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A Note on Population


Nihlus

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I was reading a well-sourced paper recently about medieval European demographics. The paper stated that in the late 14th/early 15th century, the time period most closely matching Westeros's technology and structure, there were 117 cities in medieval Europe ("city" defined as being over 10,000 people) with the top 92 totaling 3.5% of Europe's population ( 2.73 million people given that Europe's population was 78 million at the time). With those remaining cities averaging a bit over 10,000, you could bump that up to a total of 3 million people living in major urban areas (3.85% of the population). I'll try to use those ratios to estimate the population of Westeros.

The bulk of Westeros's city population lives in the five big ones. King's Landing (500,000), Oldtown (said to be similar to King's Landing, ~400,000), Lannisport (generally estimated around 300,000), Gulltown (said to have several tens of thousands of people but not hundreds of thousands, ~60,000), and White Harbor (ditto, ~60,000). 1.32 million people. Aside from those, there does seem to be a few other urban areas with populations greater than 10,000- Wintertown has 15,000, Barrowton about the same. Stoney Sept is implied to be much bigger than any settlement except the big five (it's listed as one of six major bases of the Faith), Duskendale is probably pretty big, and then you have other places like Planky Town. Say there are ~15 other cities on the continent with an average of 10,000 people each (seems reasonable, the North has two of around 12,000 and they are very underdeveloped). That adds150,000 people to our total and gets as 1.47 million living in major urban areas.

With the above ratio, that gives Westeros a population of 38.2 million. 1.47 million city dwellers would be 3.85% of that. As Westeros south of the Wall has a known surface area of approximately 3 million square miles, its population density is ~13 people per square mile. Less than late 14th century/early 15th century Europe's ~20 people per square mile. 

This is pretty much a confirmation of what we already knew (or at least the accepted fanon), but it's nice to have more evidence I guess.

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6 hours ago, Nihlus said:

I was reading a well-sourced paper recently about medieval European demographics. The paper stated that in the late 14th/early 15th century, the time period most closely matching Westeros's technology and structure, there were 117 cities in medieval Europe ("city" defined as being over 10,000 people) with the top 92 totaling 3.5% of Europe's population ( 2.73 million people given that Europe's population was 78 million at the time). With those remaining cities averaging a bit over 10,000, you could bump that up to a total of 3 million people living in major urban areas (3.85% of the population). I'll try to use those ratios to estimate the population of Westeros.

The bulk of Westeros's city population lives in the five big ones. King's Landing (500,000), Oldtown (said to be similar to King's Landing, ~400,000), Lannisport (generally estimated around 300,000), Gulltown (said to have several tens of thousands of people but not hundreds of thousands, ~60,000), and White Harbor (ditto, ~60,000). 1.32 million people. Aside from those, there does seem to be a few other urban areas with populations greater than 10,000- Wintertown has 12,000, Barrowton about the same. Stoney Sept is implied to be much bigger than any settlement except the big five (it's listed as one of six major bases of the Faith), Duskendale is probably pretty big, and then you have other places like Planky Town. Say there are ~15 other cities on the continent with an average of 10,000 people each (seems reasonable, the North has two of around 12,000 and they are very underdeveloped). That adds150,000 people to our total and gets as 1.47 million living in major urban areas.

With the above ratio, that gives Westeros a population of 38.2 million. 1.47 million city dwellers would be 3.85% of that. As Westeros south of the Wall has a known surface area of approximately 3 million square miles, its population density is ~13 people per square mile. Less than late 14th century/early 15th century Europe's ~20 people per square mile. 

This is pretty much a confirmation of what we already knew (or at least the accepted fanon), but it's nice to have more evidence I guess.

Nice. I think the size of the Westerosi settlements is open to a bit of interpretation. My personal assessment is that King's Landing was temporarily 500k in size, swollen by refugees and 60k Tyrell troops. I think it is usually at around 400k. I think Oldtown is not far behind, maybe at around 300-350k. Lannisport is stated to be much smaller than Oldtown, but much larger than Gulltown and White Harbor.

So I would guess Lannisport is half Oldtown's size, at around 150k. White Harbor and Gulltown number in the "tens of thousands".  So I think around 40-60k is a good estimate for them. Let's say 50k average.

So that gives us a total for the main cities of 400+350+150+50+50 = 1 million.

From my reading, none of the other settlements number in the tens of thousands. So the likes of Stony Sept, Barrowton, Duskendale etc. are all in the thousands, not tens of thousands. But  I reckon there are a score or more of these settlements. We just aren't aware of them all. Apparently there are some big towns in the Stormlands, obviously there is Sunspear and the Planky Town in Dorne, there must be a bunch of large towns in the Reach, the Riverlands is known for having a number of large towns instead of a single city, and so on.

So say 30 large towns gives you another 150-200k urban dwellers. So I think Westeros has an urban population of around 1.2m. But I also think Westeros is less urbanized than Medieval Europe. So the urbanisation rate might be lower than the ratio you used.

Take the North, where it seems kind of ridiculous that you have a city larger than medieval London, but then suddenly there are only two towns between that size and your local peasant village size. It doesn't really make sense. So there seems to be a gap in the middle, which Martin has either forgotten about, or just not told us about yet.

 

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11 hours ago, Nihlus said:

I was reading a well-sourced paper recently about medieval European demographics. The paper stated that in the late 14th/early 15th century, the time period most closely matching Westeros's technology and structure, there were 117 cities in medieval Europe ("city" defined as being over 10,000 people) with the top 92 totaling 3.5% of Europe's population ( 2.73 million people given that Europe's population was 78 million at the time). With those remaining cities averaging a bit over 10,000, you could bump that up to a total of 3 million people living in major urban areas (3.85% of the population). I'll try to use those ratios to estimate the population of Westeros.

The bulk of Westeros's city population lives in the five big ones. King's Landing (500,000), Oldtown (said to be similar to King's Landing, ~400,000), Lannisport (generally estimated around 300,000), Gulltown (said to have several tens of thousands of people but not hundreds of thousands, ~60,000), and White Harbor (ditto, ~60,000). 1.32 million people. Aside from those, there does seem to be a few other urban areas with populations greater than 10,000- Wintertown has 12,000, Barrowton about the same. Stoney Sept is implied to be much bigger than any settlement except the big five (it's listed as one of six major bases of the Faith), Duskendale is probably pretty big, and then you have other places like Planky Town. Say there are ~15 other cities on the continent with an average of 10,000 people each (seems reasonable, the North has two of around 12,000 and they are very underdeveloped). That adds150,000 people to our total and gets as 1.47 million living in major urban areas.

With the above ratio, that gives Westeros a population of 38.2 million. 1.47 million city dwellers would be 3.85% of that. As Westeros south of the Wall has a known surface area of approximately 3 million square miles, its population density is ~13 people per square mile. Less than late 14th century/early 15th century Europe's ~20 people per square mile. 

This is pretty much a confirmation of what we already knew (or at least the accepted fanon), but it's nice to have more evidence I guess.

Wintertown is not 12k, it is full to bursting before Karstarks arrive with some 2k men, it is less than 1/5 full before autumn. Since Karstark men are also settled and it is still described as full to bursting, however, we can neglect the first full to burst part I think.

There's also this part though, Eyrie, which is much smaller than Winterfell, can house 500 men in it's towers according to Ned. So Winterfell itself perhaps housed a thousand or two of these men.

 

5 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Nice. I think the size of the Westerosi settlements is open to a bit of interpretation. My personal assessment is that King's Landing was temporarily 500k in size, swollen by refugees and 60k Tyrell troops. I think it is usually at around 400k. I think Oldtown is not far behind, maybe at around 300-350k. Lannisport is stated to be much smaller than Oldtown, but much larger than Gulltown and White Harbor.

So I would guess Lannisport is half Oldtown's size, at around 150k. White Harbor and Gulltown number in the "tens of thousands".  So I think around 40-60k is a good estimate for them. Let's say 50k average.

So that gives us a total for the main cities of 400+350+150+50+50 = 1 million.

From my reading, none of the other settlements number in the tens of thousands. So the likes of Stony Sept, Barrowton, Duskendale etc. are all in the thousands, not tens of thousands. But  I reckon there are a score or more of these settlements. We just aren't aware of them all. Apparently there are some big towns in the Stormlands, obviously there is Sunspear and the Planky Town in Dorne, there must be a bunch of large towns in the Reach, the Riverlands is known for having a number of large towns instead of a single city, and so on.

