Northern cavalry - a discussion

[Bernie Mac]

23 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

2. Direpuppy's comment about extreme positive and negative assessments of the North's strength

Direpuppy, I dispute your assertion that I take extreme positions on the North's strength. I take positions based on the evidence. My assessment of the North's strength has traditionally been a figure of 45k, which agrees with the semi-canon RPG numbers and agrees with Martin's comments that Robb wasn't able to raise the North's full strength. It is endorsed by the cavalry numbers we have seen and can logically expect to still see based on quotes provided.

 

Has GRRM actually ever said that in regards to Robb?

[Free Northman Reborn]

40 minutes ago, Bernie Mac said:

 

Has GRRM actually ever said that in regards to Robb?

Martin has said this:

... but the north is much bigger, so it takes longer for an army to gather. And life is harsher there as well, so lords and smallfolk both need to think carefully before beating those plowshares into swords.

The implication is that there are two primary factors which reduce the size of any given army that the North can mobilize. The first is the time constraint. In the North it takes longer to gather their full strength than in the South. So if you are pressed for time - as Robb was - you cannot wait to gather the whole strength of the North.

The second constraint is the time of year in which you raise your army. If it is Harvest time, you are out of luck, because Northern lords are loathe to send their men off to war during Harvest. In this particular case, both of the contraints applied, as it was both Harvest time, and Robb was pressed for time to march South.

Hence, it was a perfect storm of factors that resulted in the smallest possible army that could be raised by the North.

[Bernie Mac]

30 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Martin has said this:

... but the north is much bigger, so it takes longer for an army to gather. And life is harsher there as well, so lords and smallfolk both need to think carefully before beating those plowshares into swords.

The implication is that there are two primary factors which reduce the size of any given army that the North can mobilize. The first is the time constraint. In the North it takes longer to gather their full strength than in the South. So if you are pressed for time - as Robb was - you cannot wait to gather the whole strength of the North.

The second constraint is the time of year in which you raise your army. If it is Harvest time, you are out of luck, because Northern lords are loathe to send their men off to war during Harvest. In this particular case, both of the contraints applied, as it was both Harvest time, and Robb was pressed for time to march South.

Hence, it was a perfect storm of factors that resulted in the smallest possible army that could be raised by the North.

But Robb did take longer than both the Westerlands and the Riverlands to raise his army and given that some of his Lords complain about the lack of men to bring in the harvest it appears that his men did not think too carefully about those 'plowshares'. 

 

GRRM in that quote makes no mention that Robb did not take his full strength. It is a little disingenuous to say that he has. You may or may be right about the North's military strength but to use a vague quote from GRRM as evidence is a little misleading. 

 

 

[Universal Sword Donor]

41 minutes ago, Bernie Mac said:

But Robb did take longer than both the Westerlands and the Riverlands to raise his army and given that some of his Lords complain about the lack of men to bring in the harvest it appears that his men did not think too carefully about those 'plowshares'. 

 

GRRM in that quote makes no mention that Robb did not take his full strength. It is a little disingenuous to say that he has. You may or may be right about the North's military strength but to use a vague quote from GRRM as evidence is a little misleading. 

 

 

in the semi-cannon RPG, yes he does: 

http://imgur.com/aDMsWcJ

For whatever reason the pdf won't let me copy the text.

[Lord Varys]

7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Firstly, I acknowledge your consistency in your view of the North. Your  post above and the others leading up to it clearly demonstrate what shapes your estimates of Northern troop numbers, northern cavalry ratios and Northern society in general. I will say that I think you underestimate Northern society by an order of magnitude, though.

I try to be consistent.

7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Lone homesteaders are simply not a feasible model for a medieval society. Instead, you will have tens of thousands of small villages, where a bunch of farmers come together to pool their produce and engage in barter and general resource exchange. A typical village might consist of maybe two dozen families. Say about 50-100 people.

That is just a wrong picture of medieval lifestyle, and even more unrealistic in the case of the North. We have a region with a very low population density with essentially no infrastructure on a cultural level where the lower classes are constantly exploited by their betters. 

This is not the kind of society where there is a lot trading going on. You have what you need to do your work and you grow and slaughter/hunt what you need to eat. If you are a peasant then you don't go anywhere aside from, perhaps, some harvest feast in a neighboring village or to some other similar gatherings you can get there without much trouble.

The idea that people were specializing in the whole agriculture department makes no sense in this kind of environment, and that goes for the North as much as the the average peasant in the Riverlands and elsewhere. You grow as many crops as you need for yourself, not as many as you could possibly sell or trade for other things you might need. That would be ridiculous because if you harvest goes wrong you and your family would die.

You also overlook that families in this setting would include extended families (grandparents, cousins, etc.) living together, making the whole thing much closer to some sort of clan thing than the modern family which usually only consists of parents as a few children. The peasants in Westeros would usually have easily have a dozen children (so many would at least be born). Two dozen families would be much more people than just 50-100 people.

7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

And this village will produce food and provide a portion of it to their local "Master" (the term "Master" being used here in place of a southron Landed Knight). There might be a dozen such villages on the land of such a Master. This Master, in turn, will have a keep, and either be sworn to a petty lord - along with a bunch of other Masters - or directly to a House like the Manderlys, who have 100 such Masterly Houses sworn to them. Sometimes even directly to House Stark itself, if they happen to live on the direct Stark lands.

While this sort of correctly describes the feudal landscape throughout Westeros (although it is still far to rigid for my taste - we don't know whether there are always landed knights, we don't know whether petty lords always also have landed knights, and so on) there is no reason to assume that such structures exist everywhere, especially in the North.

The clansmen are legal system of their own, and there are other large regions in the North about which we have no idea. Do the people at the Stony Shore, Sea Dragon Point, Cape Kraken and its adjacent lands (south of Blazewater Bay and west of the Neck), or elsewhere actually have any noble overlords of this or that type? We don't know. It could very well be that there are just people out there who don't answer directly to some regional lord but directly to Winterfell - just as the clansmen do. We know that the Umbers control a vast portion of land but we have basically no idea about the political geography of the North.

The Glovers and Tallharts qualify as masterly/landed knight houses but they control vast portions of land. Why should we assume there are plenty of keeps and holdfasts around on their lands as there are in the Riverlands and the Reach?

Back in the days of the petty kings many a king would have needed such structures to secure his borders but the Starks have conquered the North a long time ago, and unlike the southern kingdoms many of the Northern regions should actually be accustomed to long periods of peace. The Starks had occasional trouble with the Boltons and a long war with the Vale in the east. The wildling threat is comparatively new, and the Ironborn should never have been a major threat as far inland as Torrhen's Square or the Glover lands in the depths of the Wolfswood (certainly not while the Glover men were at home).

7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

So clearly, the idea that House Stark has only Ser Rodrik's House sworn to them because he is the only one that was mentioned, is ludicrous.

That was not was I said. I talked about household knight or their equivalents. And household knights are defined as attending their liege in his household/castle. But there are simply no such man in Winterfell. That is a fact. All Lord Eddard has is a personal guard. But those are not household knights. Or rather, not all of them qualify as such (Jory and Alyn could).

7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

How many Houses have directly been named as being sworn to House Manderly? 

Actually, we can assume that House Woolfield - the house of Wylis Manderly's wife - may be a vassal house of the Manderlys. You are right that we don't know any names there. But we have a very precise picture of Winterfell and there simply no men there. We don't have as clear a picture of White Harbor. If we did, and if there were no Manderly knights mentioned to be there I'd be the first to point that something doesn't add up there.

7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Not a single one that I can recall. And yet Lord Manderly states that he has a dozen lords and a hundred landed knights sworn to him. The same would apply, in varying numbers, for every other major House in the North.

That was my point, too. I just don't think that this adds up to 3,400 mounted men armed and equipped as the southron knights. 

I also never said there would be no landed knight equivalents or petty lords sworn to Winterfell. I just pointed out that it would be very odd to assume that a lot of those men would be living near enough to Winterfell to make a difference. Else those men would have sent representatives to hang out at Winterfell. Not all of them would have gone with Robb, especially not the elder guys. Just as all the other noble houses left some relations back home those men would have left somebody back home, too, especially the women. Yet Prince Bran is later not attended by a retinue old landed knights and their grandchildren and a lot of their women. Why is it that only Ser Rodrik Cassel is at Winterfell?

That makes no sense if there are, say, 200-400 landed knight equivalents on the Winterfell lands.

I try to resolve such discrepancies by assume the actual numbers of the noble elite ruling of the North - which would include landed knight equivalents, masters, petty lord, and lords - is very low. There are some of them, and they have men in their service, but these men wouldn't be as well equipped as the people they work for (or only a very small percentage of them would be).

That makes the most sense, especially in light of the fact that resources are scarce and winter is coming. An average lord cannot afford the coin to pay some sworn sword enough so that the man can maintain costly armor and fine horses. That is simply not very likely.

2 hours ago, Protagoras said:

Ok, lets start with the armour and gear first.

I agree with you that there won´t be many Tobho Motts in the North (as I wrote earlier - the top names will shun the North since they can get better offers in a city (which has more to offer in terms of clientele and freedom) BUT there will be more armourers than him. There will be decent armoursmiths who can still make gear of a high quality tha simply won´t be able to all survive in the same place and it all comes down to supply and demand. If I am a smith who has a monopoly in King´s landing and make big bucks, I am not gong to leave, ever. But what if I don´t sell that much in King´s landing, because there are already 50 of us and at least half of them are a good as me if not better? What happens then is that I leave. And if there are fewer smiths in the north that also means less competition. Sure, Lord Stark might only pay me 2/3 of what I could earn in King´s landing, and half of it is not in coin but in land (which might not be something I want since money is flexible) BUT my only competetor is Mikken who clearly is a decent smith but no Tobho Mott.

