The Gift is a region to the south of the Wall under the control of the Night's Watch. It lies at the northern edge of the region known as the North. It was donated to the Night's Watch by House Stark when the order was founded thousands of years ago, in order to support the Night's Watch with food and provisions. The Gift is officially not subject to the authority of Winterfell, and is technically not part of "the North", but is a special administrative zone directly ruled by the Night's Watch. Culturally and socially, however, the lightly inhabited villages of the Gift are usually seen as just an extension of the North. By definition, the Gift is ruled by the Night's Watch, and thus contains no noble Houses. Therefore no special bastard surname was ever developed for the region, because these are legally only used by the bastard children of nobles.

The Gift is held to be as old as the Wall itself - which according to legend was raised 8,000 years ago. The region is called "the Gift" because it was given to the Night's Watch as a gift of land for their "sustenance and support", from which the Watch could draw a steady supply of food, livestock, firewood, etc. The myths say that  Brandon the Builder himself, the founder of House Stark and builder of the Wall, is the one who gifted these lands to the Watch.

The Gift extends immediately south of the Wall, stretching from the eastern to western coasts of Westeros. The southern border is roughly at the same parallel as the southern tip of the island of Skagos (slightly further north than the northern edge of Bear Island). The Kingsroad runs through the middle of the Gift, as it passes from Winterfell to Castle Black. The Gift is bordered to the south by the lands of House Umber, which are centered on their castle-seat at Last Hearth. As the northernmost noble House of the North (and the Seven Kingdoms as a whole) the Umbers often have to lead armies into the Gift to repel wildling raiding parties.

Notable places shown in the series are: