Bard’s Leap Summit is a high, windy clifftop southeast of Markarth, and you’ll usually spot its huge waterfall long before you reach it. Most people climb up through Lost Valley Redoubt, but if you’d rather not fight your way through a Forsworn camp, you can also come in from the west via Gloomreach or Runoff Caverns. Up top you get a Word Wall, a pair of busy hagravens and one of Skyrim’s best leaps of faith.
What you’ll find
- A stone bridge that leads out to a diving spot above the waterfall, with a small pool waiting far below.
- Two hagravens behind a structure draped with tanned leather, in the middle of turning a corpse into a Forsworn Briarheart.
- A Word Wall teaching one word of Become Ethereal, plus a chest right next to it.
- The ghost of Azzadal, a bard who once tried the same dive and did not exactly stick the landing.
Quests
The chest by the Word Wall is one of the possible spots for Hrolfdir’s Shield, the item Jarl Igmund of Markarth may ask you to recover.
Notable items
- Word Wall: Become Ethereal (see Skyrim shouts).
- At higher levels one of the hagravens may carry a Daedra heart.
Tips
Kill the hagravens quickly – if you dawdle, they finish their ritual and you have a Briarheart to deal with too. Once the summit is quiet, walk out over the waterfall and jump into the pool. Having Become Ethereal ready (or a horse handy) is cheap insurance against a bad landing. Climb out and Azzadal appears to tell you about his failed dive; listening to him raises your Speech by two levels, which is the best-paid swim in the province.
You don’t actually need to jump – stepping off the diving board and sliding down the rock face behind the falls also works. Knocking enemies off the top with Unrelenting Force is fun, though some of them land in the pool and survive.
Fast travelling straight here with a horse or a big group can end with someone spawning near the edge and falling to their death. Arrive somewhere nearby and walk the last stretch instead.
Good to know
Azzadal claims to have performed the whole “Poetic Edda” – a nod to the real Old Norse poem collection that helped preserve Norse mythology.
Nearby
Closest places covered on TamrielSaga: Lost Valley Redoubt, Cradle Stone Tower, Gloomreach, Fort Sungard, Valthume.
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.