So by pure logic there should be "traveling armorers" who have gone north simply because that mean a chance for them to get a job. The market will be saturated in the south after a while, and regardless on how harsh and unforgiving land it is, it still beats starving in the south competing against many others for the same patrons. And Umber might not have an own "emigrated" armoursmith, but there might be one at Barrowton, or White harbor (if not several). There is no reason to import the armour from the south. 

Honestly, I don't think I can buy that narrative. That sounds way too modern and market-based for me. We are talking about a medieval feudal society, here, not some kind form of early capitalism without much technology. Travel and the like was hard. People wouldn't have liked it, not to mention that it was dangerous.

And the idea that any refined person would have considered traveling up north because you could find employment there is about as likely, I think. We know how unattractive that place. You don't go anywhere where it is cold and you don't get the same kind of cultural infrastructure in a city. Gold dragons are not worth as much in Last Hearth as they are in KL.

2 hours ago, Protagoras said:

And yes, super great armor and weaponry might not be necessary BUT that doesn´t mean people up there won´t want them. If I was lord Umber, I would want the best armour money can buy, regardless of opponents. In short, while there might be a difference it shoud not be enourmous, especially since you can import that fancy southron armour if you really want to. 

That wouldn't make much sense. You usually don't want to most expensive stuff unless you are the richest guy, and you actually need the stuff. You don't need the best armor on the world to fight wildlings.

2 hours ago, Protagoras said:

As for horses, I always assumed that the regional overlords took out taxes from their bannermen and that those overlords in turn pay their taxes to the king. So, when Ned gets Ryswell horses as payment then Robert certainly will get his cut but the Ryswells doesn´t really pay taxes straigth to the king.

What little we know about the taxes is that trade and the like would be taxed (especially the cities, where the bulk of the import-export business would take place). The smallfolk would pay rents, and their landlords would also pay rents to their lieges (or some other kind of payment - military service, for instance) if they hold their lands in their name. The same goes for the king, in the end. It is the working class (i.e. the commoners who produce enough stuff to actually be able to sell it) who actually have the money you could collect in taxes. 

There are some noble houses in Westeros - the Redwynes, Butterwells, Hightowers, Lannisters, and so on - who seem to be heavily invested in trade themselves. They would also have to pay taxes (and we know that for Lord Paxter Redwyne) but one assumes that the North would be mostly too poor to actually provide the Iron Throne with many taxes aside from the White Harbor region.

2 hours ago, Protagoras said:

And I think the problem with assuming that the mountain garrons could qualify as some kind of cavalry is that A. The garron is a small, sturdy pony and unsuitable for the role of armoured cavalry and escpecially B. The Mountain clans seems to be more of a loosely organized group who have more similarities to the earlier time eras. And in those time eras, the horse was not seen as a weapon in combat. Again, when you want to the battle in the viking era you might have ridden a horse but once there you stepped off it an fought on foot. The horses are made for riding and carrying cargo and not fighting in wars.

That is why I also assume that not all the northern horse would ride such garrons. They wouldn't be real cavalry, that much is clear. I just doubt the number of the Northern cavalry. And I also doubt the idea that the cavalry could be more quicker assembled. Robb certainly had more time to squeeze men out of the lands close to Winterfell because he could reach them much quicker, and ensure that people put much more effort to recruiting men. Considering that the Umbers and Karstark also came with footmen in a huge train we have to assume pretty much no Northern lord with some armored lances just sent them off and never bothered to recruit any footmen. 

2 hours ago, Protagoras said:

And you are aware that there are more options than Garrons and Chargers/Destriers, right? A poor northerner might choose, say a Rounsey instead. There are other alternatives for less rich noblemens too, most likely also produced in the North, if not Ryswell then some minor family (since Rounseys cost less and therefore gives less profit).

As I've said repeatedly, my knowledge about horses is very limited. I know there are many different breeds, though, and I expected something of that sort. I never said the Northmen would have no war horses to be used in battle.

2 hours ago, Protagoras said:

As for the winters, it is a non issue since we know Westeros has horses and animals - even in the North. Doesn´t really matter how unrealistic it is. GRRM say they exist - make it work. Maybe "nature have found a way" or something.

Tell that to bear who has prepared for a hibernation period of four years only to realize this is a six-year-winter. The seasons are basically ridiculous and could only work reasonably if the entire flora and fauna were to follow completely different (magical) laws than life in reality. And there is no indication that this is the case.

But you are right. That is a separate issue. I just addressed that because I consider the fact of chargers and destriers dying like flies in an autumn storm in the knight as a very strong sign that such animals do not thrive in the North. There could be some hardy breeds in the Rills or the Manderly lands that are up to this kind of weather but it would still be very costly to feed them throughout winter.

[direpupy]

10 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

1)That is basically far too complicated in a medieval setting. People weren't advanced enough to do that kind of thing, nor was it necessary to do so, especially not in a sparsely populated area. You mainly grew stuff for yourself and your own. If there was a surplus, fine, if not, it was fine, too. And the idea that the average peasant actually can sell a lot of food makes no sense whatsoever in light of the fact that people need to prepare for winter. Especially in the North the focus would be on foods they could store for a long time in cold temperatures.

2)The idea that the society is based very much on food trade isn't very convincing to me.

3)You basically need just some plans to get some sheep grazing. That is far less complicated than finding suitable land to grow some crops. And if the people in the North have anything it would be empty plains.

4)I'm not challenging the idea that the average settlement in a more populated area of the Norths consists of a dozen families or so, who live reasonably close together. But since we don't know whether they have to interact or trade with other people 100 miles away or not it doesn't make a lot of sense to assert that this is the case. Farming is hard work. You don't take your time off to make some journey. There could be harvest feasts and the like (after all, that's when a lot of work that has to be done in the outside is over).

5)We know that there are some yeomen in the Riverlands who would be free. But we also know that King Aerys I commanded the smallfolk who left their lands and villages during the drought to return there, suggesting that the majority of the peasants were not free to do this kind of thing.

6)No, it is not. The vast majority of the people in medieval setting would live up and die without ever leaving their community. The men we meet on the Osgrey lands are not likely to have ever left them (the guys marching with the Black Dragon excluded). The chances that the Northmen peasants are different doesn't convince at all. Traders, merchants, craftsmen, and hunters would travel. Shepherds would also migrate with their herds (but usually only on the lands where they are allowed to graze). But the average peasant who is basically just trying to feed his family wouldn't go on any journeys.

7)We don't even know if there are market towns in the North.

8)One assumes there is, but the people might still do a lot of farming inside and outside the town. That was done back in the middle ages. You had some animals in your backyard even if you were actually doing something else for a living.

9)It also doesn't connect directly to Harrenhal or Riverrun but it is still the major road of the Realm. You have to deal with that. Down in the South a lot of goods are moved on that road. We see that happening.

10)Well, there is none of that to be seen in AGoT when Tyrion actually travel the Kingsroad up to the Wall. And that's in summer.

11)I doubt that Jaehaerys I actually built the causeway. The road through the Neck and up to Moat Cailin must have already existed. And it also makes sense that the Starks had a road connecting Winterfell to Moat Cailin that went exactly where the Kingsroad goes now, just as there would have been a road connecting the Wall to Winterfell. It might have gone to the Nightfort instead of Castle Black but that would just be a small change.

12)It would have been down south where Jaehaerys I would have had to do the real work, building roads that actually lead to King's Landing, and building a road through the Riverlands that actually connects KL with to the Neck. That wouldn't have been a priority of the River Kings or the Ironborn later on.

13)That is why you usually have your family and your farm hands and maids around. We are not talking about some house in the middle of nowhere, we are talking about a farm large enough to support a family. Such a place can exist out in the wild. And we are not necessarily talking about it being 100 miles away from the next neighbor. 20 could work just as fine.

14)Well, if horses die in some autumn storm then it is actually pretty different because that means horses can only survive in (heated?) stables in winter. And that's a luxury the average person simply could not afford. If they live together with a few animals in the house that could work, but they would not be able to do this with all that many horses and would most likely go with swine or fowl.

1) No its mot just look at medieval russia for example, you also for the so manyest time gloss over the fact that you can not grow or produce averything yourself, even in the dark ages there was trade, they found pottery from the Levant in dark age Britain waste pits they uncovererd. Trade was perfectly normal and a everyday occurens in the middle ages, even for peasents.

2) Barter trade is they oldest type of trade in the world and even in roman times half the trade was done this way, only in they late 1500 and early 1600 did monetary trade start to become bigger, so trading food for goods was indeed the medieval norm.

3) Sorry but it does not work that way, if you let your sheep just graze enywhere then you have a lot of dead sheep real fast. Good grazing ground is as rare as good farming ground.

4) Yes farming is hard work, and as i said you can not make or grow everything yourself, contact and some form of market where you can trade your goods for the things you can't make/grow yourself is a neccesity. Now in the South thats not a problem because the next village is not going to be more then 20 miles away, but in the fast distance of the North thats not they case hence you need to have at least 1 wagon with a team of horses per village to transport what you are going to trade.

