Monsters of Ice and Fire: The Undead

From wights to White Walkers, from Beric Dondarrion to Jon Snow, A Song of Ice and Fire is packed with undead creatures. We take a close look at them.

While I am not automatically a fan of everything zombie-related, it can’t be denied that the zombie has dethroned the vampire as pop culture’s No. 1 monster, probably at some point during the early 2010s. Interestingly, the vampire and the zombie are undead in a rather loose sense and have both developed partly from the same roots.

(Un)Biology of the Undead

We should first talk about what being undead means in general. What criteria does the modern vampire have to fulfill before it can be called undead? What about Gregor “the Mountain” Clegane, who we covered in the first installment of this series? Different mythologies have different sets of qualifications.

Let’s start by discussing the difference between “dead” and “inanimate.” The Golem of Prague, for example, is clearly not undead. He does not blur the line between the dead and the living, but rather between the biological and the inanimate. What is dead may never die…and what is inanimate may never die either, since it was never alive to begin with. Without living first, and then dying, you cannot be undead. Death, in this sense, means not the absence of life, but having lived and living no longer.

With that in mind, I would argue that Frankenstein’s monster — the wretch — is not properly undead, with some caveats. In contrast to some versions of Frankenstein’s monster — the version depicted by Rory Kinnear in Penny Dreadful, for example — Mary Shelley’s original creature has no previous identity. The wretch is put together from various human and animal parts and therefore becomes a blank slate. He is not a continuation of any previous life; the parts of bodies he consists of are mere material and don’t define his identity. His consciousness is a new one, without a past. This consciousness — which is arguably what counts in terms of defining identity — has never died.

Why is this distinction so important? It’s because what is so unsettling about zombies and other proper undead is how they mix the familiarity of a living and feeling warm human being with the ultimate foreignness of a cold, dead body carrying on by sheer malicious instinct (or by somebody else’s will, depending on what kind of zombie we’re talking about). We really do not know how much of that applies to someone (something?) like Gregor Clegane, for example.

Undead History

Having straightened out some of the basics, we can turn to the specific variations of undead we see in the collective imagination(s) of our own world and in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. At the beginning of the European tradition of the undead we find the Wiedergänger.i Funnily enough, “Wiedergänger” is also what the wights are called in the German translation of A Song of Ice and Fire (which I as a German have never actually read, because it is awful). While not universally agreed upon, it is pretty common to use the term Wiedergänger for every kind of phenomenon that has a dead person influence the world of the living through their body (this definition excludes ghosts, who have no body), short of full-blown Jesus Christ-style resurrection.

Just as there are different kinds of undead in modern popular culture — zombies, mummies, ghouls, animate skeletons, vampires, etc — there were relatively distinct kinds of Wiedergänger during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The historical variants of the Wiedergänger include the Nachzehrer, which in its most basic form doesn’t leave its grave but rather feeds on the living energy of its victims, usually its own family members, from under the earth. Another important variant is the Aufhocker, an undead that jumps on its victims back and can’t be thrown off. The victim has to carry the Aufhocker, typically to a graveyard, or die from exhaustion due to its ever-growing weight, or maybe because the Aufhocker drains the victims’ strength.

Both the Nachzehrer and the Aufhocker are related to much better-known creatures from pop culture: the vampire and the werewolf respectively. While the details remain unclear, the Germanic Nachzehrer is very similar to what became the Vampire in Slavic and Greek contexts. Reading very early cases of documented vampiric incidents, the difference is minimal.ii The Aufhocker, in turn, becomes all but inseparable from the werewolf when it develops shapeshifting traits and kills its victims not only through exhaustion, but with fangs. There are also more specific but less common kinds of Wiedergänger, like the headless horseman, best known for an appearance in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. And there are many regional variants all over the continent.

Death is a Master from Germany

There is a well-known and highly controversial German poem called Todesfuge, which translates to something like “Death Fugue.” It’s best-known line is, “Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland,” which basically translates to “Death is a master from Germany.” Without getting into the poem itself, that line rings true on a grander scale, as many of the monsters that popular the popular imagination have roots in Germany. That particularly true of monsters touched by death and decay, which is the kind we’re looking at in this article.

Why is this the case? Well, the most high-profile authors of the Gothic novel — the genre that brought us Dracula, Frankenstein and his wretch, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and others — were inspired by Germany, in part by its literature and in part by the country itself. Mary Shelley famously wrote Frankenstein on a trip through German-speaking Europe; Viktor Frankenstein himself is from the German-speaking part of Switzerland and conducts his experiments at the (German) University of Ingolstadt. The story is inspired by Faust, the protagonist of a classic German legend, and by German philosophy and science. Edgar Allan Poe was fascinated by German poet Gottfried August Bürger’s ballad Lenore, the story of a young woman and her fiancé who come back from the Seven Year’s War undead. He used the story on three separate occasions: in Eleonora, which is his take on the story as a whole; and in Lenore and The Raven, arguably his two best-known poems.* The prototype for all female Vampire stories, Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, is set in Styria, Austria. I could go on, but I won’t. Exploring the German roots of the Gothic novel could fill a book.

