The Wildlings ARE the Others!

I believe the return of white walkers is a manufactured threat, recreated by the wildlings in order to convince the Nights Watch to allow them through the Wall. The definition of "Others' includes white walkers, wights, and the humans that created them.

The First Men brought bronze to Westeros. Bronze is also associated with magic. The Andals are credited with bringing iron. Iron is a known substance used to ward against magic.The crown of the King in the North is of a bronze circlet surrounded by nine iron swords, which to me symbolically sends the message that the King in the North defeated a magical opponent. This goes along with the name of Winterfell sounding like the defeat of winter, and the motto "Winter is Coming". Put it all together and it would appear the Starks took Winterfell by conquest.

The “thing” that the Nights Watch has forgotten is that the wildings ARE the Others. I suspect the wildlings are descendants of First Men who were separated from the mainstream group, and seem related to the Ironborn. The Wall itself appears to have the Drowned God and the Storm God contained, while the white walkers are obviously frozen water and air - the two gods of the Ironborn.

I think the wildlings are a splinter of the Ironborn that the Children tried to cutoff from the mainland with their hammer of waters. The hammer separated the Iron Islands from the mainland, and are called "Iron" Islands, because "iron" is an element used in warding. Basically severing them from the mainland was a type of warding using water against them. It didn't stop them however, because they made the sea their strength, thereby being reborn from the iron ward that was used against them.

After the Ironborn overcame their water ward, the next step the Children took was to bring about an extended winter in an effort to contain them by freezing the water ward. But the Ironborn learned how to marry their water ward with their storm (air) god to create the frozen white walkers. We know what happened after that, so lets just focus on the clues that the wildlings have given us that support my theory.

Ygritte says “kneelers” are thieves

The ground was littered with pine needles and blown leaves, a carpet of green and brown still damp from the recent rains. It squished beneath their feet. Huge bare oaks, tall sentinels, and hosts of soldier pines stood all around them. On a hill above them was another roundtower, ancient and empty, thick green moss crawling up its side almost to the summit. “Who built that, all of stone like that?” Ygritte asked him. “Some king?”

“No. Just the men who used to live here.”

“What happened to them?”

“They died or went away.” Brandon’s Gift had been farmed for thousands of years, but as the Watch dwindled there were fewer hands to plow the fields, tend the bees, and plant the orchards, so the wild had reclaimed many a field and hall. In the New Gift there had been villages and holdfasts whose taxes, rendered in goods and labor, helped feed and clothe the black brothers. But those were largely gone as well.

“They were fools to leave such a castle,” said Ygritte.

“It’s only a towerhouse. Some little lordling lived there once, with his family and a few sworn men. When raiders came he would light a beacon from the roof. Winterfell has towers three times the size of that.”

She looked as if she thought he was making that up. “How could men build so high, with no giants to lift the stones?”

In legend, Brandon the Builder had used giants to help raise Winterfell, but Jon did not want to confuse the issue. “Men can build a lot higher than this. In Oldtown there’s a tower taller than the Wall.” He could tell she did not believe him.

<snip>

“This land belongs to the Watch,” Jon said.

Her nostrils flared. “No one lives here.”

“Your raiders drove them off.”

“They were cowards, then. If they wanted the land they should have stayed and fought.”

“Maybe they were tired of fighting. Tired of barring their doors every night and wondering if Rattleshirt or someone like him would break them down to carry off their wives. Tired of having their harvests stolen, and any valuables they might have. It’s easier to move beyond the reach of raiders.” But if the Wall should fail, all the north will lie within the reach of raiders.

“You know nothing, Jon Snow. Daughters are taken, not wives. You’re the ones who steal. You took the whole world, and built the Wall t’ keep the free folk out.”

“Did we?” Sometimes Jon forgot how wild she was, and then she would remind him. “How did that happen?”

“The gods made the earth for all men t’ share. Only when the kings come with their crowns and steel swords, they claimed it was all theirs. My trees, they said, you can’t eat them apples. My stream, you can’t fish here. My wood, you’re not t’ hunt. My earth, my water, my castle, my daughter, keep your hands away or I’ll chop ’em off, but maybe if you kneel t’ me I’ll let you have a sniff. You call us thieves, but at least a thief has t’ be brave and clever and quick. A kneeler only has t’ kneel.”