5) That he decided to send them back does not mean they normaly do not have the right to travel, and serfs who are bonded to the land would work the land of there Lord near his castle not live in a village in the middle of nowhere.

6) The people on the Osgrey lands are serfs not free farmers. Also not everybody has to travel just the people who are taking stuff to market wich is a minority, basicaly this is the task of the head of the family.

7) There don't have to be markets where not always held in towns you just have to have a preditermend place of gathering that need not be permanently setteled like the Upstallesbâm of the Frysians. And whe don't really know if there are no other towns in the North GRRM keeps adding new places as the story progreses like the sudden apperance of the Weeping Town in the Stormlands that previeusly nobody had heard off.

8) Sure there will still be farmersin Barrowton who work the land outside it, but it is to big to be a farming town a town of that size means trade.

9)Harrenhall and Riverrun are connected via the Riverroad that meets the High road and the Kingsroad at  they Inn at the Crossroads, hell thats why the inn is called the way it is.You are also being inconsistent here just a few post ago you where claiming that most trade in the Riverlands was by river. More importantly i never said there was no trade along the Kingsroad in the South, i said there was no trade along it in the North.

10) He travels along the Kingsroad that does not connect to anything so no he is not going to see trade moving there that was the whole point, because the Kingsroad does not connect to anything its not a Northern traderoute, so Tyrions POV only confirms the point i made.

11) Whe do know he incorparated existing roads into the network he build so yes there could have been a road there, as a matter of fact i have in the time between my last post and this one talked to some friends of mine about this subject, and changed my mind about the road being a usless prestige project. You see one of my friends is in the military and he pointed out that the road connects Winterfell to the two places where if trouble brews they would want to get troops fast, so he always assumed it was a military highway build for trooptransport to The Motte of Caelin and to the Wall. Now this makes sence to me, you would want a road for that, however that does not mean it doubles as a traderoute.

12) In the South the roads make perfect sence to me, it was the Kingsroad in the North that seemed useless to me until my friend pointed out the military angle.

13) In the South yes you would be right, in the fastness that is the North hell no.

14) A villages with a 1 ore 2 dozen family's and 1 team of four horses sorry but i think they will manage just fine.

[direpupy]

9 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

From what I've read about medieval warhorses, they were far from regular horses that had just received some extra training. On the contrary, they were very much bred for the purpose. How it appear to have worked was that you had a herd of mares led by one specifically selected stallion, that you pretty much left to fend for itself in the wilderness (the stallion being responsible both for impregnating the females as well as for protecting the herd against predators), which you only visited now and then to choose promising male foals that would be brought back and trained for war. 

It was a pretty elaborate process in other words, and a horse like that could easily cost five or ten times as much as a regular plow or riding horse. On the other hand, most horses used by "mounted archers" and other such common troops are likely of the regular, cheaper variety. 

There is actually a dispute among scholars about this, some point to the fact that there are medieval stories that set destriers apart from other horses, this is basicly what you are talking about, but an other part (the mayority) points to they fact that analysis of horse-armor and archaeological evidence shows that the horses used in battle where not any bigger then a normal workhorse, so that negates the need for a special breed.

As a matter of fact they where actually smaller then modern day draught horses.

People also make to much of the weight of armor even the heaviest armor weight no more then 90 pounds or 41 kilo's ad to that the horse-armor of 70 pounds or 32 kilo's and the weight of the rider himself say 200 pounds or 91 kilo's and you are talking 360 pounds or 164 kilo's, a horse can carry about 30% of its own weight so a modern heavy riding horse (smaller then a modern draught) of between 1200 and 1300 pounds can easily carry this. Medieval horses where smaller then modern horses but a medieval draugt is roughly equal to a modern heavy riding horse, so really destriers where nothing special, a medieval draught trained for war there high price coming from there training as a warhorse. Wich was indeed a long an expencive proces since a horse as a grazing animal would have the natural respons of running away from danger instead of straight at it.

[Lord Varys]

34 minutes ago, direpupy said:

1) No its mot just look at medieval russia for example, you also for the so manyest time gloss over the fact that you can not grow or produce averything yourself, even in the dark ages there was trade, they found pottery from the Levant in dark age Britain waste pits they uncovererd. Trade was perfectly normal and a everyday occurens in the middle ages, even for peasents.

In Antiquity society was much more mobile less restricted than in the middle ages. And the spread of pottery can be just a style and a certain skill. You don't have to move a pot from Turkey to France. It is enough if the skill and the style spread. I'm certainly not saying that there was no trade in those early days, but it would only have involved a tiny fraction of the population. They would do the actual trading, not the majority. 

34 minutes ago, direpupy said:

2) Barter trade is they oldest type of trade in the world and even in roman times half the trade was done this way, only in they late 1500 and early 1600 did monetary trade start to become bigger, so trading food for goods was indeed the medieval norm.

I never contested that. What I said was that I doubt there is a great need for the the average Northern peasant to do much trading. That is a difference. If there was a need then they would barter, I never doubted that.

34 minutes ago, direpupy said:

3) Sorry but it does not work that way, if you let your sheep just graze enywhere then you have a lot of dead sheep real fast. Good grazing ground is as rare as good farming ground.

Since I live in a region where the people traditional used a lot of land for grazing I can assure that kind of land is easier created than proper farming ground. Especially when you first have to cultivate the land. And what we see in the North, especially in the lands Bran cross but also in the lands along the Kingsroad is that the North is basically full of empty plains and mountains. There isn't that much good farming land - and if there is, then nobody is sitting on that land for some reason. Compare that to Arya's journey through the Crownlands and Riverlands where she constantly moves from one orchard to the next, and is never far away from the next village or farm.

34 minutes ago, direpupy said:

4) Yes farming is hard work, and as i said you can not make or grow everything yourself, contact and some form of market where you can trade your goods for the things you can't make/grow yourself is a neccesity. Now in the South thats not a problem because the next village is not going to be more then 20 miles away, but in the fast distance of the North thats not they case hence you need to have at least 1 wagon with a team of horses per village to transport what you are going to trade.

You also need carts and the like in the South. Your farm isn't at the same place as the market town. And even if it is you have to get your stuff to the market.

I still prefer the idea that most of the Northern communities are insular and survive on their own. They stick together precisely because they have to, and if the land is fertile enough to support a community they will form such a community. Those should be bigger where there is actual good farmland and smaller where there is not (in the forests and possibly even up north at the Bay of Ice where there might be fish to be had but the climate might be too cold and unpleasant to motivate many people to live there.

34 minutes ago, direpupy said:

5) That he decided to send them back does not mean they normaly do not have the right to travel, and serfs who are bonded to the land would work the land of there Lord near his castle not live in a village in the middle of nowhere.

That is why I actually think a decent portion of the northern peasants could not be bound to the land. But that still doesn't mean they are keen to traveling. And even if they did - you know that men can also draw carts, right? If they have to go to some market 20 miles away some farmhands can actually draw the cart. That's what you do when your animals are dead.

34 minutes ago, direpupy said:

6) The people on the Osgrey lands are serfs not free farmers. Also not everybody has to travel just the people who are taking stuff to market wich is a minority, basicaly this is the task of the head of the family.

That makes no sense. Going to a market is a task that involves a lot of people. People have to carry stuff, take care of your shop, help you sell stuff, and protect you from thieves. I can see this kind of thing happening after some bountiful harvests but those wouldn't be all that often in the North. After a harvest people have some free time on a farm.

Thinking about that - we have mills on the Bolton lands near the Dreadfort. That means there is pretty good infrastructure there. Some people aren't forced to grind their grain all by themselves (which was common practice in the middle ages in a lot of places) but can take it to the local mill (if there is one). But we should not imagine that this kind of infrastructure is everywhere in the North. I'd say that's part of the 'castle culture' of the Seven Kingdoms. Where there are castles there is the culture that goes with them. Out in the wild where there are no big castles (i.e. large enough to show up on our maps) things should be different.

34 minutes ago, direpupy said:

7) There don't have to be markets where not always held in towns you just have to have a preditermend place of gathering that need not be permanently setteled like the Upstallesbâm of the Frysians. And whe don't really know if there are no other towns in the North GRRM keeps adding new places as the story progreses like the sudden apperance of the Weeping Town in the Stormlands that previeusly nobody had heard off.

Well, the Weeping Town isn't exactly some huge place, though. If we learn the names of some villages in the North I'm not going to be surprised. There have to be some, nobody doubts that.

34 minutes ago, direpupy said:

8) Sure there will still be farmersin Barrowton who work the land outside it, but it is to big to be a farming town a town of that size means trade.

Amongst the townsfolk or with some outsiders? There is no other town hundreds of leagues around Barrowton, and it is neither near to a river nor another major trading route we know of.

34 minutes ago, direpupy said:

9)Harrenhall and Riverrun are connected via the Riverroad that meets the High road and the Kingsroad at  they Inn at the Crossroads, hell thats why the inn is called the way it is.You are also being inconsistent here just a few post ago you where claiming that most trade in the Riverlands was by river. More importantly i never said there was no trade along the Kingsroad in the South, i said there was no trade along it in the North.

My point was that the Kingsroad would have indeed been an artificial new construction down in the South because the place where KL was founded was not important prior to the Conquest, and thus nobody needed roads to go into that direction. But the Starks would have always needed a road from the Neck to Winterfell and, now that I think of it, the existence of the Wall and the NW would always have necessitated it that there was some way you could go to actually reach the Wall. That makes it exceedingly likely that the Kingsroad already existed from Moat Cailin to the Wall before Jaehaerys I added the road in the Riverlands and Crownlands (and most likely reworked the road up in the North).