So say 30 large towns gives you another 150-200k urban dwellers. So I think Westeros has an urban population of around 1.2m. But I also think Westeros is less urbanized than Medieval Europe. So the urbanisation rate might be lower than the ratio you used.

Take the North, where it seems kind of ridiculous that you have a city larger than medieval London, but then suddenly there are only two towns between that size and your local peasant village size. It doesn't really make sense. So there seems to be a gap in the middle, which Martin has either forgotten about, or just not told us about yet.

 

With all the round ups,, I don't think King's Landing is 500k even with all the soldiers and refugees. Tyrion gives a number of 50-70k "Roses", and 20k Lannisters with 6k goldcloaks of his own ( which was less than that by around half a thousand). King's Landing is very likely to be less than  400k in normal times.

 

As for town dwellers; Lordsport is described as both a town and a village and is the largest settlement in Iron Islands. Pebbleton, another Iron Island settlement, has several thousand fisherfolk. Lord Hewett's Town, a town in one of the Shield Islands is Twice the size of Lordsport. So with all the known and unknown towns, Town Dwellers may far exceed the numbers of city dwellers in total.

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On 10/28/2017 at 6:11 AM, Corvo the Crow said:

Wintertown is not 12k, it is full to bursting before Karstarks arrive with some 2k men, it is less than 1/5 full before autumn. Since Karstark men are also settled and it is still described as full to bursting, however, we can neglect the first full to burst part I think.

There's also this part though, Eyrie, which is much smaller than Winterfell, can house 500 men in it's towers according to Ned. So Winterfell itself perhaps housed a thousand or two of these men.

The Karstarks still fit in it, and "full to bursting" is how it's described as being for half the year, so yeah that's its population. I made a mistake, the population is actually 15,000. Not 12,000. 12,000 soldiers occupy 4/5 of the houses  (the ones not already taken) and put it close to max capacity.

 

Lord Hewett's town is good evidence that there are a lot of smaller cities we do not hear about in Westeros  (or at least what our world would that term cities at that time). Pebbleton has several thousand people (~3,000-6,000). Lordsport is noticeably bigger, say ~5,000-6,000. Hewett's town, at twice the size, would have a population of 10,000-12,000. And it's still not important enough to get a real name. I would bet anything that Duskendale, Stoney Sept, and Barrowton are noticeably bigger.

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1 hour ago, Nihlus said:

The Karstarks still fit in it, and "full to bursting" is how it's described as being for half the year, so yeah that's its population. I made a mistake, the population is actually 15,000. Not 12,000. 12,000 soldiers occupy 4/5 of the houses  (the ones not already taken) and put it close to max capacity.

 

Lord Hewett's town is good evidence that there are a lot of smaller cities we do not hear about in Westeros  (or at least what our world would that term cities at that time). Pebbleton has several thousand people (~3,000-6,000). Lordsport is noticeably bigger, say ~5,000-6,000. Hewett's town, at twice the size, would have a population of 10,000-12,000. And it's still not important enough to get a real name. I would bet anything that Duskendale, Stoney Sept, and Barrowton are noticeably bigger.

Look, in terms of Wintertown, I never considered it to be above 10,000 people in size, and one might argue that an army of soldiers would cram into the available houses and spaces quite a bit more tightly than the normal inhabitants would. So maybe the high thousands, but below 10,000 would be a normal size for it. Maybe I'm wrong, I have little to base it on, I must admit.

Barrowton is more interesting. My reading has been that Barrowton is the second largest settlement in the North, after White Harbor, with Wintertown being the third. Interestingly, Theon give us a bit of a description for Barrowton. He says it is "less than a mile" from the gate to Barrow Hall. Note he doesn't say less than half a mile, for example, so I take his description to mean roughly equidistant between half a mile and a mile. So let's go with three quarters of a mile as a reasonable estimate.

Now, we do not know whether the town stretches on beyond Barrow Hall, and I suspect it does, since Barrowton is supposedly built around the Great Barrow, which presumably lies at its centre. And logic would dictate that Barrow Hall is built at the highest point within the town, which would be on or next to the Great Barrow itself. Anyway, I find it difficult to see how Barrowton would cover less than half a square mile in total size, based on Theon's description.