<snip>

“And men can’t own the land no more’n they can own the sea or the sky. You kneelers think you do, but Mance is going t’ show you different.”

Wildlings choose their leaders and they won’t kneel:

You don’t become King-beyond-the-Wall because your father was. The free folk won’t follow a name, and they don’t care which brother was born first. They follow fighters.

“You can kill your enemies,” Jon said bluntly, “but can you rule your friends? If we let your people pass, are you strong enough to make them keep the king’s peace and obey the laws?”

“Whose laws? The laws of Winterfell and King’s Landing?” Mance laughed. “When we want laws we’ll make our own. You can keep your king’s justice too, and your king’s taxes. I’m offering you the horn, not our freedom. We will not kneel to you.”

If you force the wildlings to kneel they will rise up at the first chance:

“Free folk do not kneel,” Val told her.

“Then they must be knelt,” the queen declared.

“Do that, Your Grace, and we will rise again at the first chance,” Val promised. “Rise with blades in hand.”

The wildlings choose their own leader. The only other group that does that is the Ironborn. Balon Greyjoy tried to instill a monarchy by having his children inherit, but once he was dead his brother Aeron (Damphair) declared a Kingsmoot to choose the next leader.

The Halfhand had suspected that the wildlings had gone up into the bleak and barren Frostfangs in search of some weapon, some power, some fell sorcery with which to break the Wall. After Jon is forced into killing the Halfhand, he is taken in by the wildlings, but they are only faking their friendship. Not too soon afterward he is attacked by an eagle skinchanged by Orell.

The next he knew, he was on his face with the taste of mud and blood in his mouth and Ygritte kneeling over him protectively, a bone dagger in her hand. He could still hear wings, though the eagle was not in sight. Half his world was black. “My eye,” he said in sudden panic, raising a hand to his face.

“It’s only blood, Jon Snow. He missed the eye, just ripped your skin up some.”

His face was throbbing. Tormund stood over them bellowing, he saw from his right eye as he rubbed blood from his left. Then there were hoofbeats, shouts, and the clacking of old dry bones.

“Bag o’ Bones,” roared Tormund, “call off your hellcrow!”

“There’s your hellcrow!” Rattleshirt pointed at Jon. “Bleeding in the mud like a faithless dog!” The eagle came flapping down to land atop the broken giant’s skull that served him for his helm. “I’m here for him.”

“Come take him then,” said Tormund, “but best come with sword in hand, for that’s where you’ll find mine. Might be I’ll boil your bones, and use your skull to piss in. Har!”

“Once I prick you and let the air out, you’ll shrink down smaller’n that girl. Stand aside, or Mance will hear o’ this.”

Ygritte stood. “What, is it Mance who wants him?”

“I said so, didn’t I? Get him up on those black feet.”

Tormund frowned down at Jon. “Best go, if it’s the Mance who’s wanting you.”

Rattleshirt had been sent by Mance to bring him to where he was - which was at the top of the Fist of the First Men the day after the Nights Watch was attacked. As they drew nearer the snow was falling faster, the drifts were deeper, the wind was colder, and night was falling. All signs that white walkers were in the area. Jon could see the great hill even through the blowing snow - The Fist of the First Men. Jon noted that the wildlings were crawling over the dead garrons like flies, stripping them of saddles, bridles, packs, and armor, and hacking them apart with stone axes. They were even prying horseshoes from their hooves. There were ravens flapping from one dead horse to the next and Jon wondered if they were Nights Watch ravens. Mance was at the top of the hill. Under his black wool and red silk he wore black ringmail and shaggy fur breeches, and on his head was a great bronze-and-iron helm with raven wings at either temple. Is Mance "Ossa Ravenhead", a Viking warrior god of wisdom and strength? Wearing a winged helmet is commonly used to depict Celts, but the shaggy fur breeches imply he’s wearing a ritual costume that projects the wearer’s intention to become a divine predator.