A lot of the trade is done via the rivers in the Riverlands. I think that's discussed during Jaime and Brienne's river journey early on in ASoS. But there certainly are also roads in the Riverlands, that's clear. The major population centers in the Riverlands don't seem to be Riverrun or Harrenhal anyway (although Harrenhal has an adjacent town), but rather Maidenpool, Lord Harroway's Town, Stoney Sept, Saltpans, and the like.

34 minutes ago, direpupy said:

10) He travels along the Kingsroad that does not connect to anything so no he is not going to see trade moving there that was the whole point, because the Kingsroad does not connect to anything its not a Northern traderoute, so Tyrions POV only confirms the point i made.

And I say it is a northern trade route until proven otherwise. You assume in advance that there have to be other (major) trade routes in the North. I wait until that is confirmed.

34 minutes ago, direpupy said:

11) Whe do know he incorparated existing roads into the network he build so yes there could have been a road there, as a matter of fact i have in the time between my last post and this one talked to some friends of mine about this subject, and changed my mind about the road being a usless prestige project. You see one of my friends is in the military and he pointed out that the road connects Winterfell to the two places where if trouble brews they would want to get troops fast, so he always assumed it was a military highway build for trooptransport to The Motte of Caelin and to the Wall. Now this makes sence to me, you would want a road for that, however that does not mean it doubles as a traderoute.

That was the point I also made early on. Reaching the Wall quickly wouldn't have been so important in the good old days but the men actually volunteering to join the Watch from Dorne to the North would have needed a way to get there. Some road would have existed, and it would have gone up the causeway, past Winterfell, presumably up to the Nightfort.

You also have to keep in mind that road-building was usually not done in the middle ages. The English continued to use the Roman roads for a millennium never bothering repairing or adding new ones. The idea that they have many roads of the sort of the Kingsroad (which isn't very impressive, neither in the North nor down south) is very likely, which in turn suggests that road-building was never a top priority in the Seven Kingdoms.

[direpupy]

4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

In Antiquity society was much more mobile less restricted than in the middle ages. And the spread of pottery can be just a style and a certain skill. You don't have to move a pot from Turkey to France. It is enough if the skill and the style spread. I'm certainly not saying that there was no trade in those early days, but it would only have involved a tiny fraction of the population. They would do the actual trading, not the majority.

No they anillised the clay it was from the Levant not a style but actually from the Levant, i disagree about the trade only involving a small portion but hey thats the whole disageement we are having here.

7 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I never contested that. What I said was that I doubt there is a great need for the the average Northern peasant to do much trading. That is a difference. If there was a need then they would barter, I never doubted that.

Agreed on the bartering then, and i never said there was a big amount off trade just that you would need to trade to get the things you can not make or grow yourself.

9 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Since I live in a region where the people traditional used a lot of land for grazing I can assure that kind of land is easier created than proper farming ground. Especially when you first have to cultivate the land. And what we see in the North, especially in the lands Bran cross but also in the lands along the Kingsroad is that the North is basically full of empty plains and mountains. There isn't that much good farming land - and if there is, then nobody is sitting on that land for some reason. Compare that to Arya's journey through the Crownlands and Riverlands where she constantly moves from one orchard to the next, and is never far away from the next village or farm.

So do i, i am from the Netherlands and traditionaly because of poor soil over half of our farming was cattlefarming. It is the reason whe became a trading nation in the middle ages because whe hade to trade our goods to the people of North-Eastern Germany and what is now Poland for there grain that whe could not grow ourselfs. So i know for a fact that medieval people traded with each other because if my medieval ancestors had not traded with there neighbours my people would not exist today.

I also know for a fact that you can not create grazing land out of any land  thats bullshit, and that the North is spasely populated is something whe already knew thats why peasants who have to trade there goods to get something they can't make or grow themselves would have to travel.

25 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

You also need carts and the like in the South. Your farm isn't at the same place as the market town. And even if it is you have to get your stuff to the market.

Sure but a cart and a wagon are not the same thing and a peasant in the South would not have to travel the same distance as one in the North.

26 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I still prefer the idea that most of the Northern communities are insular and survive on their own. They stick together precisely because they have to, and if the land is fertile enough to support a community they will form such a community. Those should be bigger where there is actual good farmland and smaller where there is not (in the forests and possibly even up north at the Bay of Ice where there might be fish to be had but the climate might be too cold and unpleasant to motivate many people to live there.

So its a personal preference, great i do not share your preference. And i do not think it makes sence in light of what whe know of the North.

28 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

That is why I actually think a decent portion of the northern peasants could not be bound to the land. But that still doesn't mean they are keen to traveling. And even if they did - you know that men can also draw carts, right? If they have to go to some market 20 miles away some farmhands can actually draw the cart. That's what you do when your animals are dead.

I agree that most people in the North are probably not bound by the land.

They do not have to be keen on traveling it is a nesecity because you can not make or grow everything yourself.

In the South yes they could draw a cart themselves to the next village or marketplace, because in the South it would actually be 20 miles away. But you are again underestimating the vastnes of the North and the sparce population that simply do not live that close to each other, thus to make the trip fast enough for your goods not to spoil or rotten you need to travel by wagon drawn by a horse or a team of horses.

34 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

That makes no sense. Going to a market is a task that involves a lot of people. People have to carry stuff, take care of your shop, help you sell stuff, and protect you from thieves. I can see this kind of thing happening after some bountiful harvests but those wouldn't be all that often in the North. After a harvest people have some free time on a farm.

If you go with the head of every family in a village of 1 or 2 dozen familys you have more then enough people, and that is what i have been talking about al this time. The people of a village putting there stuff in a jointly owned wagon, drawn by a jointly owned team of horses.

37 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Thinking about that - we have mills on the Bolton lands near the Dreadfort. That means there is pretty good infrastructure there. Some people aren't forced to grind their grain all by themselves (which was common practice in the middle ages in a lot of places) but can take it to the local mill (if there is one). But we should not imagine that this kind of infrastructure is everywhere in the North. I'd say that's part of the 'castle culture' of the Seven Kingdoms. Where there are castles there is the culture that goes with them. Out in the wild where there are no big castles (i.e. large enough to show up on our maps) things should be different.

Yes there most certainly is going to be infrastructure near castles, whe also have the mill near Winterfell where Theon gets the two boys he kills in order to hide that he lost Bran and Rickon. I agree that this is not going to the same away from castles, but not having that infrastructure near you and grinding your own grain does not mean that you do not have to trade that grain for the things you can not grow or make yourself.

42 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, the Weeping Town isn't exactly some huge place, though. If we learn the names of some villages in the North I'm not going to be surprised. There have to be some, nobody doubts that.

Glad we can agree on this.

44 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Amongst the townsfolk or with some outsiders? There is no other town hundreds of leagues around Barrowton, and it is neither near to a river nor another major trading route we know of.

That is not true Barrowton lies next to one of the unnamed rivers that flows from the Barrowlands and the Rills into the Saltspear.

And that we do not see any other towns or villages does not mean they are not there, just that have not been mentioned by GRRM. Probably because they have no impact on the story.

48 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

 My point was that the Kingsroad would have indeed been an artificial new construction down in the South because the place where KL was founded was not important prior to the Conquest, and thus nobody needed roads to go into that direction. But the Starks would have always needed a road from the Neck to Winterfell and, now that I think of it, the existence of the Wall and the NW would always have necessitated it that there was some way you could go to actually reach the Wall. That makes it exceedingly likely that the Kingsroad already existed from Moat Cailin to the Wall before Jaehaerys I added the road in the Riverlands and Crownlands (and most likely reworked the road up in the North).

As i said in my previeus post since i talked to my friend in the military i have become convinced of the same thing, there was probably already a road i just do not believe it was meant as a trading route.

51 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

A lot of the trade is done via the rivers in the Riverlands. I think that's discussed during Jaime and Brienne's river journey early on in ASoS. But there certainly are also roads in the Riverlands, that's clear. The major population centers in the Riverlands don't seem to be Riverrun or Harrenhal anyway (although Harrenhal has an adjacent town), but rather Maidenpool, Lord Harroway's Town, Stoney Sept, Saltpans, and the like.

Lord harroways town is on the Riverroad i actually meant that and not Harrenhall which is not on the Riverroad, Stoney sept does not need a road it lies next to the the Blackwater Rush, Fairmarket lies next to the Blue Fork, and Saltpans lies next to the mouth of the Trident, so that fits with most of the trade being done by river.

58 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

And I say it is a northern trade route until proven otherwise. You assume in advance that there have to be other (major) trade routes in the North. I wait until that is confirmed.

I never said that they where mayor traderoutes i just said there would be trade going on and that this means there have to be more roads.

And that the Kingsroad is not a trade-route in the North is already confirmed by every POV who traveled on that road, if there was trade they would have seen it and they saw none, so i say your full of it.

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

 That was the point I also made early on. Reaching the Wall quickly wouldn't have been so important in the good old days but the men actually volunteering to join the Watch from Dorne to the North would have needed a way to get there. Some road would have existed, and it would have gone up the causeway, past Winterfell, presumably up to the Nightfort.

As said i changed my mind on this after talking to my friend in the military, so we are in agreement on this.

