noise went echoing over the hills one expected to see an army of evil spirits spring up around headed by his Satanic Majesty himself.
–from a description of the Waiotapu volcanic area of Rotorua, New Zealand, 1884
But maybe that’s not right. There could be other possibilities:
- Maybe the Hardhome Event was like Earth’s Tunguska Event, a (probable) meteor impact/disintegration/air burst that flattened 2000 km2
of forest. While on Earth, the event happened in sparsely populated Siberia and caused no human casualties, on Terros the meteorite burst above a heavily populated town, set all the buildings on fire, and caused the deaths of all living there. However, this doesn’t explain the screaming caves.
- Somehow the wildlings of Hardhome woke some thing that killed everyone with a fiery explosion, dragged a few survivors to the caves, and proceeded to torment them there. Slightly more possible with the magic of ASOIAF, but wildlings aren’t exactly known for sorcery or waking the Thing That Should Not Be.
- Combination of the above, Lovecraft-style (and similar to the Bloodstone Emperor’s black stone that fell from the sky, still worshipped by the Church of Starry Wisdom) – there was a meteorite that exploded over Hardhome, but it didn’t just bring a fiery air burst that destroyed the town and killed almost everyone, it was carrying some Great Old One, an eldritch creature from beyond the skies, which dragged the survivors to the caves, shrieks and screaming etc.
However, while that Eldritch Asteroid might be an interesting story, I don’t see how it applies to the situation in Hardhome now. Which isn’t to say they have to be related, but it seems odd for GRRM to set up this plot point without it actually being relevant in the future. If there is some abomination from beyond the stars (or from deep within the earth) still in the caves of Hardhome, how would it help or hurt the Night’s Watch mission there? While it might be able to destroy the Others, such a thing seems more likely to join them. And that kind of plot complication just doesn’t feel like it belongs in an already complicated story.
Whereas if the destruction of Hardhome was a geothermic event… and if there’s serious geothermal activity going on there still… then that could mean, in addition to lava and geysers – dragonglass. Obsidian, the “frozen fire” that we know can destroy Others, could be a weapon for the beleaguered Night’s Watch to find, when driven back to the caves by an army of the dead. And further, lava flows, the fires of the earth, could be diverted down the cliffs to distract the Others and wights and keep them from chasing the survivors back to the ships.
Or maybe lava and obsidian are a little prosaic compared with experiments of the Faceless Men and the Horror Out of Space. (Even with screaming geysers in the caves.) I don’t know. Maybe all the theories don’t even compare to what GRRM actually has planned for this plotline, and the real answer could be something completely different. There really isn’t enough evidence in the books to make any kind of valid prediction here. (You’re lucky I was in a mood to speculate wildly, I’m usually not.) So I guess we’re just going to have to see. I hope we find out soon. :)
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