How many people do you think lived in Westeros

[Willam Stark]

At the beginning of the saga? I'm talking about the people who were South of the Wall, but you can try to guess how many Wildlings lived North of the Wall if you want.

Westeros is as big as South America, which has an area of 17,840,000 km², almost twice the size of Europe. It emulates the 15th century Europe and is more populated in the South than in the North, all of these parameters have a significant impact on the quantity of people and population density.

So what do you guys think?

 

[Corvo the Crow]

In my signature, you can find a calculation of Rhoyne and to some extent, Dorne back when the Rhoynar migrated.

I've also done about Iron Islands at the time of the saga, which should be in the military strengths and more thread or else I don't know with what name I've opened a thread on that.

Ironborn are the easiest to calculate their population, with how many ships and therefore fighting men they have, we've also been told about their thrall to Ironborn ratioin the world book if I recall and what percentage of them are fishers, therefore on boats. They have a rather small population, only advantage in war being having not much arable land and living in islands on top of that, not being worthwhile to invade except for punitary expeditions and when raiding, using hit and run tactics with their small but highly mobile(at sea) number.

[Loose Bolt]

For some reason I did not have access to local library and I had a lot of more free time I was used to so I read a book that I got as a gift long time ago but I did not bother to read bc I was "busy". That massive tome about medieval Finland included a lot info about many things including economy, military and population.

One interesting fact is that year 1500 in Finland total number of available cavalry and infantrymen were same as numbers of host that came to Winterfell with lord Karstark. Or total population of lands ruled by house Karstark should be at least 300.000 that is estimated population of Finland 1500. In fact that could be actually larger bc that house could raise couple new armies even when most of their warriors were already south of the Neck.

[Free Northman Reborn]

1 hour ago, Loose Bolt said:

For some reason I did not have access to local library and I had a lot of more free time I was used to so I read a book that I got as a gift long time ago but I did not bother to read bc I was "busy". That massive tome about medieval Finland included a lot info about many things including economy, military and population.

One interesting fact is that year 1500 in Finland total number of available cavalry and infantrymen were same as numbers of host that came to Winterfell with lord Karstark. Or total population of lands ruled by house Karstark should be at least 300.000 that is estimated population of Finland 1500. In fact that could be actually larger bc that house could raise couple new armies even when most of their warriors were already south of the Neck.

Indeed.

~300k people in the Karstark lands.

~ 5 million in the entire North.

A similar number in the Riverlands and West respectively.

A bit fewer (~4m) in the Vale. 

Still fewer (~3 million) in the Stormlands.

And even fewer (~2.5 million) in Dorne.

Maybe 1.5 million in the Crownlands.

Up to 10 million in the Reach.

Fewer than 500 thousand in the Iron Isles. (Note, Martin says that unlike in the mainland kingdoms,  almost every man and even some women are warriors among the Ironborn, so even allowing for some hyperbole in that statement, they may be as low as 100-200 thousand, given their armed strength of maximum 25 thousand.)

Perhaps 100 thousand North of the Wall.

Total in Westeros: 35-40 million.

[Lord Lannister]

I've always felt that Martin really doesn't focus much on details like demographics save to pull numbers out to support the needs of the story.