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Atlas of Ice and Fire


Werthead

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An Economic Map of the Seven Kingdoms

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Even after the Conquest. People in Scotland barely sound like people in England, after all these centuries. Heck people in one English county hardly sound like people in the next English county, and the entire England could fit into the Karhold lands.

 

That's not really true. There's accent and dialect differences, but people in Orkney can easily understand those from Scilly and all points inbetween and people from Connemara (well, almost) can understand those from Norfolk. In addition, it's not really distance that's the issue: people in the United States can understand one another across much vaster distances with no major accent variation (although certainly some minor ones, like Baltimore versus Everywhere That Isn't Baltimore). Population density and what people regard as "long distances" (which varies massively from place to place) factor into that.

I mean, the language thing is sticking a band-aid over the side of the Titanic really, but it's the best we can do.

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22 hours ago, Werthead said:

An Economic Map of the Seven Kingdoms

That's not really true. There's accent and dialect differences, but people in Orkney can easily understand those from Scilly and all points inbetween and people from Connemara (well, almost) can understand those from Norfolk. In addition, it's not really distance that's the issue: people in the United States can understand one another across much vaster distances with no major accent variation (although certainly some minor ones, like Baltimore versus Everywhere That Isn't Baltimore). Population density and what people regard as "long distances" (which varies massively from place to place) factor into that.

I mean, the language thing is sticking a band-aid over the side of the Titanic really, but it's the best we can do.

Loved the article on the economy of Westeros.

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@Werthead I was wondering if you have made, or know of, a decent (accurate!) map of the layout at Castle Black? I did check your site first and did not find one. My pardons if I missed it.

Thanks :cheers:

p.s.

I found a bunch online that fans have made in the Minecraft game :dunno::lol:

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20 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

@Werthead I was wondering if you have made, or know of, a decent (accurate!) map of the layout at Castle Black? I did check your site first and did not find one. My pardons if I missed it.

Thanks :cheers:

p.s.

I found a bunch online that fans have made in the Minecraft game :dunno::lol:

Nope.

Caste and city maps were on the agenda, but I haven't found a way yet of doing them that's to my liking.

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The big linguistic divide in Westeros should be the North vs South. I can buy that languages across the South would be much more homogenized than they were in real-life Europe, because of heavy cultural similarities and the one-two punch of the Maesters and Faith acting to keep a common language present in the courts of the lords plus the cities and towns (although there should be some interesting peasant variations in dialect). That's happened in real life as well - Latin and Greek were widely spoken in the western and eastern halves of the Roman Empire respectively. 

But that's much weaker in the case of the North. There are maesters, but only one per significant lord, and the North is significantly more spread out and thinly populated than the South. The Faith is barely present aside from White Harbor, and there was no invasion of Andal people with their particular tongue because the North stopped it. Even if the maesters teach the lords and their households the "proper" common tongue, the broader dialect of people in the North should be really distinct and different from that of folks in the South. 

The same might be true for the Ironborn, who seem kind of suspicious of maesters and rarely tolerated the Faith. But in that case I figure that they took enough salt wives and thralls for it to keep their language similar to that of the mainland (plus the Andals did invade and conquer the islands, even if they then went native). 

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  • 8 months later...

Updated with the voyage of the Sun Chaser.

This was a pain in the backside because GRRM didn't give the fleet enough time to get very far from Westeros: 12 days before becoming becalmed, then hit by 4 storms in 4 days and then they reach the islands, which puts the islands really not that far from Westeros at all (1,200-1,500 miles, perhaps).

That's less of an issue for the islands, but certainly a bigger one for Lady Meredith getting back to Westeros afterwards, as it becomes less plausible that they missed the Summer Islands and wound up on Sothoryos. The only conclusion I can come to is that they were blown way off course to the south by the storms that are mentioned.

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  • 8 months later...
  • 2 months later...
7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Nice work. Question about Castle Cerwyn. In the books it is less than a day’s ride from Winterfell. However, based on the scale of that map it would appear to be 100-150 miles from Winterfell. I think it should be maybe a third of that distance away.

We have to go with the previous maps, which place Cerwyn firmly where it is. I'm making it on the scale about 60 miles, so an optimistic (very optimistic) day's ride, but maybe they were exaggerating, or there's a more direct straight route rather than following the Kingsroad.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 1/19/2019 at 7:31 AM, Werthead said:

Updated with the voyage of the Sun Chaser.

This was a pain in the backside because GRRM didn't give the fleet enough time to get very far from Westeros: 12 days before becoming becalmed, then hit by 4 storms in 4 days and then they reach the islands, which puts the islands really not that far from Westeros at all (1,200-1,500 miles, perhaps).

That's less of an issue for the islands, but certainly a bigger one for Lady Meredith getting back to Westeros afterwards, as it becomes less plausible that they missed the Summer Islands and wound up on Sothoryos. The only conclusion I can come to is that they were blown way off course to the south by the storms that are mentioned.

Regarding the Planetos's world map, I always picture a big continent in the middle of the "Pacific" ocean (to the right of the map), much in the same way America is the middle of Europe/Africa and Asia.

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  • 2 months later...

The Size of Westeros (revisited).

