Craster's Keep

A wildling's hall beyond the Wall

The daubed hall of Craster, a free folk man who keeps his daughters as wives and stays on cold terms with harder things.

The fuller tale

CrasterÔÇÖs Keep is a midden heap with a hall on top ÔÇö one smoky longhouse behind a dirt wall, north of the Wall and outside every law but its ownerÔÇÖs. Craster styles himself a friend to the Watch, and the rangers use his roof and hate themselves for it, because the price of his hospitality is agreeing not to notice things: the daughters he marries, the wives who are his daughters, and the sons who are never, ever seen. The keep is the storyÔÇÖs first lesson that some bargains keep you alive and cost you everything else.

The truth of the missing sons is the taleÔÇÖs coldest secret ÔÇö left in the woods for the things in the dark, a tithe paid to powers the Watch has stopped believing in. And it is under CrasterÔÇÖs roof that the Watch itself breaks: the survivors of the Fist, starving and mutinous, turn on their own Lord Commander, and the Old Bear dies in a pigsty of a hall at the hands of his sworn brothers. Gilly ÔÇö one daughter-wife, one unsanctioned son ÔÇö walks out of that ruin into the storyÔÇÖs keeping, which is more escape than the place ever allowed anyone before.

The page and the screen

The show returns to the keep for an invented chapter: the mutineers linger there under Karl Tanner, BranÔÇÖs party is briefly caught, and Jon leads a raid from Castle Black to put the traitors down. In the books nobody goes back ÔÇö the mutineers scatter or rot where they sit, and CrasterÔÇÖs hall simply drops out of the world, which is somehow the bleaker ending.

The chronicle here

Jon storms Craster's Keep; Locke dies with a snapped neck; Bran wargs Hodor for the second time and slips away north. (S4┬ÀE5)
At Craster's Keep the Old Bear sups with a man who weds his daughters and gives his sons to the wood; Jon holds his tongue and hates it. (ACOK 24)
At Craster's Keep the Watch's discipline snaps: Craster is killed at his own board, the Old Bear is stabbed dying, and Sam flees with Gilly and her newborn son. (ASOS 34)