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

You also have to keep in mind that road-building was usually not done in the middle ages. The English continued to use the Roman roads for a millennium never bothering repairing or adding new ones. The idea that they have many roads of the sort of the Kingsroad (which isn't very impressive, neither in the North nor down south) is very likely, which in turn suggests that road-building was never a top priority in the Seven Kingdoms.

Top priority, no certainly not but there would be roads where they are needed, and yes they would probably not look very impressive i agree with you on that.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

2 hours ago, direpupy said:

There is actually a dispute among scholars about this, some point to the fact that there are medieval stories that set destriers apart from other horses, this is basicly what you are talking about, but an other part (the mayority) points to they fact that analysis of horse-armor and archaeological evidence shows that the horses used in battle where not any bigger then a normal workhorse, so that negates the need for a special breed.

As a matter of fact they where actually smaller then modern day draught horses.

People also make to much of the weight of armor even the heaviest armor weight no more then 90 pounds or 41 kilo's ad to that the horse-armor of 70 pounds or 32 kilo's and the weight of the rider himself say 200 pounds or 91 kilo's and you are talking 360 pounds or 164 kilo's, a horse can carry about 30% of its own weight so a modern heavy riding horse (smaller then a modern draught) of between 1200 and 1300 pounds can easily carry this. Medieval horses where smaller then modern horses but a medieval draugt is roughly equal to a modern heavy riding horse, so really destriers where nothing special, a medieval draught trained for war there high price coming from there training as a warhorse. Wich was indeed a long an expencive proces since a horse as a grazing animal would have the natural respons of running away from danger instead of straight at it.

Well they don't really need to be any bigger than normal workhorses, but rather bred for other characteristics like fearlessness, aggressiveness, strength, endurance, obedience, etc. 

To chime in on the craftsmanship debate a little bit with regards to sparsely populated societies, in Nordic countries during the Viking Age and before it seems like a lot of the more specialized craftsmanship was centered around the dwellings of the elite rather than in towns or villages. That is to say, if you were a chieftain or some other kind of local great man you could well have a swordsmith, combmaker, and other kinds of craftsmen in your service (either unfree or semi-free), who lived and plied their trade in your halls, and whose produce could either be traded away in exchange for other goods, or handed out as gifts to your followers (warriors) to keep them happy. In any case even people during that time certainly had access to relatively sophisticated items. 

Also regarding medieval households they averaged between four and six people, they werent that large. People had more children, yes, but people also died a lot more often (particularly as infants) so that there in the end was barely any population growth at all. Also not all of the children a couple had would necessarily be alive, or still living at their parents' home, at the same time. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

15 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I try to be consistent.

That is just a wrong picture of medieval lifestyle, and even more unrealistic in the case of the North. We have a region with a very low population density with essentially no infrastructure on a cultural level where the lower classes are constantly exploited by their betters. 

This is not the kind of society where there is a lot trading going on. You have what you need to do your work and you grow and slaughter/hunt what you need to eat. If you are a peasant then you don't go anywhere aside from, perhaps, some harvest feast in a neighboring village or to some other similar gatherings you can get there without much trouble.

The idea that people were specializing in the whole agriculture department makes no sense in this kind of environment, and that goes for the North as much as the the average peasant in the Riverlands and elsewhere. You grow as many crops as you need for yourself, not as many as you could possibly sell or trade for other things you might need. That would be ridiculous because if you harvest goes wrong you and your family would die.

You also overlook that families in this setting would include extended families (grandparents, cousins, etc.) living together, making the whole thing much closer to some sort of clan thing than the modern family which usually only consists of parents as a few children. The peasants in Westeros would usually have easily have a dozen children (so many would at least be born). Two dozen families would be much more people than just 50-100 people.

While this sort of correctly describes the feudal landscape throughout Westeros (although it is still far to rigid for my taste - we don't know whether there are always landed knights, we don't know whether petty lords always also have landed knights, and so on) there is no reason to assume that such structures exist everywhere, especially in the North.

The clansmen are legal system of their own, and there are other large regions in the North about which we have no idea. Do the people at the Stony Shore, Sea Dragon Point, Cape Kraken and its adjacent lands (south of Blazewater Bay and west of the Neck), or elsewhere actually have any noble overlords of this or that type? We don't know. It could very well be that there are just people out there who don't answer directly to some regional lord but directly to Winterfell - just as the clansmen do. We know that the Umbers control a vast portion of land but we have basically no idea about the political geography of the North.

The Glovers and Tallharts qualify as masterly/landed knight houses but they control vast portions of land. Why should we assume there are plenty of keeps and holdfasts around on their lands as there are in the Riverlands and the Reach?

Back in the days of the petty kings many a king would have needed such structures to secure his borders but the Starks have conquered the North a long time ago, and unlike the southern kingdoms many of the Northern regions should actually be accustomed to long periods of peace. The Starks had occasional trouble with the Boltons and a long war with the Vale in the east. The wildling threat is comparatively new, and the Ironborn should never have been a major threat as far inland as Torrhen's Square or the Glover lands in the depths of the Wolfswood (certainly not while the Glover men were at home).

That was not was I said. I talked about household knight or their equivalents. And household knights are defined as attending their liege in his household/castle. But there are simply no such man in Winterfell. That is a fact. All Lord Eddard has is a personal guard. But those are not household knights. Or rather, not all of them qualify as such (Jory and Alyn could).

Actually, we can assume that House Woolfield - the house of Wylis Manderly's wife - may be a vassal house of the Manderlys. You are right that we don't know any names there. But we have a very precise picture of Winterfell and there simply no men there. We don't have as clear a picture of White Harbor. If we did, and if there were no Manderly knights mentioned to be there I'd be the first to point that something doesn't add up there.

That was my point, too. I just don't think that this adds up to 3,400 mounted men armed and equipped as the southron knights. 

I also never said there would be no landed knight equivalents or petty lords sworn to Winterfell. I just pointed out that it would be very odd to assume that a lot of those men would be living near enough to Winterfell to make a difference. Else those men would have sent representatives to hang out at Winterfell. Not all of them would have gone with Robb, especially not the elder guys. Just as all the other noble houses left some relations back home those men would have left somebody back home, too, especially the women. Yet Prince Bran is later not attended by a retinue old landed knights and their grandchildren and a lot of their women. Why is it that only Ser Rodrik Cassel is at Winterfell?

That makes no sense if there are, say, 200-400 landed knight equivalents on the Winterfell lands.

I try to resolve such discrepancies by assume the actual numbers of the noble elite ruling of the North - which would include landed knight equivalents, masters, petty lord, and lords - is very low. There are some of them, and they have men in their service, but these men wouldn't be as well equipped as the people they work for (or only a very small percentage of them would be).

That makes the most sense, especially in light of the fact that resources are scarce and winter is coming. An average lord cannot afford the coin to pay some sworn sword enough so that the man can maintain costly armor and fine horses. That is simply not very likely.

Honestly, I don't think I can buy that narrative. That sounds way too modern and market-based for me. We are talking about a medieval feudal society, here, not some kind form of early capitalism without much technology. Travel and the like was hard. People wouldn't have liked it, not to mention that it was dangerous.

And the idea that any refined person would have considered traveling up north because you could find employment there is about as likely, I think. We know how unattractive that place. You don't go anywhere where it is cold and you don't get the same kind of cultural infrastructure in a city. Gold dragons are not worth as much in Last Hearth as they are in KL.

That wouldn't make much sense. You usually don't want to most expensive stuff unless you are the richest guy, and you actually need the stuff. You don't need the best armor on the world to fight wildlings.

What little we know about the taxes is that trade and the like would be taxed (especially the cities, where the bulk of the import-export business would take place). The smallfolk would pay rents, and their landlords would also pay rents to their lieges (or some other kind of payment - military service, for instance) if they hold their lands in their name. The same goes for the king, in the end. It is the working class (i.e. the commoners who produce enough stuff to actually be able to sell it) who actually have the money you could collect in taxes. 

There are some noble houses in Westeros - the Redwynes, Butterwells, Hightowers, Lannisters, and so on - who seem to be heavily invested in trade themselves. They would also have to pay taxes (and we know that for Lord Paxter Redwyne) but one assumes that the North would be mostly too poor to actually provide the Iron Throne with many taxes aside from the White Harbor region.

That is why I also assume that not all the northern horse would ride such garrons. They wouldn't be real cavalry, that much is clear. I just doubt the number of the Northern cavalry. And I also doubt the idea that the cavalry could be more quicker assembled. Robb certainly had more time to squeeze men out of the lands close to Winterfell because he could reach them much quicker, and ensure that people put much more effort to recruiting men. Considering that the Umbers and Karstark also came with footmen in a huge train we have to assume pretty much no Northern lord with some armored lances just sent them off and never bothered to recruit any footmen. 

As I've said repeatedly, my knowledge about horses is very limited. I know there are many different breeds, though, and I expected something of that sort. I never said the Northmen would have no war horses to be used in battle.

Tell that to bear who has prepared for a hibernation period of four years only to realize this is a six-year-winter. The seasons are basically ridiculous and could only work reasonably if the entire flora and fauna were to follow completely different (magical) laws than life in reality. And there is no indication that this is the case.

But you are right. That is a separate issue. I just addressed that because I consider the fact of chargers and destriers dying like flies in an autumn storm in the knight as a very strong sign that such animals do not thrive in the North. There could be some hardy breeds in the Rills or the Manderly lands that are up to this kind of weather but it would still be very costly to feed them throughout winter.