Why would the white walkers and wights attack LC Jeor Mormont's camp at the Fist and leave the wildlings trailing less than a day's ride behind them unmolested? The wildlings are following the white walkers, and yet Harma says the wights are behind them. There are only a small handful of white walkers, and they serve in the capacity of military leaders with the wights as their soldiers. If the white walkers are in front of the wildlings and the wights are behind them, then it's more than a coincidence that Mance is dressed as a divine predator with his winged helmet and shaggy fur pants while his "officers" strip the dead horses of weapons, leather, and horseshoes. Jon takes note of the snow and cold air surrounding Mance at the top of the Fist and darkness has not yet fallen.

Jon says: He was ready for . . .”

“. . . me?” finished Mance Rayder.

<snip>

…when the dead walk, walls and stakes and swords mean nothing. You cannot fight the dead, Jon Snow. No man knows that half so well as me.”

Mance said Jeor was readying the camp against "Mance". And that no man knows that you can't fight the dead half so well as Mance. Why would Mance know this more than anybody? He didn't say no man knows this half so well as the wildlings. He just said "as me"...as in singular.

Further on in the story, After Jon and Ygritte made it over the Wall:

“The worst is behind us.” Jon tried to sound confident. “Don’t be frightened.” He tried to put an arm around her.

Ygritte slammed the heel of her hand into his chest, so hard it stung even through his layers of wool, mail, and boiled leather. “I wasn’t frightened. You know nothing, Jon Snow.”

“Why are you crying, then?”

“Not for fear!” She kicked savagely at the ice beneath her with a heel, chopping out a chunk. “I’m crying because we never found the Horn of Winter. We opened half a hundred graves and let all those shades loose in the world, and never found the Horn of Joramun to bring this cold thing down!”

Is it possible that Mance told the wildlings they were looking for a horn when his true intentions were to dig up the dead to raise as wights? My suspicions are born from the fact that the wildlings traditionally burn their dead, so in order to get wights he needed dead bodies.

Ironborn’s words seem to apply to wights and white walkers:

“What is dead may never die,” his uncle echoed, “but rises again, harder and stronger..."

Jon found burned remains in the Whitetree weirwood:

He knelt and reached a gloved hand down into the maw. The inside of the hollow was red with dried sap and blackened by fire. Beneath the skull he saw another, smaller, the jaw broken off. It was half-buried in ash and bits of bone.

When he brought the skull to Mormont, the Old Bear lifted it in both hands and stared into the empty sockets. “The wildlings burn their dead. We’ve always known that. Now I wished I’d asked them why, when there were still a few around to ask.”

Since white walkers are magical creatures, they shouldn't be bound to human restrictions on travel. Just like dragons can travel great distances by flying, I'm thinking white walkers can ride the cold, high winds and appear anywhere where conditions allow for their presence.

White walkers are frequently referred to as shadows. After Melisandre's shadowbaby disappeared Stannis was still alive, but weakened by the experience. We don't know for sure the process to create white walkers, but I suspect it includes blood sacrifice like the dragon hatching ritual did. If dragons are fire made flesh with the souls of humans inside, then ice made flesh would also have humans inside. It would make sense for there to be a type of rebirth - a transformation from human into ice.

Reading over the Prologue to GOT hints at how a group of eight wildlings may have been sighted (by Will) right as they began this transformation. They are all laying as if asleep, (well seven are laying - one is up a tree) but by the time Will brings Waymar Royce and Gared back to where he saw them, they were gone. Will noted that the firepit had not been used. Recall that Dany used a pyre to hatch the eggs, but if humans can be transformed into white walkers, then the cold would be used to "burn" the bodies to death, just as night is falling with a full moon.

How many white walkers come out of the woods to kill Waymar? I'm thinking the sole woman up the tree with the "far-eyes" was the priestess that was conducting the transformation, and I suspect she climbed down and walked away remaining human, with only the seven men being transformed.

PROLOGUE - (some bits omitted for clarity and to shorten)

“The camp is two miles farther on, over that ridge, hard beside a stream,” Will said. “I got close as I dared. There’s eight of them, men and women both. No children I could see. They put up a lean-to against the rock. The snow’s pretty well covered it now, but I could still make it out. No fire burning, but the firepit was still plain as day. No one moving. I watched a long time. No living man ever lay so still.”

“Did you see any blood?”

“Well, no,” Will admitted.

“Did you see any weapons?”

“Some swords, a few bows. One man had an axe. Heavy-looking, double-bladed, a cruel piece of iron. It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand.”

