(Not the same anon) I kind of chalked Ice Spiders as a literary trick rather than being actual giant spiders. I mean I remember that in one of Jon’s chapters in ADWD that he had a dream while defending the Wall, and he was fighting wights climbing the Wall “like Ice spiders”. I thought it was potential foreshadowing where GRRM revealed something out of the horror genre with the undead twisting and clawing up the ice, serving as impromptu mounts for the others.

If ASOIAF has taught us anything, it’s that Old Nan speaks the truth:

“Now these were the days before the Andals came, and long before the women fled across the narrow sea from the cities of the Rhoyne, and the hundred kingdoms of those times were the kingdoms of the First Men, who had taken these lands from the children of the forest. Yet here and there in the fastness of the woods the children still lived in their wooden cities and hollow hills, and the faces in the trees kept watch. So as cold and death filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in him, and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders big as hounds—”

The pale spiders are not metaphors.