Humans in Northrend

Argent Dawn
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Was there any humans in northrend before the lich king?

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There were iirc, but they were the test experiments for the plague of undeath - by the time of Wrath of the Lich King (or even Warcraft 3) there weren’t any left.

If you’re asking there’s those viking-like humans that you see in rp sometimes - no, no there’s not

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There’s the Grizzly Hills Trappers (rip), but I don’t know their history. Most of them were turned into the Wolf Cult and slain iirc.

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The Grizzly Hills trappers appear to have inhabited that part of Northrend since before the Alliance Vanguard and Arthas arrived in Warcraft 3 to find Mal’Ganis. The Alliance refers to them as “locals” and allegedly speak a ‘variant’ of Common. They also all have Russian-sounding names, such as Sasha, Mikhail, Anya and Petrov. Most of them shacked up with the Wolf Cult.

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This. The humans up there were fairly average to other humans and had those type of names.

But nothing of the “Bjorn Haraldsson the berserker” Viking humans. That’s just Vrykul and there weren’t/aren’t any humans like that.

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Btw since I made this post I might as well ask which class fits the best for playing the northrend campaign?

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Shaman :slight_smile:
Taunka there deal a lot with elements and even by force, having a shaman could help pacify the elements + a fire elemental can help you stay warm :heart:

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I just levelled a shaman lol but that does sound cool

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That seemingly infinite army of human corpses musta come from somewhere.
I doubt that such massive legions of people were all brought up there by boats between WC3 and wotlk.

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Four examples of humans in Northrend:

  • The trappers of Grizzly Hills which are Russian-inspired
  • Wintergarde Keep was built upon a village that was already there, perhaps human?
  • I seem to remember something about Valgarde also being already there by the time Alliance got to it
  • In the in game book “Icecrown and the Frozen Throne”, it mentions that the Lich King “continued to experiment with his plague of undeath by subjugating every human inhabitant of Northrend”, so there were already humans there.
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I recall the concept art for Valgarde having very Scandinavian features. It’s good that they went for something a bit different for the Trappers, mind you.

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Hey, don’t doxx me!

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Even the name is inspired by ValsgÀrde which is a Swedish town

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This is my peeve because Petrov is a surname, not a first name. Why can’t English fiction ever get Russian names right


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American fiction often has difficulty getting British-English names right, how do you expect them to get names from a whole other language right?

And the inhabitants of the rainy misery island care for nothing beyond their grim shores.

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As others have said, there is heavy precedent that Northrend has been inhabited by humans since at least before Warcraft 3. How they got there is another matter; they could be villages from Alliance expeditions, or even the descendants of some of the first devolved vrykul. Nowadays it would be easy to argue that there would be very few left, after the Wolfcult infected most of Grizzly Hills, and the Scourge has been running rampant for a good 20+ years.

If you want a character from Northrend, go for it, no reason not to, you just have to ask yourself why Northrend as opposed to any of the other kingdoms with more accessible lore. For example, if you wanted a viking-themed human, Arathi fostered a warlord culture held by the early humans (which maybe your character admired); or, Drustvar is a very Nordic inspired landscape, whose people are arguably the direct descendants of the Drustic vrykul that once settled there.

The Warcraft humans have a lot to them that would encourage a “viking/warlord” styled character, you just have to find the sort of character that suits that best. My suggestion would be Arathi, but if you want to go Northrend, go Northrend.

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No.
Kul Tirans are descendants of Gilnean settlers.
Drust ancestry is a bad headcanon take to cope with the size designers gave their models.

And nevertheless were all armed more or less as mid to late medieval armies would be. Not as vikings with halls and longboats. Even in WC3, Danath dressed in the same style as his Lordaeronian and Stormwindian contemporaries.

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Few things:

Drust ancestry is, at the very least, confirmed in quest text to explain the brand of Kul Tiran druidism.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Ulfar#Quotes
“We Thornspeakers joined Kul Tiran society. Some of their descendants heard the call of the wilds and wished to learn the ancient ways, and so we have taught them.”
This does not confirm that all Kul Tiran are Drust-descendants, but there is precedent for Thornspeakers, and by extension some Drustvar humans, to claim ancestry. It isn’t as headcanon as you think.

I’m talking about early Arathi, not present-day.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Thoradin
King Thoradin doesn’t dress to differently to his not-so-distant vrykul ancestors; it may not be traditionally “viking”, but it’s tribal enough for a Arathi-descendant to wish to relearn “The Old Ways” and engage in a humanity society that was not yet that detached from their vrykul ways.

There’s nothing wrong with taking certain creative liberties with human lore, because otherwise Blizzard has presented every human kingdom barring Kul Tiras and Gilneas as identical. Arathi is shown to be the cradle of civilization, and so it isn’t a massive stretch (nor unsupported by lore) to headcanon a warlord character who harkens back to the times of pre-Light humanity, where humans lived in tribes and behaved akin to the vrykul they had descended from. It happens irl, can happen here too.

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Some of the Kul Tirans’ descendants.

They got taught druidism by the Thornspeakers.
In no way does this imply mixed heritage for Kul Tirans.

A human society that, as far as we can tell, no longer exists anywhere. Not much to engage in.

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It’s one line of quest text; at this point we’d just be arguing about the semantics of what Ulfar was implying, but it isn’t far off to assume he was referring to the descendants of the Drust who joined Kul Tiran society.

The Drust, as a species, were effectively genocided/bred out of existence, evidenced by the fact there is only one living Drust remaining. You can’t argue that Ulfar’s words mean naught when we don’t have any official confirmation of what he means; it can be interpreted one of two ways, and until we have a confirmation (which I doubt we will), it’s fair to assume he means one thing over the other.

People in modern day Scandinavia can feel pride in their ancestors, and Western Europe has a plethora of contemporary pagan-revival sects. Like I sais, it happens irl, and it can happen here. In Torghast this week we literally meet Conan The Barbarian; yes, he’s a lame movie reference, but he’s canon. Nothing stopping a human from looking back at his ancestors and wanting to honour them. We should be encouraging RP concepts instead of shutting down stuff down like it’s 2014 again.