Kaer Trolde

Kaer Trolde is the fortress of Clan an Craite and the seat of jarl Crach an Craite, on Ard Skellig, the largest island of the archipelago. Partly carved into the island’s highest mountain, it towers over a fjord and a busy harbor town, and from its upper terraces you can see most of the other isles: An Skellig, Spikeroog, Undvik and Hindarsfjall. Faroe is only visible from the top of a tower, looking south.

Skelligers like to tell how the castle was made. According to their legend, Grymmdjarr Iron Fang, son of Hemdall and Heulyn, the founders of Clan an Craite, chained a mountain on the seabed, dragged it up and carved the fortress out of it in seven days, so he could watch over the islands his brothers ruled. In The Witcher 3 it is where the jarls gather to bury their king and then fight over who comes next.

In The Witcher 3

Geralt’s first real stop in Skellige is the harbor below the castle, where the islanders are giving King Bran a funeral at sea. At the wake in the great hall (the main quest The King is Dead – Long Live the King) he meets the claimants to the throne, including Bran’s widow Birna and her son Svanrige, Crach’s children Cerys and Hjalmar, and the hot-tempered Madman Lugos, who can be talked down or taught some manners with fists. Yennefer then takes Geralt into the druid Ermion’s laboratory in the castle, where a guardian earth elemental attacks. Afterwards Crach asks Geralt to look after his children, which opens The Lord of Undvik and Possession.

Once both are done, everyone returns to Kaer Trolde for a feast in King’s Gambit, and it ends in blood when bears burst into the hall. Side with Cerys and you investigate inside the castle, from a tainted mead barrel in the cellar to a fiery escape through the tunnels below; side with Hjalmar and you take the fight to the vildkaarls of Fornhala. Either way, the new ruler of Skellige is proclaimed in Coronation at Gedyneith.

Quests in Kaer Trolde

Good to know

The fast travel signposts are Kaer Trolde Harbor and Bridge to Kaer Trolde. From the harbor town, a lift or a tunnel takes you up to the keep.
The harbor town has an inn, a herbalist and a notice board, and the blacksmith and armorer near the castle also play Gwent.
A Place of Power (Igni) lies in the tunnels beneath the castle, but you only pass it on Cerys’s path in King’s Gambit.
See the Skellige map for the rest of the Skellige Isles.

In the books

Kaer Trolde is already Crach an Craite’s seat in Sapkowski’s saga. Yennefer describes the port town below it as a dark, shapeless mass, like a crustacean washed ashore, and the town even has a branch of the Cianfanelli bank.