This reciprocity between project and place extends beyond the countryside. Another reason the marriage between “Thrones” and the region has been happier than any on the show is that the production’s material needs — armor, medieval weapons, elaborate costumes and jewelry — meshed well with the area’s longstanding artisanal traditions. “We’re good at that stuff,” Williams said.

Even when a fight was filmed in a place like Morocco, the spears were almost always built in Belfast. Fans who would like to try on a replica of Cersei’s crown can often do so at Steensons jewelers in Ballymena, because that’s where the original and other Westerosi finery were designed and made. (Though when I stopped in, I was told that the show had commandeered it for Season 8 — spoiler alert, I guess?)

This may be one explanation for the general lack of resentment evident in other locations besieged by “Thrones” tourists, like Dubrovnik, the exterior home of King’s Landing, which has been almost totally overrun.

“There are not many people in this country who haven’t been involved in some direct capacity,” Boake said. “Their brother made something for the show, or their sister was an extra, or their cousin worked on an episode.”

As we drove along the coast, Robinson reminisced about his time as Hodor’s double, dodging White Walker stuntmen in the Three-Eyed Raven’s cave as he dragged Bran’s double toward a green screen, in one of the show’s most famous scenes. “Then Kristian Nairn held the door,” he said. “He did the easy bit.”

Robinson, 52, was a former carpenter laid low by the global financial crisis, working as a tour guide when he applied to be a “Thrones” extra. Soon he was facing off with the likes of Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as a stand-in for the undead Mountain, a stint that became the hook for his Giant Tours, which takes small groups of “Thrones” fans up and down the coast.