A lot has been said, and maybe opinions have been revised over the course of this thread, so forgive me if I respond to the odd position that you may no longer hold.

Regarding the social structure of the North, you stated up thread that most of the North consists of lone subsistence farmers or shepherds just living off the land. That is not a medieval social setup. The Domesday book makes it quite clear that medieval society was structured around "hides" of land . And these hides would be worked by peasants who resided in a village - usually of 100 people or less. With families averaging around 4-5 people, that meant up to 20-24 families per peasant village, working the land around it.

These villages would in turn be on land owned by a manor lord,  (in Westeros this would be the landed knight or petty lord), who earned rent from the peasants on his land - in the form of a percentage of their produce.

So the idea that most peasants live in villages is not necessarily because of the trade opportunities, but because it takes a village to work the fields effectively for the manor lord in a particular location. In England in 1086, for example, there were more than 9000 such manors, each with its villages and peasants working the land for the manor lord.

This fits perfectly with what lord Manderly has told us about his lands. He has a dozen petty lords, and a hundred landed knights in his lands. Each landed knight would have a number of villages on his land, from which he earns income.

And it would be these landed knights and petty lords who use the revenues from their peasants to provide armored lances to their liege lords. If we extrapolate the Manderly numbers across the whole North, (within reason and with some reductions in less populated areas) we might well be looking at a hundred lordlings and a thousand landed knights/Masterly Houses, spread across the North.

 

 

[Lord Varys]

@direpupy

I don't think we have much differences left. The only thing I find confusing is the scope of the trade you think is there. I'd say that the average peasants eats the cabbage and turnips he has, and doesn't use that as coin. He also doesn't need or want other vegetables. Perhaps he would like to have some oranges, but he will never eat one of those unless Septon Meribald also walks the North some time.

Vegetables and crops of the type the Northmen are growing are also not likely to rot or go bad on a trip to some market, even if the market was a hundred miles away. The stuff has to last this long or else they could never hope to store anything for winter. Thus it makes little differences whether you use some oxen, donkeys, or horses to the stuff to some market.

As to grazing lands, I'm not really an expert on that but don't sheep just eat grass and other green clean plants? What little I know about the fertility of farmland is that you cannot get the same harvest again and again out of the same land if you can't fertilize it properly. The fact that a lot of the North is essentially empty land with a lot of grass and similar plant life makes it actually ideal to keep sheep there.

We know that there many fields of wheat down in the Reach but we never see any of those in the North.

As to the Kingsroad: The fact that we don't see any trade on the Kingsroad could also indicate that there is little trade in the North, not that it happens elsewhere. I mean, anybody moving a lot of heavy goods from Karhold or Last Hearth to Winterfell would want to use the Kingsroad for that kind of thing. First they would take lesser roads to the Kingsroad and then go down that road. It seems to be the best road in Westeros. That doesn't mean it is particularly good but presumably the risk to getting stuck in the mud with your wagon and goods is smaller on the Kingsroad than on a lesser road. Thus people most likely would accept this kind of detour if they had to move their stuff.

Now, I don't think there is much trade between those places because of the vast distances. It is just an example.

@Free Northman Reborn

I know that setting well enough, and I'd agree with you that this could be the ways things are on the Manderly lands. In fact, if you recall the point of my original argument was that the Manderlys are comparatively strong, not just in relation to their peers in the North but also as power on the scale of all the Seven Kingdoms.

Now, the problem I have with a standard 'developed feudal setting' is that the North is deliberately introduced and described as a backwater place. We have the clansmen and those remote locations were only very few people seem to live. In addition to all that there is obviously a lot of uncultivated, wild land. That makes it exceedingly unlikely that all the land is necessarily held or owned by some lord. It could be literally empty land (with only the Starks holding it in the name of the Iron Throne as they hold all land up there) or if it is cultivated then this could be done by free peasants/smallfolk who are not part of the feudal hierarchy as it exists in the lands that are directly controlled by some lords.

That seems to be the case with the clansmen. They answer directly to Winterfell. It could be there are other such structures not on a semi-lordly level as there is with the clansmen but on a lower level still. Again, we have no idea who the proper guy in charge at the Stony Shore is. The Tallhart son and his guys go there but are actually not supposed to do that, suggesting that the Tallharts have no business there. That either means there are lords there that have never been mentioned or the people there sort of rule themselves with the blessing of Winterfell.

The idea that the North can feed proportionally as many elite noble parasites as the other kingdoms can is very unlikely. Food is always scarce in winter, and while a lord can sentence hundreds or thousands of smallfolk to death in a very severe winter by controlling the access to the stored food such kind of behavior would be remembered.

The North is more likely to be much more egalitarian than the other kingdoms because even the noblemen have to suffer in winter, and all are dependent on the peasants and other smallfolk to actually produce the food they are eating.

[Free Northman Reborn]

26 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

 

@Free Northman Reborn

I know that setting well enough, and I'd agree with you that this could be the ways things are on the Manderly lands. In fact, if you recall the point of my original argument was that the Manderlys are comparatively strong, not just in relation to their peers in the North but also as power on the scale of all the Seven Kingdoms.

Now, the problem I have with a standard 'developed feudal setting' is that the North is deliberately introduced and described as a backwater place. We have the clansmen and those remote locations were only very few people seem to live. In addition to all that there is obviously a lot of uncultivated, wild land. That makes it exceedingly unlikely that all the land is necessarily held or owned by some lord. It could be literally empty land (with only the Starks holding it in the name of the Iron Throne as they hold all land up there) or if it is cultivated then this could be done by free peasants/smallfolk who are not part of the feudal hierarchy as it exists in the lands that are directly controlled by some lords.

That seems to be the case with the clansmen. They answer directly to Winterfell. It could be there are other such structures not on a semi-lordly level as there is with the clansmen but on a lower level still. Again, we have no idea who the proper guy in charge at the Stony Shore is. The Tallhart son and his guys go there but are actually not supposed to do that, suggesting that the Tallharts have no business there. That either means there are lords there that have never been mentioned or the people there sort of rule themselves with the blessing of Winterfell.

The idea that the North can feed proportionally as many elite noble parasites as the other kingdoms can is very unlikely. Food is always scarce in winter, and while a lord can sentence hundreds or thousands of smallfolk to death in a very severe winter by controlling the access to the stored food such kind of behavior would be remembered.

The North is more likely to be much more egalitarian than the other kingdoms because even the noblemen have to suffer in winter, and all are dependent on the peasants and other smallfolk to actually produce the food they are eating.

Well, this is what George says about the Karstark and Bolton lands (along with the Frey lands, for that matter):

Question:

I am also a bit curious as to the social structure of westeros. I understand the seven high lords, and the slightly lower lords (ie. Boltons, Karstarks, Freys etc.). However, do these lords also have sub lords below them? Lords who maybe raise 10 or 20 men for the Karstarks?

Answer:

Yes, it is a feudal system. The lords have vassals, the vassals have vassals, and sometimes the vassals of the vassals have vassals, down to the guy who can raise five friends.

So under lord Karstark you would have vassals (call them petty lords) who can maybe each raise 200 of his 2800 men. Then under these petty lords, you have further vassals, (landed knights or masterly houses for the most part, as they are known in the North), who can maybe each raise 20 men of the 200 men of the petty lord. The weakest of these would be akin to Ser Eustace Osgrey, who could "barely raise five friends", to use the turn of phrase George used above.

Note that George does not distinguish between the Northern Houses and House Frey in his answer above. They all follow the same system. The North does not follow a different social structure to the South. Except for the areas ruled by clans, such as Skagos, the Mountains, and the Neck.

In the North, a landed knight would just rule a much larger area in order to raise the same 20 men that a landed knight in the South could raise from a much smaller area.

[Lord Varys]

@Free Northman Reborn

That has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I know that powerful lords have lordly vassals, and those have vassals of their own.

The issue I raised is whether all of the Seven Kingdoms are parceled out into a various fiefs of different size. We don't know that. And we also don't know how large the lands of the various lords actually are.

I've laid out my case above as to why I think the noble class is much smaller in the North in comparison to the other regions.

I can simplify it even more. Peasants have to eat to be able to produce food. If they don't eat they can't produce food. Lords and nobles are not necessary for peasants to eat. They don't work for a living so as a class they can only exist if the peasants produce enough food to keep them alive, too.

The chances that this also results in a lot of mounted warriors who are as well equipped as their Southron counterparts is unlikely in my opinion. Simply because the South can feed much more knights than the North.

[Free Northman Reborn]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

@Free Northman Reborn

That has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I know that powerful lords have lordly vassals, and those have vassals of their own.

The issue I raised is whether all of the Seven Kingdoms are parceled out into a various fiefs of different size. We don't know that. And we also don't know how large the lands of the various lords actually are.

I've laid out my case above as to why I think the noble class is much smaller in the North in comparison to the other regions.

I can simplify it even more. Peasants have to eat to be able to produce food. If they don't eat they can't produce food. Lords and nobles are not necessary for peasants to eat. They don't work for a living so as a class they can only exist if the peasants produce enough food to keep them alive, too.

The chances that this also results in a lot of mounted warriors who are as well equipped as their Southron counterparts is unlikely in my opinion. Simply because the South can feed much more knights than the North.

But the case can equally simply be addressed as follows:

From a top down approach, Martin says the North can raise the same sized army that the Vale can.

