Nord Overview (Guide)

Introduction

It is said that the world was created when Shor made a great sacrifice of his very godhood. In revenge, his heart was ripped from his body and thrown to Nirn, forming Red Mountain around it. His wife Kyne then breathed on highest peak in Tamriel, the throat of the world and brought into existence the races of men. Many of them migrated north and in the land of distant green summers they became the Atmorans. Towering, hardy warriors, these animal totem worshiping stout-hearted men and women suffered decades of civil war and encroaching frost on their continent until at last a chieftain named Ysgramor convinced a group of them to sail south to the continent of Tamriel. On the northernmost shores under the shadow of the same mountain from which their ancestors first emerged, they settled. However the native snow elves, fearful of the spread of mankind, descended on their small settlement of Saarthal and massacred the innocent people there. Ysgramor and his two sons escaped and returned to Atmora to tell the story of the night of tears to their people, and then rallied 500 companions to their side to avenge them. When next they sailed their longboats to Tamriel it was not as mere settlers, but as fierce conquerors. They cut a bloody swath across the whole of the land that was touched by sky until not a single snow elf remained. Thus was the land of Skyrim tamed, and ruled by the descendants of Ysgramor's victorious warriors - the Nords.