Familiarizing ourselves with the origins of these novels, and with the undead monsters in them, helps us understand the kind of undead we see in the world of Ice and Fire. George R.R. Martin’s wights are decidedly not the morbidly alluring undead of early dark romanticism, the kind who would eventually be overshadowed by the proper vampire. Rather, they more closely resemble a variety of undead you’ve probably been waiting for this article to get to: the zombie.

What’s in Your Head?

What is a zombie, though? Again, it depends on context. Are we talking about the pop culture zombie or the original Haitian, Central African-influenced zombie? The pop culture zombie comes in a lot of varieties, but is usually driven by instinct and hungers for the flesh of the living — human flesh, to be more specific, and human brains to be more specific than that. This is not true, however, of the original zombie. The original zombie, the zombi or zonbi, is an undead person — not just a body — shackled to the will of another, an eternal slave.iii A zombie is created by magically raising a person from the dead.

The wights of the world of Ice and Fire have a lot in common with the original Haitian zombies. They are raised by others; the Others, in fact, to do their bidding. It is not entirely clear to what extent the wights are micromanaged by the Others, though. Are they completely controlled by the Others? If the Others did not exert any will power, would they simply become lifeless corpses? Or do they have instincts or even minds of their own? Is the Others’ control of them maybe even a form of warging? We lack the answers to those questions for now.

Wights and Others and Wargs

We do get a few hints that the wights preserve some mind of their own. For example, take a look at the following passage from the very end of the prologue to A Dance with Dragons. This chapter is narrated by the skinchanger Varamyr Sixskins, who has just warged into the body of a wolf:

"The things below moved, but did not live. One by one, they raised their heads toward the three wolves on the hill. The last to look was the thing that had been Thistle. She wore wool and fur and leather, and over that she wore a coat of hoarfrost that crackled when she moved and glistened in the moonlight. Pale pink icicles hung from her fingertips, ten long knives of frozen blood. And in the pits where her eyes had been, a pale blue light was flickering, lending her coarse features an eerie beauty they had never known in life.She sees me.iv"

“She sees me.” The language here is deliberate; it implies more than than “the thing that had been Thistle” noticing “the wolf that is now Varamyr.” After all, the wolves were not making themselves hidden. When Varamyr thinks “She sees me,” we can interpret it as, “She recognizes me” — she sees Varamyr, not the wolf he has possessed.

There are three major ways to make sense of this, I think. 1) The boring answer: Varamyr is wrong. I do not think that is the case. The chapter wouldn’t have much value if it were, and the last line would be very anticlimactic. 2) the wights are like Haitian zombies; they are not empty vessels but more like slaves, powerless and probably suffering. Or, finally, 3) it is not really Thistle’s mind or soul or spirit or whatever we want to call it that recognizes Varamyr; it is whichever Other is controlling her body who recognizes him.

I am torn between the second and the third answer. The second may be the more interesting. It would make the wights doubly monstrous and doubly frightening. As with the Haitian zombie, the fear of meeting one of them would be rivaled by the fear of becoming one of them, being trapped in a horrible kind of unwilling afterlife. But the third answer could be more promising for the plot. If it is not Thistle “seeing” Varamyr but the Others, that would imply that they know who he is, and that they are actively looking for him. Could the Others be specifically targeting wargs? They could be seeking wargs because they are dangerous, more dangerous than we already know, or because they need them for something, although this is not the place to follow this train of thought to its end.

Making Undead

We have not yet looked into the question of how undead come into the world. In our world, the creation of undead is traditionally tied to religion. Undead are usually created by an act of sacrilege or by passively falling prey to the devil, and usually destroyed by the reinstatement of the religiously sanctioned order. While the Haitian zombie is created by a bokor, a practitioner of black magic, the Nachzehrer is created through imperfect preparation of the body before the funeral.

We don’t know if the wights of Martin’s world are tied to religion, but there’s evidence that some people in Westeros think they are. Just take a look at what Ser Bonifer Hasty says in A Feast for Crows:

"I fear no shade, ser. It is written in The Seven-Pointed Star that spirits, wights, and revenants cannot harm a pious man, so long as he is armored in his faith.v"

While we don’t know if Ser Bonifer is talking about the same kind of wights that Jon Snow is so worried about, it’s clear he thinks that his devotion to the Faith of the Seven will protect him from undead creatures. The Faith of the Seven religion, it should be noted, is often thought to be an analogue for medieval Christianity. Keeping that in mind, Ser Bonifer’s beliefs make sense, as much of the pre-modern European discourse on the undead happens in the context of the Christian religion. However, in the World of Ice and Fire, the reality of the wights makes them too big to be contained by any one faith.