From a bottom up approach, we see the same picture of equivalence with the South.  The Karstarks raise 2750 men, which seems to be on a par with what prominent southron Houses tend to raise. For example. Houses Dondarrion and Caron in the Stormlands each seem to have raised around 2000 foot and 400 horse when they faced the Vulture King. House Florent is said to be able to raise 2000 men in total. In both cases the Karstarks easily seem on a par with these prominent southron Houses.

The Boltons in turn have raised around 4000 men, which is on a similar level to what the Freys (the most powerful House in the Riverlands) have raised. A second comparison is made possible for us when Tywin descended on House Tarbeck. They did not have time to raise their levies, having only Lord Tarbeck's household knights numbering 500 to defend the castle. And in this case we see that Roose Bolton has a personal garrison of 600 cavalry at the Dreadfort, compared to the 500 household knights of House Tarbeck. And this after Roose is in the South, with his personal guard an most prominent warriors, including Steelshanks Walton and the like.

So House Bolton compares most favourably with some of the most prominent southron Houses.

And House Manderly seems likely to raise even more than House Bolton.

So, if these Great Houses equate so well with southron Great Houses, why would their vassal lords (confirmed by George to follow the same feudal pyramid structure as their southron counterparts) not equate equally well to the vassal lords of the South? If they did not, then their liege lords would not have the strengths that they do.

And ultimately, we can take this up to the highest level. House Stark matches the strength of House Arryn. But they do it with perhaps 5 times the land area. And therein lies the answer to your conundrum. You are right that Northern land yields less food than southron land. Therefore, you need 5 times as much land to produce the same surplus resources as a farm in the South would. Hence, with 5 times as much land, a Northern Knightly House can produce the same surplus resources as its equivalent Southron Knightly House.

Balancing the equation out, and explaining how the North produces equivalent numbers of cavalry to southron armies.

As for every piece of land being allocated to a local lord. I am sure there may be empty areas of the North that go lordless at different historical times. That doesn't mean that there aren't thousands of vassal lordlings and masterly houses ruling over the land that IS allocated and farmed.

You suggested at one point that House Cassell is perhaps the only knightly House occupying the Stark lands, simply because no others happen to be mentioned. And yet George tells us specifically that House Karstark has vassals, and his vassals have vassals and that patchwork is how his army is made up. Now, if House Karstark is confirmed to have this vassal structure on their lands, how on earth would House Stark not have it too, but only more so?

Even House Glover has named forest clans sworn to them. Not to mention direct lands that stretch for two days ride from their keep. Forty miles, I believe it was. In that much land you would have dozens of holdfasts belonging to vassal knights to House Glover.

Even the abandoned crofter's village in the Wolfswood has a tower guarding it. Signifying that it belonged to some lordling. Peasants certainly aren't going to afford to build stone watchtowers to protect their lands.

So to conclude, if the North was the same size as the Vale, it would perhaps have a fifth the power of the Vale, due to its land on average being a fifth as productive. But because it is five times bigger, it's combined surplus resources allow it to match the strength of the Vale.And this applies to individual lords in the same way it applies to House Stark's strength in its entirety.

 

[direpupy]

17 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

Well they don't really need to be any bigger than normal workhorses, but rather bred for other characteristics like fearlessness, aggressiveness, strength, endurance, obedience, etc.

I tottaly agree they would pick the ones that where the most naturally aggresive already, and the ones that showed the least amount of fear in the hopes that those traits would be past on to there offspring. But the main cost off the horse would still be the training not the cost of breeding.

[direpupy]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

@direpupy

1)I don't think we have much differences left. The only thing I find confusing is the scope of the trade you think is there. I'd say that the average peasants eats the cabbage and turnips he has, and doesn't use that as coin. He also doesn't need or want other vegetables. Perhaps he would like to have some oranges, but he will never eat one of those unless Septon Meribald also walks the North some time.

2)Vegetables and crops of the type the Northmen are growing are also not likely to rot or go bad on a trip to some market, even if the market was a hundred miles away. The stuff has to last this long or else they could never hope to store anything for winter. Thus it makes little differences whether you use some oxen, donkeys, or horses to the stuff to some market.

3)As to grazing lands, I'm not really an expert on that but don't sheep just eat grass and other green clean plants? What little I know about the fertility of farmland is that you cannot get the same harvest again and again out of the same land if you can't fertilize it properly. The fact that a lot of the North is essentially empty land with a lot of grass and similar plant life makes it actually ideal to keep sheep there.

4)We know that there many fields of wheat down in the Reach but we never see any of those in the North.

5)As to the Kingsroad: The fact that we don't see any trade on the Kingsroad could also indicate that there is little trade in the North, not that it happens elsewhere. I mean, anybody moving a lot of heavy goods from Karhold or Last Hearth to Winterfell would want to use the Kingsroad for that kind of thing. First they would take lesser roads to the Kingsroad and then go down that road. It seems to be the best road in Westeros. That doesn't mean it is particularly good but presumably the risk to getting stuck in the mud with your wagon and goods is smaller on the Kingsroad than on a lesser road. Thus people most likely would accept this kind of detour if they had to move their stuff.

6)Now, I don't think there is much trade between those places because of the vast distances. It is just an example.

 

1)I agree whe seem to have resolved most of the diffrences by a good healty discussion.

As to the amount of trade, i do not imagine the trade to be big i was talking about small trade between villages, think the villages of the 100 landed knights sworn to house manderly trading goods with each other, i doubt they would trade any much beyond this because with they area they live in already being so big it should produce everything these villages need.

2)I still think you underestimate the distances in the North but in they end thats really a nitpick in the grand scheme of things, i do stil beleive that because of the distances a Northern villages would need horses to move its goods that it wants to trade for things they cant make or grow themselves.

3)If you let a domesticated sheep just eat anything it finds in terms of plants it will die, not al plants are good for there stumach they differ from the wild sheep in this because of there domestication where they are bred for the things that are favoreuble to there human owners and not the things that are favoreuble to them. They only domesticated animals that can basicaly eat anithing are goats and pigs.

4)Actually we do not really know anything about what Northern farmers grow because we never hear about it in the books.

5)Moving goods from Karhold to Last Hearth would be done via The Last River, trade going from Last Hearth to say White Harbor would go down Long Lake and then The White Knife. Honestly if you look at the map of the North apart from being a military highway there is really very little point to the Kingsroad.

6)I agree and i think i understand now where we where misunderstanding each other, i was not talking about trade between the castles of the mayor Lords, i was talking about trade between the villages in the land of a single Lord. Each Northern Lord controls enough land himself to be selfsufficient within them, and i really don't think there is much inter-lord trade in the North with they exeption of maybe things like horses from the Rills, but this would be an exeption.

[Lord Varys]

22 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

From a bottom up approach, we see the same picture of equivalence with the South.  The Karstarks raise 2750 men, which seems to be on a par with what prominent southron Houses tend to raise. For example. Houses Dondarrion and Caron in the Stormlands each seem to have raised around 2000 foot and 400 horse when they faced the Vulture King. House Florent is said to be able to raise 2000 men in total. In both cases the Karstarks easily seem on a par with these prominent southron Houses.

The Karstarks arriving with a certain number of men at Winterfell doesn't mean all the men that came with them are their retainers or the retainers of their retainers. Some of the mounted men they would bring would be knights equivalents, and others would be freeriders and light horse. 

And the size of an army riding to war doesn't mean the men marching with the lord leading the men are all men raised from his lands. The Dondarrions and Carons led an army against the Vulture King that could very well have drawn men to their cause that came from other regions in the Stormlands and the Reach, just as Lord Rickard Karstark could actually drawn people to his banner that were not formally sworn to him. He would have crossed a lot of lands on his way to Winterfell, after all.

22 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The Boltons in turn have raised around 4000 men, which is on a similar level to what the Freys (the most powerful House in the Riverlands) have raised. A second comparison is made possible for us when Tywin descended on House Tarbeck. They did not have time to raise their levies, having only Lord Tarbeck's household knights numbering 500 to defend the castle. And in this case we see that Roose Bolton has a personal garrison of 600 cavalry at the Dreadfort, compared to the 500 household knights of House Tarbeck. And this after Roose is in the South, with his personal guard an most prominent warriors, including Steelshanks Walton and the like.

The Tarbecks are actually a poor house. Lady Ellyn repaired the castle and hired swords with gold loaned from Casterly Rock. If you compare the Boltons to the Tarbecks the result would be that the Boltons are scarcely stronger than an impoverished house from the West. That doesn't bode well for the North. Gold buys you swords.

22 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

So House Bolton compares most favourably with some of the most prominent southron Houses.

It does not. At least not on the basis of your example.

22 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

So, if these Great Houses equate so well with southron Great Houses, why would their vassal lords (confirmed by George to follow the same feudal pyramid structure as their southron counterparts) not equate equally well to the vassal lords of the South? If they did not, then their liege lords would not have the strengths that they do.

There is no such confirmation there. The SSM you quote asked a general question about the feudal system in the Seven Kingdoms, not specifically the Boltons, Karstarks, and Freys. I'm with you that this is so for those three houses, but this doesn't mean that those houses have a lot of vassals who can afford as many knights/knight equivalents as they themselves. Roose and Rickard might be able to feed a scores of very professional household knight equivalents but this doesn't mean that their vassals (petty lords, landed knight equivalents, etc.) have the coin to do the same.

In the South many of the poorer houses would be richer than the poorer Northern houses, effectively reducing the absolute number of the mounted knights down there.

