I don't understand how it is possible for Bear Island to become a large commercial node. If I were on the east coast, with the city states and all of Essos, there wouldn't be any kind of problem, but being on the West Coast, who are you going to do business with?
honestly what I would do is go full on trojan horse pretend to be a ironborn where they let me in on the island then slaughter everyone one of them except for slaves and salt wives then take all they have food,gold, then burn the iron islands to the ground