Ice and Fire

The wights of the world of Ice and Fire have a closer relation to the Old Gods and to R’hllor than to the Faith of the Seven, but it would be wrong to say that they are tied to religion. It’s more that they are tied to the same elemental forces that also play major roles in the religions of the Old Gods and R’hllor.

In the religion of R’hllor, the wights and the Others feature as something like the ultimate enemy of the Lord of Light. However, the Lord of Light has His own version of the wights, after a fashion. George R.R. Martin explains in an interview:

"[Beric Dondarrion’s] memories are fading, he’s got all these scars, he’s becoming more and more physically hideous, because he’s not a living human being anymore. His heart isn’t beating, his blood isn’t flowing in his veins, he’s a wight, but a wight animated by fire instead of by ice, now we’re getting back to the whole fire and ice thing."

This does not apply only to Beric Dondarrion, but also to Lady Stoneheart and to Jon Snow on the show (for now). We may not know whether ice wights retain anything of themselves after death, but our trio of fire wights clearly do. Beric and Lady Stoneheart may be much changed, but they retain control over their actions, even if they gradually seem to lose their grip on their identities.

Again, there are several ways to interpret this. It might be the case that the Others suppress or even erase the consciousness of the wights they raise. Meanwhile, the people known to raise fire wights — Thoros of Myr, Beric Dondarrion, and Melidsandre on the show — do not. But those three only partly grasp what they are even doing, anyway. Their understanding is probably inferior to that of the Others. Or perhaps fire ice and ice wights are simply qualitatively different.

Beyond Wights

Another kind of undead-seeming character is Bloodraven, aka Brynden Rivers, aka Bloodraven, aka the Three-Eyed Crow (on the show, he’s called the Three-Eyed Raven). We do not know exactly how Bloodraven ended up where Bran finds him, but he looks dead enough, with roots basically growing through his body. Also, he would be about 125 years old when Bran finds him. It’s not impossible to live that long, but it’s excessive. At the least, Bloodraven’s life may be getting an extension courtesy of his powers. At most, he could be a kind of undead creature himself.

We should probably also talk about “dead things in the water,” which Jon hears are swimming near Hardhome in A Dance with Dragons. Is this some new trick the Others have up their frozen sleeve?Or perhaps they’re just corpses floating on the tide. Or might we even learn of a connection between the Others and the Drowned God? Let’s hit the brakes here; my head is spinning.

Before we conclude, I want to propose one more idea: are the Others themselves, in a way, undead? Let’s look at a last quote, this one concerning the Night’s King and his Queen.

"As the sun began to set the shadows of the towers lengthened and the wind blew harder, sending gusts of dry dead leaves rattling through the yards. The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another of Old Nan’s stories, the tale of Night’s King. He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night’s Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. ”And that was the fault in him,” she would add, “for all men must know fear.” A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night’s King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night’s King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.vi"

Let’s assume that this story has some basis in truth. Is this woman an Other or a wight? She is called a “corpse queen”, yet her white skin is her most distinguishing attribute. Wights do not have white skin, and there is no mention of the wight’s characteristically black and swollen hands and feet. So far as we can tell, the White Walkers on Game of Thrones are not undead; after all, we saw the Children of the Forest create the first one. They changed him, but didn’t kill him. But is the same true of the Others in the novels?

In any case, the Night’s Queen, if we can call her that, seems certainly influenced by other stories of undead lovers who miss some aspect of life and manage, either figuratively or literally, to enthrall their human counterparts.vii The Others we see in the novels are are eerie, strangely alluring creatures; they might even be called beautiful. That reminds us of the undead of dark romanticism.

Next: Monsters of Ice and Fire: Robert Strong and his Precursors

iCf. Jean-Claude Schmitt: Les Revenants. We could use the term “revenant” instead of Wiedergänger, but I prefer the latter especially in the context of what there will be said about the role of Germany later in this article.

ii The case of Peter Blagojević, considered to be the first documented vampire case in history, is an ideal starting point for a search of the “real” vampire in contrast to the literary one. Cf. Thomas Bohn: Der Vampir, p. 109-122.

iii Cf. Sarah J. Lauro: The Transatlantic Zombie.

iv A Dance with Dragons, Prologue

v A Feast for Crows, Jamie III.

vi A Storm of Swords, Bran IV.

vii This might sound familiar from last installment’s Melusina. Many monsters do have a fascinating, even alluring side to them.

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