“Did you make note of the position of the bodies?”

Will shrugged. “A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the ground. Fallen, like.”

“Or sleeping,” Royce suggested.

“Fallen,” Will insisted. “There’s one woman up an ironwood, half-hid in the branches. A far-eyes.” He smiled thinly. “I took care she never saw me. When I got closer, I saw that she wasn’t moving neither.” Despite himself, he shivered.

<snip>

The knight’s smile was cocksure. “Will, lead us there. I would see these dead men for myself.”

<snip>

“Why are you stopping?” Ser Waymar asked.

“Best go the rest of the way on foot, m’lord. It’s just over that ridge.”

Royce paused a moment, staring off into the distance, his face reflective. A cold wind whispered through the trees. His great sable cloak stirred behind like something half-alive.

“There’s something wrong here,” Gared muttered.

The young knight gave him a disdainful smile. “Is there?”

“Can’t you feel it?” Gared asked. “Listen to the darkness.”

Will could feel it. Four years in the Night’s Watch, and he had never been so afraid. What was it?

<snip>

Will made no sound as he climbed. Behind him, he heard the soft metallic slither of the lordling’s ringmail, the rustle of leaves, and muttered curses as reaching branches grabbed at his longsword and tugged on his splendid sable cloak.

The great sentinel was right there at the top of the ridge, where Will had known it would be, its lowest branches a bare foot off the ground. Will slid in underneath, flat on his belly in the snow and the mud, and looked down on the empty clearing below.

His heart stopped in his chest. For a moment he dared not breathe. Moonlight shone down on the clearing, the ashes of the firepit, the snow-covered lean-to, the great rock, the little half-frozen stream.

Everything was just as it had been a few hours ago.

They were gone. All the bodies were gone.

“Gods!” he heard behind him. A sword slashed at a branch as Ser Waymar Royce gained the ridge. He stood there beside the sentinel, longsword in hand, his cloak billowing behind him as the wind came up, outlined nobly against the stars for all to see.

“Get down!” Will whispered urgently. “Something’s wrong.”

The wildlings had Ser Waymar Royce's sword. First, it's description:

Royce slid gracefully from his saddle. He tied the destrier securely to a low-hanging limb, well away from the other horses, and drew his longsword from its sheath. Jewels glittered in its hilt, and the moonlight ran down the shining steel. It was a splendid weapon, castle-forged, and new-made from the look of it.

Waymar's sword when fighting the Others:

Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. “For Robert!” he shouted, and he came up snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Other’s parry was almost lazy. When the blades touched, the steel shattered.

A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles. Royce went to his knees, shrieking, and covered his eyes. Blood welled between his fingers.

Later - Will finds the remains of the sword:

He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof. Gared would know what to make of it, and if not him, then surely that old bear Mormont or Maester Aemon. Would Gared still be waiting with the horses? He had to hurry.

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.

His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye. The right eye was open.

The pupil burned blue. It saw.

The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray. Long, elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around his throat. They were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was icy cold.

When the wildlings passed through the Wall a broken sword was tossed in one of the carts the Watch had ready:

As they passed, each warrior stripped off his treasures and tossed them into one of the carts that the stewards had placed before the gate. Amber pendants, golden torques, jeweled daggers, silver brooches set with gemstones, bracelets, rings, niello cups and golden goblets, warhorns and drinking horns, a green jade comb, a necklace of freshwater pearls … all yielded up and noted down by Bowen Marsh. One man surrendered a shirt of silver scales that had surely been made for some great lord. Another produced a broken sword with three sapphires in the hilt.

The smiling enemy:

“You wanted warriors, didn’t you? Well, there they are. Every one worth six o’ your black crows.”

Jon had to smile. “So long as they save those weapons for our common foe, I am content.”

“Gave you my word on it, didn’t I? The word of Tormund Giantsbane. Strong as iron, ’tis.” He turned and spat.

Amongst the stream of warriors were the fathers of many of Jon’s hostages. Some stared with cold dead eyes as they went by, fingering their sword hilts. Others smiled at him like long-lost kin, though a few of those smiles discomfited Jon Snow more than any glare. None knelt, but many gave him their oaths. “What Tormund swore, I swear,” declared black-haired Brogg, a man of few words.