Northern Cyrodiil

In a stark contrast to the humid jungles that surround the Heartlands, the Brumath highlands and the accompanying Jerall mountains present a world much more akin to the neighbouring province of Skyrim. And indeed. the people of the region can in many ways be connected closer to their northern neighbours than the cosmopolitan Heartlanders.
The isolated north of Cyrodiil was spared much of the Ayleid machinations – their settlement being limited to a few outposts and tributaries –, leading the native population to remain relatively isolated. While the higher altitudes were favoured by the Jerallian tribes closely related to the peoples of High Cheydin who only ever came in contact with other peoples in the greater region through fur trade and raids, the southern frontier was populated by the more exotic northern Heartlanders who engaged far more with their southern kin. Isolation came to an end rather swiftly once the Nords had reached the Jeralls; the invaders pushed back the Ayleids, establishing the great city of the north. Although the region came under Nordic rule, the Heartlanders in the more fertile south would come to dominate through sheer numbers. Through contact with the Heartlands, cultural diffusion brought on by the Nordic invasion did not impact the land as much as it did north of the mountains and although many of the cultural practices of the north, as well as many Nordic and North Colovian loanwords (after all, many of the invaders that had settled around Bruma were recently Nordicised Kreathmen) became common even among the southerners, the smaller population of settlers would soon dissipate among the ever-growing southern population that had settled in Bruma. Only among the wilder Jerallians did the Nords leave a greater impact, their tongue becoming much more Cyro-Nordic in nature. In Bruma, even the Jerallians would adorn their faces in tattoos, although simple ones, yet their beliefs align more with the Nordic than Cyrodiilic pantheon.

Leaving the terraced southern part of the Brumath highlands, the landscape swiftly shifts to an even more extreme one compared to the southern plains. North of Bruma, settlements become sparse as farming is not viable in the land of permanent glaciers. Isolated communities of Jerallians exist there, nonetheless. Hunting is the primary means of survival for most of them, along with trading furs and in some cases mining. Some of the wilder tribes still engage in raids like their ancestors were known to, although they pose much less of a threat. The Imperial presence keeps them contained primarily to the wildest parts where they resort to raiding smaller villages or travelers.
Although the people of the Jeralls are commonly known by one name, the population of one of Cyrodiil’s (and Skyrim’s) most isolated regions differ greatly from one region to the other. The greatest element that factors into this is geography: the main division is between the more civilized valley-folk and the wilder tribes in the higher elevations, away from the influences from the Heartlands to the south or the neighbouring regions in Skyrim to the north. Although the mountain people live in the regions bordering Skyrim and in Hrothgar in Skyrim itself, they have mostly retained their old ways and tongues, although some tribes’ tongues share similarity to the more civilised languages. Some have seen considerable intermarrying with Nords yet remained distinctly Jerallian in culture. It is the settled Jerallians in the valleys and lower mountain communities that have aligned closer to their neighbours, with many abandoning the old ways completely. The many ruins of old villages across the region tell the story of imperalisation that made whole tribes leave for warmer lands, drowning them out among the far more numerous communities.