#cappy's thoughts

No, genuinely, that's what that theory rests on most of all... it's how expected it is—he's ice, she's fire, wink wink, nudge nudge. She's the hot dragon lady, he's the hot broody guy. She's a Targ, he's a Stark, rival houses but... oh, what if... what if love overcame and maybe, if just for one moment (before he nissa nissas her) they are infinite!!

Give me a break, give me something MORE! I'm putting Jonsa in the bin here and I'm talking from a narrative perspective! J+D is derivitive as hell and sure, people like derivitive things, I do too at times, but I think if GRRM really aspires to elevate his series to something more than your run of the mill fantasy he should also aspire to something more challenging and subversive in the romance department too.

Maybe I'm just being contrary, pushing up against the status quo opinion, but I think BNFs need to be far more rigorous with their analysis of their possible future dynamic, which, btw, I don't deny will be there, and actually, I'm looking forward to it because what I get from Val is far more foreboding, imo, than lovey-dovey romantic. Again, that's my opinion, which you can disagree with, that's not me being "dishonest" to myself, concealing some burden of J+D truth.

Look, if GRRM is a reductive, unimaginative writer when it comes to romance (this self professed Romantic btw) then yeah, maybe I'll eat my hat and he'll go there and we'll get a tarted up version of the dog's dinner we got on the show... riviting stuff, can't wait. I just think (again, my opinon here) that he'll be a lesser writer for it if he does.

In The Vikings (Penguin, revised edition, 2016) Else Roesdahl talks a bit about this particular style of ornamentation:

The Urnes style is the last phase of the long development of Scandinavian animal ornament. This seems to have developed shortly before the middle of the eleventh century and was popular for nearly a century, that is into the early Middle Ages. After a final phase where it gave rise to details and influences in Romanesque art, now predominant in Scandinavia, it had died out completely before the year 1200. Many other forms of Viking Age followed the same course. The vigour and vitality of the Ringerike style gave way to this sophisticated, elegant, indeed almost decadent, style. It is named after the exquisite wood carvings that were re-used in Urnes Church in western Norway: a portal and a door, two wall planks, a corner post and two gable ends, one complete [...] The large, four-legged animal is still one of the main motifs, but it has become as slim as a greyhound. Snake-like animals with one foreleg, snakes and thin tendrils sometimes ending in a snake's head are also featured. The designs characteristic of this style form open, asymetric patterns, creating an impression of an undulating interweaving of animals and snakes. The large loops are often figures-of-eight and the shapes grow and diminish evenly; there are no abrupt transitions. The style is also used with virtuosity on brooches and on large numbers of rune stones in central Sweden, where the undulating ornament follows the shape of the stone and the long bodies of the snakes are used as rune bands [...] Several examples of the style have been found in England, and in Ireland it became as popular as the Ringerike style.

What's so intriguing about the original carving though is that it is depicting pagan symbolism... but on a Christian church. As mentioned above, the Ringerike style predate Urnes and was "roughly contemporary with the intial spread within Scandinavia of Christianity, and was the first to contain Christian iconography, although pagan symbolism was still present," notes Philip Parker (The Northmen's Fury, Vintage, 2014). By around 1050, it gave way to the Urnes style, named for the stave church shown above.

But what do these carvings mean? In Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North (Oxford University Press, 2013), G. Ronald Murphy offers this explanation:

The door is simply surrounded with whorls of writhing snakes and vines. The tangle is so perfectly executed in a welter of animal elongation and plant reduction to vines, that it is difficult to identify where a head begins or where a tail finally ends, if at all, or to trace what seems like a joint to a neck or a leg or a vine. The main point seems to be the inter-twined-ness itself of all living things, animal or vegetable, in one huge tangle [...] Now as one looks at the left side of the doorway there is one animal standing on four legs [see above!] that is simply startling in the clarity of its depiction. It has been called a lion and explained as the Lion of Judah (Christ) fighting with evil. I think that such an interpretation makes the mistake of using an inappropriately biblical explanation when the artist, by his very Viking-like pictorial style as well as his tangle of animal and plants, tells you he is here using a Germanic one. If you look at the animal you can see that he is eating at the vine or branch which in turn is a serpent biting at him in the neck. Look at the animal's head and you can see two small horns protruding—that animal is a young male deer, a hart. Now it becomes clear it is not the Old Testament that is giving the context here for the meaning of the portal: this is an allusion to the Elder Edda and its description of Yggsdrasill as the suffering tree with many serpents forever biting on its twigs and branches, as those twigs and branches are also being devoured by a hart. The traditiona of the single deer may also come from a previous stanza in the Grímnismál where the hart is named: Eikþyrnir [Oak-thorn] is the hart's name, who stands on Father of Hosts' hall and grazes Læraðr's [kenning for Yggdrasill] branches; and from his horns liquid drips into Hvergelmir [seething cauldron], from thence all waters have their flowing (Poetic Edda 55 and 270n)

According to Murphy, "to enter the door of the Urnes stave church is to enter Yggdrasill." So, to bring this back to the world of asoiaf, it´s an interesting piece of set design to include this screen or divider in Winterfell, a place closely connected with the "old gods" of the north and that has its own world tree, in a sense: the weirwood tree, or heart tree, of the godswood. Moreover, beneath one of Yggdrasill's three large roots is the spring Hvergelmir (mentioned above, meaning 'seething cauldron'), beneath another is Mímisbrunnr ('Mímir's well) and beneath the third is Urðarbrunnr ('Well of Urðr'), this is interesting to note in parallel to the hots springs and ice-lidded pool in Winterfell's godswood, close to its heart tree.

In the Prose Edda, one of our foremost sources on Norse mythology, Yggsdrasill is also connected with Ragnarök, the doom of the gods. In chapter 54, it is told that Óðinn will ride to the well Mímisbrunnr and consult Mímir on behalf of himself and his people. After this, "the ash Yggdrasill will shake and nothing will be unafraid in heaven or on earth," and then the Æsir and Einherjar will don their war gear and advance to the field of Vígríðr. In asoiaf, the north has its own legend very reminiscent of Ragnarök, called the Long Night and I've written about their similiarities before and keep meaning to return to that.