Crannogmen

The crannogmen are the inhabitants of the swamps of the Neck in Westeros, the southernmost part of the North which borders the Riverlands. They are ruled by House Reed.

The crannogmen are so-called because so called because they live in small villages in the deep swamps, formed of reeds and thatch which sit atop artificial floating islands made out of logs, which are known as Crannog|crannogs. Thus the villages of the crannogmen actually move around throughout the swamps and bogs of the Neck, and do not have a set physical location. Even Greywater Watch, the seat of House Reed, is built on a large crannog which can actually be moved deeper into the swamps to avoid invaders. Because their locations continually change, it is impossible to train messenger-ravens to deliver messages to them, and thus no Maesters are assigned to them.

Hardy and reclusive swamp-dwellers, the crannogmen are derisively referred to by outsiders as "mudmen" and "frog-eaters". They are a poor people, mostly subsisting on fishing and frogging, as well as eating any game they can hunt. By the standards of some of their neighbors their culture is somewhat primitive, but they are very woodcrafty, with great knowledge of their terrain as well as of poisons made by local plants and animals in the swamps, which they often coat their weapons with.

Due to their self-imposed isolation, the crannogmen are almost like looking through a window back in time to how the First Men lived before the Andal Invasion. The crannogmen proudly worship the Old Gods of the Forest, maintain a close connection to nature, and were rumored to be close to the Children of the Forest in past millenia. In other respects, the crannogmen are something of a unique hybrid culture between what is normally found in the North and the kingdoms of southern Westeros. As the southernmost region of the North, their climate of their home is not as cold and desolate as most of the rest of the North, but is instead humid, swampy, and overgrown with fish and game. The surroundings of their home thus shaped their way of life to be quite different from that of their cousins in the main parts the North.

The crannogmen do not march into open battle, and if invaded rely on retreating their crannogs deeper into the swamps. The crannogmen will then use guerrilla tactics, poisoned weapons, and superior knowledge of the difficult swampy terrain to bleed the invaders through attrition. For ten thousand years, the crannogmen have proven to be very difficult to conquer, though otherwise they usually seclude themselves in their swamps and do not trouble outsiders. They have a centuries-old feud with House Frey, whose lands (in the northernmost part of the Riverlands) are on the southern border of their own (in the southernmost part of the North), and who often try to encroach on the lands of the crannogmen.

In the books
In the ''A Song of Ice and Fire novels,