Now, based on some random googling, I found a site called "Medieval Demographics Made Easy", I'm sure many of you might be familiar with it, and according to that source, a medieval town had about 38600 people per square mile. Meaning half a square mile would give Barrowton upwards of 15,000 people, and even a quarter square mile would give it close to 10,000 people.

Anyway, based on all of the above, I would suspect that Barrowton comes close to a population of 10,000 at the very least.

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1 hour ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Look, in terms of Wintertown, I never considered it to be above 10,000 people in size, and one might argue that an army of soldiers would cram into the available houses and spaces quite a bit more tightly than the normal inhabitants would. So maybe the high thousands, but below 10,000 would be a normal size for it. Maybe I'm wrong, I have little to base it on, I must admit.

That incident where 12,000 soldiers and presumably 3,000 civilians were hold up in it is literally the only indication we have of its overall population. I should note that the exact wording, "full to bursting", was used both for describing Wintertown's usual population in the winter/spring months and for describing it when the soldiers were hold up in it. So, 15,000 is as solid and indisputable figure as we're likely to get.

Quote

Barrowton is more interesting. My reading has been that Barrowton is the second largest settlement in the North, after White Harbor, with Wintertown being the third. Interestingly, Theon give us a bit of a description for Barrowton. He says it is "less than a mile" from the gate to Barrow Hall. Note he doesn't say less than half a mile, for example, so I take his description to mean roughly equidistant between half a mile and a mile. So let's go with three quarters of a mile as a reasonable estimate.

Now, we do not know whether the town stretches on beyond Barrow Hall, and I suspect it does, since Barrowton is supposedly built around the Great Barrow, which presumably lies at its centre. And logic would dictate that Barrow Hall is built at the highest point within the town, which would be on or next to the Great Barrow itself. Anyway, I find it difficult to see how Barrowton would cover less than half a square mile in total size, based on Theon's description.

Now, based on some random googling, I found a site called "Medieval Demographics Made Easy", I'm sure many of you might be familiar with it, and according to that source, a medieval town had about 38600 people per square mile. Meaning half a square mile would give Barrowton upwards of 15,000 people, and even a quarter square mile would give it close to 10,000 people.

Anyway, based on all of the above, I would suspect that Barrowton comes close to a population of 10,000 at the very least.

If it's larger than Wintertown, which it probably is, it's likely over 15,000 since it's not described as a ghost town.

50 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

There are only 5 cities in Westeros. Of which White Harbor is the smallest, with Gulltown only a little larger.

Well, by GRRM's wording anyway. In our reality a lot more settlements would be considered cities. Medieval Krakow only had 10,000 people in the year 1300, and it was the largest city in and capital of Poland. Sandomierz was the second largest 'city' with 5,000 people. Esztergom, the capital and largest city of the medieval kingdom of Hungary, had a population of 12,000 in the mid 13th century. Wintertown and Barrowton are almost certainly larger than either of them, same with Hewett's town. 

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Meh,

George doesn't deal in economics. Where an inn exists in the Riverlands, it should instead be a thriving town (prior to the War of the Five Kings). Economics should be blah, blah, blah, important. Trade fairs, river trade routes, etc. At most we get Ser Davos smuggling stuff (evidence of some kind of economy).

One other bit of economic bits is Jon dealing with the Iron Bank where he secures a side-loan to help the BW.

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I came across an interesting observation regarding White Harbor's size. Davos notes that the newly built wall that separates the inner and outer harbours is a mile long. That is quite interesting, considering that the ancient mega-port of Carthage, had a harbour approximately 3200 feet in length and 1000 feet wide, based on my googling.

Now maybe White Harbor's harbour is much narrower, but certainly its length appears to exceed that of ancient Carthage. Unless the harbour wall all stretches well beyond the actual harbour, and onto the land on either side as well.

Also, this heavily implies that White Harbor itself has a diameter of a mile at least. And possibly greater. Meaning 40k is kind of a minimum population size for it, based on previously quoted medieval town/city population densities.

