Off the northeastern shore of the North, where the Shivering Sea meets the Bay of Seals, lies the great and rugged island the smallfolk name Skagos, which in the Old Tongue means stone. Upon it dwell the Skagosi, a fierce and backward folk whom the rest of the North regards with fear and loathing, calling them Skaggs; they raise shaggy unicorns to ride and, it is whispered, still keep the ancient custom of eating the flesh of their enemies. The island came under the dominion of the Kings of Winter in the deeps of the Age of Heroes, as all the North did in time, yet its people never took easily to any rule but their own, and there came a day when the Skagosi cast off their fealty to Winterfell and rose in open rebellion against the direwolf.
The histories of so distant an age are thin and half legend, and the singers preserve more of the terror of the rebellion than of its course, but they agree upon its ending: a King of Winter of House Stark carried war across the cold waters of the bay and broke the rising, bringing the island once more beneath the rule of Winterfell. The cost of that reconquest was said to be grievous, for the Skagosi fought like the wild beasts of their own crags, and the island was never truly tamed. In later centuries the Skaggs would rise again, and it is recorded that a Stark lord fell putting down a second Skagosi rebellion in the reign of a Targaryen king; but the folk of Skagos remained a people apart, distrusted and let alone, a corner of the North that bends the knee in name and keeps its own savage ways in truth.