Lore:Jurgen Windcaller

Jurgen Windcaller
Jurgen Windcaller in Sovngarde
Race	Nord	Gender	Male
Born		1st Era
Resided in		High Hrothgar Sovngarde
Appears in		Skyrim

"Fate drives you, but you follow your own path. Choose wisely, lest you wander into evil." – Jurgen Windcaller to the Last Dragonborn

Jurgen Windcaller, a Nord warrior who came to be called Jurgen the Calm, is said to have had the strongest thu'um of the First Era, possibly of all time. As a militant thu'um wielder, or "Tongue", he utilized his voice as a weapon and a way to grow in strength, like many Tongues of the time. This changed for Jurgen, however, when the Nordic armies suffered an ignominious defeat at Red Mountain. Jurgen would use the defeat as inspiration to discover the Way of the Voice and found the Greybeards, wielders of the voice who practiced fierce pacifism.

Following the defeat at Red Mountain, Jurgen began to look inward for answers as to how the strength of their Voices could fail. After seven years of introspection and contemplation of the history of the Voice, Jurgen finally realized that the Nords had grown arrogant with their use of the thu'um, much like the Dragons before them did. The Gods had not gifted them their thu'um for conquest and have been punished for misusing them, much like the dragons before them. He came to the belief that Voice should be used solely for the glory and worship of the gods, not the glory of men; that it was a means of attaining enlightenment, not a means of attaining power.

Jurgen returned to the Tongues in order to convince them of this way of thinking. They did not take to it easily, however, and Jurgen is said to have done battle with seventeen Tongues at once. It is said that Jurgen swallowed the Shouts of these Tongues for three days until they lay exhausted. Afterwards, they acknowledged the superiority that the Way of the Voice has given him, and traveled with him to the highest slopes of the Throat of the World, where Jurgen set his new home, devoting it to the studies of the Way of the Voice as a philosophy of peace and inner balance. The monks who followed him came to be called the Greybeards, and devote themselves to meditation at secluded High Hrothgar. Upon his death, Jurgen was buried at Ustengrav, an ancient fane in the marshes of Hjaalmarch.

Gallery

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  High Hrothgar, where Jurgen made his home and founded the Greybeards

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  The tomb of Jurgen Windcaller, as seen in Skyrim

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  The tomb of Jurgen Windcaller (Concept Art)

Notes

• On his tomb in Ustengrav, the word "Windcaller" is spelled out in the Daedric alphabet.
• An excerpt in The Improved Emperor's Guide to Tamriel credits Jurgen Windcaller with the discovery of the Thu'um.

See Also

• For game-specific information, see the Skyrim article.