This was good for pinning down with a high degree of accuracy (as much as we are ever going to get) the size of the Seven Kingdoms and the constituent areas:

The Seven Kingdoms: 3,062,967 miles² (square miles)

  • The Gift: 63,347 miles²
  • The North: 1,132,154 miles²
  • The Vale: 255,016 miles²
  • The Iron Islands: 11,136 miles²
  • The Riverlands: 268,881 miles²
  • The Crownlands: 130,148 miles²
  • The Westerlands: 192,720 miles²
  • The Reach: 479,135 miles²
  • The Stormlands: 201,967 miles²
  • Dorne: 328,472 miles²
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Yep. Good job. 

Now to test these territorial sizes against population estimates to consider the comparative population densities.

For example, Dorne is less than a third the North’s size, and mostly desert. So if these two regions have roughly similar population densities the North should have three times Dorne’s population.

The Stormlands has less than a fifth the North’s territory and is confirmed by the World Book as being sparsely populated by southron standards. Even if it has twice the North’s population density, the North will have 2.5 times as many people as the Stormlands.

The Westerlands is barely one sixth the North’s size. So even if it had 5 times the North’s population density, the North would still have a larger population.

To fit these numbers into a consistent overall picture, I calculate regional populations of approximately :

North - 5.5 million - 5 per square mile

West - 4.5 million - 24 per square mile

Stormlands - 2.5 million - 12 per square mile

Dorne - 2.25 million - 7 per square mile

EDIT

Note that army sizes are impacted greatly by wealth and logistical capacity, so in the case of the West a 4.5m population would merely require a mobilisation rate of 1.25% to exceed 50k troop numbers quite easily.

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Got this feeling that the North is rather high there. 

Also, FWIW, Wethead's results are uncannily close to mine when I did a similar exercise over 10 years ago. I think we were like .3% difference on some of these, using different maps and techniques.

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18 hours ago, Ran said:

Got this feeling that the North is rather high there. 

Also, FWIW, Wethead's results are uncannily close to mine when I did a similar exercise over 10 years ago. I think we were like .3% difference on some of these, using different maps and techniques.

Yes it is very close. 

Regarding population numbers - it comes down to a realistic comparative density. Then it’s simple math based on square miles.

I can’t see Dorne having a much higher density than the North - more of the North is actually habitable than Dorne. So it gives a lower limit approximation for the North’s density, as Dorne surely has at least 2 million inhabitants, spread over 328k square miles. Thereafter the math leads you to a reasonable result.

 

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21 minutes ago, Ran said:

Got this feeling that the North is rather high there.

Year 1500 there were only about 300 cavalrymen in Finland when estimated population was about 300.000. So only about 1 per mille was a horseman.

Medieval farming methods simply could not produce enough surplus to support any more members of elite. After all most cavalrymen were VIPs. Just keeping their horses alive to spring was very hard during winters that usually lasted ONLY less than 6 months. So I am wondering how they do that during winters that could last years.

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56 minutes ago, Loose Bolt said:

Year 1500 there were only about 300 cavalrymen in Finland when estimated population was about 300.000. So only about 1 per mille was a horseman.

Medieval farming methods simply could not produce enough surplus to support any more members of elite. After all most cavalrymen were VIPs. Just keeping their horses alive to spring was very hard during winters that usually lasted ONLY less than 6 months. So I am wondering how they do that during winters that could last years.

The North has around 5000 heavy cavalry, just with Robb. Probably well over 7000 in the entire North, therefore. Using your metric above, it is quite clear that the North is not equivalent to Finland - or any Scandinavian country.

Edit

In fact, the Karstarks on their own have 300 heavy cavalry. With a population roughly equivalent to the 300k you listed for Finland, most likely.

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32 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The North has around 5000 heavy cavalry, just with Robb. Probably well over 7000 in the entire North, therefore. Using your metric above, it is quite clear that the North is not equivalent to Finland - or any Scandinavian country.

Yes, the North is huge both in population and size compared any medieval Nordic country.

For instance when lord Karstark came to Winterfell his task force included as many infantry and cavalry men that were available in here 1500 and his castellan seemed to be able to call hundreds of more men at arms later. So even 1 banner man of Starks had access more warriors than medieval Finland.

So I agree that total population of the North should be at least 5 million may be even more to be able to call at arms over 5000 heavy cavalry men.

PS. Calling Finland a Scandinavian country is as good idea than going a pub full of drunken Irishmen and calling them loyal subjects of Queen of England. Finland might have been part of Sweden until 1808. But we are not that anymore. For that reason I used term Nordic country when I talked about group of countries including both Sweden and Finland.

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9 minutes ago, Loose Bolt said:

Yes, the North is huge both in population and size compared any medieval Nordic country.

For instance when lord Karstark came to Winterfell his task force included as many infantry and cavalry men that were available in here 1500 and his castellan seemed to be able to call hundreds of more men at arms later. So even 1 banner man of Starks had access more warriors than medieval Finland.

So I agree that total population of the North should be at least 5 million may be even more to be able to call at arms over 5000 heavy cavalry men.

PS. Calling Finland a Scandinavian country is as good idea than going a pub full of drunken Irishmen and calling them loyal subjects of Queen of England. Finland might have been part of Sweden until 1808. But we are not that anymore. For that reason I used term Nordic country when I talked about group of countries including both Sweden and Finland.

Apologies. Wasn’t aware of that. Will remember in future.

 

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