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On 10/27/2017 at 8:59 PM, Nihlus said:

I was reading a well-sourced paper recently about medieval European demographics. The paper stated that in the late 14th/early 15th century, the time period most closely matching Westeros's technology and structure, there were 117 cities in medieval Europe ("city" defined as being over 10,000 people) with the top 92 totaling 3.5% of Europe's population ( 2.73 million people given that Europe's population was 78 million at the time). With those remaining cities averaging a bit over 10,000, you could bump that up to a total of 3 million people living in major urban areas (3.85% of the population). I'll try to use those ratios to estimate the population of Westeros.

The bulk of Westeros's city population lives in the five big ones. King's Landing (500,000), Oldtown (said to be similar to King's Landing, ~400,000), Lannisport (generally estimated around 300,000), Gulltown (said to have several tens of thousands of people but not hundreds of thousands, ~60,000), and White Harbor (ditto, ~60,000). 1.32 million people. Aside from those, there does seem to be a few other urban areas with populations greater than 10,000- Wintertown has 15,000, Barrowton about the same. Stoney Sept is implied to be much bigger than any settlement except the big five (it's listed as one of six major bases of the Faith), Duskendale is probably pretty big, and then you have other places like Planky Town. Say there are ~15 other cities on the continent with an average of 10,000 people each (seems reasonable, the North has two of around 12,000 and they are very underdeveloped). That adds150,000 people to our total and gets as 1.47 million living in major urban areas.

With the above ratio, that gives Westeros a population of 38.2 million. 1.47 million city dwellers would be 3.85% of that. As Westeros south of the Wall has a known surface area of approximately 3 million square miles, its population density is ~13 people per square mile. Less than late 14th century/early 15th century Europe's ~20 people per square mile. 

This is pretty much a confirmation of what we already knew (or at least the accepted fanon), but it's nice to have more evidence I guess.

Seems legit to me. Well done @Nihlus.

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On 28/10/2017 at 2:59 AM, Nihlus said:

I was reading a well-sourced paper recently about medieval European demographics. The paper stated that in the late 14th/early 15th century, the time period most closely matching Westeros's technology and structure, there were 117 cities in medieval Europe ("city" defined as being over 10,000 people) with the top 92 totaling 3.5% of Europe's population ( 2.73 million people given that Europe's population was 78 million at the time). With those remaining cities averaging a bit over 10,000, you could bump that up to a total of 3 million people living in major urban areas (3.85% of the population). I'll try to use those ratios to estimate the population of Westeros.

The bulk of Westeros's city population lives in the five big ones. King's Landing (500,000), Oldtown (said to be similar to King's Landing, ~400,000), Lannisport (generally estimated around 300,000), Gulltown (said to have several tens of thousands of people but not hundreds of thousands, ~60,000), and White Harbor (ditto, ~60,000). 1.32 million people. Aside from those, there does seem to be a few other urban areas with populations greater than 10,000- Wintertown has 15,000, Barrowton about the same. Stoney Sept is implied to be much bigger than any settlement except the big five (it's listed as one of six major bases of the Faith), Duskendale is probably pretty big, and then you have other places like Planky Town. Say there are ~15 other cities on the continent with an average of 10,000 people each (seems reasonable, the North has two of around 12,000 and they are very underdeveloped). That adds150,000 people to our total and gets as 1.47 million living in major urban areas.

With the above ratio, that gives Westeros a population of 38.2 million. 1.47 million city dwellers would be 3.85% of that. As Westeros south of the Wall has a known surface area of approximately 3 million square miles, its population density is ~13 people per square mile. Less than late 14th century/early 15th century Europe's ~20 people per square mile. 

This is pretty much a confirmation of what we already knew (or at least the accepted fanon), but it's nice to have more evidence I guess.

Do you really think GRRM read these same papers? That his population is based on that? Or do you think, like how large the Wall is, he is just using random numbers when talking about the sizes of these settlements. 

 

And WIntertown does not have 15,000 people. It is a quarter full during summer and is only full during Winter filled with some of the population who make up he farming population.  It seems you are double counting the 3.85% here.

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12 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The North clearly has a much lower urbanization rate than the South. So even if 3.85% applies to the South, it would be a much lower percentage that applies to the North.

Maybe, maybe not. Kievan Rus' had a surprisingly high number of people living in cities, to make up for the fact that notable mid-sized towns (and even large villages) basically didn't exist. The North doesn't seem to follow the same model though.

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