Mount Anthor is a dragon lair southwest of Winterhold. The quickest way up is to fast travel to Saarthal and head straight south. Expect a dragon circling a Word Wall, a lot of snow and a very fine view – assuming you have time to enjoy it between fire breaths.
What you’ll find
- A resident dragon guarding the lair.
- A Word Wall teaching a word of Ice Form.
- An alchemy lab, oddly enough, for brewing restorative potions after the fight.
- Further up, Mount Anthor Summit, where two leveled spellcasters hang out if you climb there before finishing Dragon Rising.
- No treasure chest – this is the only dragon lair without one, so the dragon’s corpse is your loot.
Quests
Malur Seloth in Winterhold offers a bounty on the dragon of Mount Anthor. Kill it and you collect 500 gold. Fight the dragon before you approach the Word Wall: if you learn the word first, players report that the Ice Form word may not be granted after the dragon dies.
Notable items
- Word Wall – Ice Form.
- Whatever the dragon leaves behind – there is no chest to raid.
Tips
The mountaintop is open and exposed, so bring frost resistance and a bow or ranged spells to pull the dragon down. Use the rocks and the Word Wall as cover while it makes its strafing runs – though be warned that the dragon can occasionally get stuck against the wall itself. If the dragon simply is not there, try heading to another quest target and coming back.
And if you approach a landed dragon from behind on horseback, you may end up “riding” it for a second before physics remembers you exist and launches you and your horse across the landscape. Fun to watch, less fun to explain to the horse.
Good to know
Mount Anthor has a famous past. Back in the First Era, King Olaf One-Eye fought the great dragon Numinex here in a Thu’um duel said to have lasted for days, and dragged the defeated beast back to Whiterun as a prisoner. The keep later rebuilt and renamed to hold him became Dragonsreach.
Nearby
Closest places covered on TamrielSaga: Sightless Pit, Yorgrim Overlook, Forsaken Cave, Great Lift at Alftand, Shrine of Azura.
Location data (hold, map position, editor ID) read from the Skyrim game files; details checked against community wiki articles and summarised in our own words.