#skagos

so the thing is they don’t have a lot of options especially since they want to split from bran

bran is going roughly the direction of the arrow. all the red x’s are places luwin tells osha specifically not to go. he suggests the manderlys or the umbers but points out it might be hard to get to them. he’s not wrong - no matter which way she goes, she’s likely to run into boltons or ironborn. plus, and i’m sure they were both thinking about this, but they don’t ACTUALLY know who they can trust in the north - the karstark stuff has likely begun to spread back home, we know later in that the umbers start playing both sides to keep the greatjon safe, and osha doesn’t actually know any of these people! and here luwin is basically saying as he’s dying “you’re kinda SoL osha sorry.”

i think several things here are important

osha needs to be able to get back in contact with bran one day - she takes rickon with the intention of hiding for *awhile* not forever

osha knows bran is magical

i’m sure she suspects rickon is too

osha came to winterfell because she was fleeing the others

wex pyke (supposedly) followed them long enough to surmise they were going to skagos

So I think what’s likely here is that it was Osha’s decision to go to Skagos.

Before I dig into that, there are two other options I want to touch on really quick. First, the idea that Osha & Rickon simply boarded a ship & crashed on the rocks of Skagos. There IS some potential for this - Sam and Davos both comment on ships crashing against the rocks, with Sam taking note of two that crash recently. The question then becomes how Wex knows this - was he watching from the shore long enough to see them crash? Can he even see that from the shore? That gets into option two - that Wyman and the Umbers directly sent Osha & Rickon there and were being a bit misleading about what it is Wex told them. In that case, let’s say Wex found them, gets captured by the Umbers, and tells them what he knows. They decide the easiest thing to do is to simply hide Osha & Rickon, and send them to Skagos with instructions to stay near the coast, and Wyman has Wex do the whole “throw a knife at skagos” thing as a way of gently misleading Davos. I do still think these are possible! However!!

"The only actress who's really made me rethink a character is Natalia Tena as Osha. She's younger, more attractive and more dynamic than I had initially written that character. And, when Osha comes back into the story, as I hope that she will, I'm definitely going to take that into account. Other than that, I don't know.”

When Osha comes back in the books, it’s possible, I haven’t actually gotten to it yet that she will be influenced by what I’ve seen, that I will write a more interesting character.

I think it’s not unlikely that the og plan was something like the umbers & manderly playing hot potato. I think the point is to get Rickon to Skagos - the actual reasons why they go are less important than the destination. So the journey can be changed into something else, more interesting maybe. Which isn’t to say that the hot potato theory can’t be interesting - I do love northern politics. But I think George was inspired to give Osha more agency, and that is why I lean towards the idea that we are going with option three which is “Osha is a smart fucking lady”!

SO! You are entrusted with a small, feral, important child and his large, equally feral dinosaur soul-wolf. You don’t know much about the politics in the area and what you do know is “don’t trust most of them” and “there are enemies everywhere.” You are very aware of the monstrous horde of ice monsters that will be marching south some time soon. You also don’t want to go directly North, so as to not stray too close to the other trail. I think, with all that in mind, an island known to be difficult to get to might be someplace that sounds good enough to hide out at for awhile.

We also have some implication that the Skagosi are just as complex as the wildlings - which is to say, they probably aren’t just mindless cannibals. They use the Old Tongue, like the Free Folk, they’re possibly part giant, and they are VERY close to Hardhome. Which, Hardhome is its own mystery thing esp with how Skagos is involved but note that Tyrion directly cites trade with the Skagosi - we KNOW they partake in some minor level of trade, and they are closer to the wildlings geographically than they are most of the rest of the continent. They’re not very loyal to the Starks - they are similar to the Vale Wildlings in that the lord paramount has no true control over them - but like other Northerners they DO still send people to the Night’s Watch.

So all of this together makes me think Osha knows the Skagosi are just more Wildling like, and trusts then to give her safe harbor at least for a little, or trusts in her ability to otherwise blend in with the Skagosi. I ALSO believe we get mention from Tormund about wildlings getting around in little longboats (don’t quote me on that tho) - i think it’s likely Osha found a wildling style boat & used that, and Wex just put together that logically, the only place she’s going to get to in that would be Skagos.

And finally - I talk about the stone & mountain associations that the Starks all have and Skagos is a big part of that. Skagosi means stoneborn in the Old Tongue. Bael the Bard comes to Winterfell calling himself Sygerrik of Skagos, which literally translates to “deceiver of stone” which feels both a play on perhaps Bael having a “heart of stone” because he is about to kidnap the Stark Maid but also that he deceives “the stone” meaning “the Stark” as in the Stark Lord - the Skagosi & Free Folk, and more Old Ways-leaning Northerners use names & titles exactly with that phrasing, like the Greatjon, the Smalljon, the Ned, the Liddle, the Magnar, etc, and several Starks refer to the buried lords as the “stone kings” or “stone lords.” I don’t necessarily know what Rickon being on an island of stoneborn means for him - or Osha! - but it’s more strengthening of that imagery that can’t be ignored.

Skagosi, Danny Reinke x Karoline Hinz SS26

"I loved her like she was my own."—Ser Davos