In addition, we have no idea how large the lands of the various houses are. The feudal structure doesn't mean the entire North (or any of the other kingdoms) is cut into large chunks where the bigger lords sit, and then all the other lords are vassals of those. Those lords who have vassals of their own have such vassals but other smaller lords might sit on smaller chunks of lands and do homage to Winterfell directly.

22 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

And ultimately, we can take this up to the highest level. House Stark matches the strength of House Arryn. But they do it with perhaps 5 times the land area. And therein lies the answer to your conundrum. You are right that Northern land yields less food than southron land. Therefore, you need 5 times as much land to produce the same surplus resources as a farm in the South would. Hence, with 5 times as much land, a Northern Knightly House can produce the same surplus resources as its equivalent Southron Knightly House.

The problem with that is that we see that a lot of the land in the North is empty, not cultivated. There are large forests and quite a few mountainous regions. I'm with you that due to the North being not as fertile means that they will have to cultivate much more land than the people down there to get the same revenue yet with there being a lot uncultivated suggests that while they might be able to feed the same amount of people as the Vale is they might not be able to produce the same amount of surplus as the Vale is. Surplus that will manifest itself in mounted knights of state of the art weaponry, armor, and horses.

You also have to keep in mind that winter has a much more devastating effect on the Northern population, resulting in much more casualties from cold and starvation in each winter. Less if the winter is mild, and much more when winter is hard. 

22 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

As for every piece of land being allocated to a local lord. I am sure there may be empty areas of the North that go lordless at different historical times. That doesn't mean that there aren't thousands of vassal lordlings and masterly houses ruling over the land that IS allocated and farmed.

I'm with you there that land that is being farmed is most certainly controlled by some people.

22 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

You suggested at one point that House Cassell is perhaps the only knightly House occupying the Stark lands, simply because no others happen to be mentioned. And yet George tells us specifically that House Karstark has vassals, and his vassals have vassals and that patchwork is how his army is made up. Now, if House Karstark is confirmed to have this vassal structure on their lands, how on earth would House Stark not have it too, but only more so?

My argument is that the story does not show us such knight equivalents when the plot would have demanded that they would have to have been there if they existed. George also admitted that Catelyn should have had quite some few lady companions due to her rank just as Margaery and Cersei have. But she does not, and that's now an established fact of the story. There is no way around that.

If you want to tell us that there are 1,000 landed knight equivalents/petty lords on the lands adjacent to Winterfell then I have to ask you where they are and why they did not play a role in the plot leading to the destruction of Winterfell in ACoK? Those men must have been there, then, but there is no reason that Ser Rodrik had the support of any men close to Winterfell aside from the Cerwyns, suggesting that whatever folk lives near Winterfell are smallfolk not petty lords or landed knight equivalents.

22 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Even House Glover has named forest clans sworn to them. Not to mention direct lands that stretch for two days ride from their keep. Forty miles, I believe it was. In that much land you would have dozens of holdfasts belonging to vassal knights to House Glover.

Two days ride from Deepwood Motte and dozens of holdfasts belonging to the Glovers? The Glovers themselves just own a wooden keep. Whatever vassals they have most likely live in hovels not keeps.

But, yeah, they have some forest people sworn to them. But since they live in the middle of a forest those wouldn't be all that much - neither in total nor in relation to the land they live on. Last time I looked forests were full of trees not people.

22 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Even the abandoned crofter's village in the Wolfswood has a tower guarding it. Signifying that it belonged to some lordling. Peasants certainly aren't going to afford to build stone watchtowers to protect their lands.

You mean the village where Stannis is right now? Presumably the Starks would have build that watchtower. After all, it is on their lands, three days ride away from Winterfell. Peasants certainly don't build anything in stone. But neither would small lordlings only owning some village. Not without coin from their overlords.

[Lord Varys]

23 hours ago, direpupy said:

As to the amount of trade, i do not imagine the trade to be big i was talking about small trade between villages, think the villages of the 100 landed knights sworn to house manderly trading goods with each other, i doubt they would trade any much beyond this because with they area they live in already being so big it should produce everything these villages need.

Sure. In that region I'd also expect a lot of trade happening. I'd also assume that the Manderly lands are more densely populated than other regions of the North.

23 hours ago, direpupy said:

2)I still think you underestimate the distances in the North but in they end thats really a nitpick in the grand scheme of things, i do stil beleive that because of the distances a Northern villages would need horses to move its goods that it wants to trade for things they cant make or grow themselves.

Well, I think we can deal with that problem easily enough by pointing out that the population density would be different in those lands. There would be regions were a couple of villages would be rather close together (for instance, there could be many such around Long Lake due to resources the lake provides people with). Then trading between those villages would be quite common and mostly unproblematic.

Elsewhere, in more remote regions (like the depths of the Wolfswood or the forest in the Karstark lands or the mountains of the clansmen) many communities might be more isolated and thus adapted to a self-sufficient lifestyle. Either by giving up luxuries or by actually having developed a system to get pretty much everything they need from the land they live in (iron and the like could be available in the mountains, and there certainly could be some smiths in those communities as well).

23 hours ago, direpupy said:

3)If you let a domesticated sheep just eat anything it finds in terms of plants it will die, not al plants are good for there stumach they differ from the wild sheep in this because of there domestication where they are bred for the things that are favoreuble to there human owners and not the things that are favoreuble to them. They only domesticated animals that can basicaly eat anithing are goats and pigs.

Oh, I did not mean that the sheep should eat everything. Presumably they know what's good for them, no? I mean, they don't eat poisonous plants in the wild and die, or do they? But goats could also be very much used in the lands of the clansmen and the Umbers.

23 hours ago, direpupy said:

4)Actually we do not really know anything about what Northern farmers grow because we never hear about it in the books.

You can guess at that by memorizing the various dishes the characters eat. You can do that quite easily by going by 'A Feast of Ice and Fire'. The food at Winterfell and the Wall is usually nothing all that fancy (although the cuisine at Winterfell is, of course, better than that at the Wall for obvious reasons).

23 hours ago, direpupy said:

5)Moving goods from Karhold to Last Hearth would be done via The Last River, trade going from Last Hearth to say White Harbor would go down Long Lake and then The White Knife. Honestly if you look at the map of the North apart from being a military highway there is really very little point to the Kingsroad.

Not sure Long Lake works as a place to move goods on a grander scale. It is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

23 hours ago, direpupy said:

6)I agree and i think i understand now where we where misunderstanding each other, i was not talking about trade between the castles of the mayor Lords, i was talking about trade between the villages in the land of a single Lord. Each Northern Lord controls enough land himself to be selfsufficient within them, and i really don't think there is much inter-lord trade in the North with they exeption of maybe things like horses from the Rills, but this would be an exeption.

On that we agree. The North is too vast and way too underdeveloped to allow for much trade going over vast distances. Although I assume that luxury goods like costly spices and foods from Essos and the South come in via White Harbor and reach Winterfell by way of the White Knife. Karhold and the Dreadfort and Widow's Watch might also be its share of such goods from minor traders if there is a harbor near their castles (which we don't know as of yet).

[Reine]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, I did not mean that the sheep should eat everything. Presumably they know what's good for them, no? I mean, they don't eat poisonous plants in the wild and die, or do they? But goats could also be very much used in the lands of the clansmen and the Umbers.

You can guess at that by memorizing the various dishes the characters eat. You can do that quite easily by going by 'A Feast of Ice and Fire'. The food at Winterfell and the Wall is usually nothing all that fancy (although the cuisine at Winterfell is, of course, better than that at the Wall for obvious reasons).

Not sure Long Lake works as a place to move goods on a grander scale. It is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

 

The problem with sheep is that they get killed really easy, in Switzerland a wolf or a pack of wolves (nobody is sure which yet) killed 45 sheep in the last 15 days on 3 farms. Sheep even die because the enivronment is too steep (they fall over cliffs). Really big herds of sheep need either a safe environment without predators (like wild dogs, bears, wolves or big cats) or more or less constant supervision. I always envisioned the farming in the north as semi-nomadic, like in the Alps. In summer the people with herds will go to pastures that are useless in winter (it the Alps those are in the mountains, in Spain it's to more rainy regions and in Westeros going up north). Transhumance, yay. In the eurasian steppe you will find many people who are nomadic and follow their large herds. In Iceland they don't have predators and naturally closed borders so they chase a part of their sheep herds inland in spring and let them be for summer (and they need many horses to bring all sheep home). The fields in the south would then be free for farming or for making hay, and in winter they can maybe even used for grazing (if you have a tree cover).

And those people in the Alps all had a winter job too like silk weaving or making lace. I wonder what the people do in a year long winter?

So yeah, I always thaught the North had a steady populance that farms (mostly in the warmer regions) and a wandering one that keeps animals. And that they either have houses with really thick stone walls (like the Engadinerhaus: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engadinerhaus) or if it's too cold in winter for stone buildings (like in some parts of Russia) they build their houses in wood (with a double entry to keep the warmth in).

As for the Long Lake, there could be a steady and even rather big populance on the shore if doesn't freeze solid in winter. Then you can fish even in winter, and provide food this way. Like at the Baikal lake. The same on the coast: you can fish even in winter, and maybe there are whales and seals to hunt. 

Lakes are really cool too because you can ship your wares over water, which is easier than to cart the same amount of goods (especially with bad roads). That made rivers in Europe such a good place to put your city, an easy way to transport goods and an easy way to demand fees.