Post/Author/DateTime	Post
bravo052492 01-02-08, 04:38 AM	I am creating a campaign, and my current mapped setting is the size of greenland. I looked at several sources to get ideas on the population of such a place, but only found Medieval Demographics Made Easy. However, that made a lot of assumptions about kingdom type, and also is better for all of a large area, not just small isolate kingdoms. What would be some examples of population density in the middle ages? And also the rural-urban percentage and all that jazz. To help, the northern kingdom is a mainly barbarian nomad area, with a few trade cities by the "southerners". It is tundra and is frozen all year around. South of that is a military state that is half tundra, half not-tundra (but is cold most of the time). I'd like to state that the military-state is small, and below that are more temperate kingdoms that are cold usually, but get warmer (think northern-central united states, southern canada). It is slightly longer than Greenland, but skinnier. The tundra is only the top 1/5 of the island, and it gets warmer as you go south.
Naderion 01-02-08, 06:24 AM	At the time of about 1000, the overall population for europe was about 40,000,000. But it's hard to use as a guideline for such a small continent, since I'm fairly sure there were much more people in italy and spain than in skandinavia and eastern europe. World population at that time is estimated as 300,000,000, so europe would only make about 12% of the overall world population. Also you have to distunguish between human population and humanoid population. If 50% of the population are humans, but the rest are all ogres, kobolds, and goblins living in the wild, the human nations would be much smaller than if humans make about 95% of the overall population. All those other humanoids may not be part of civilized society. But for an island the size of greenland, with 100% human population, roughly mediveal living conditions and a temperate climate, I would estimate about 8,000,000 people (greenland is about 20% the size of europe, map stretching makes it often look bigger).
Darth Syntax 01-02-08, 03:13 PM	Considering you are going for an arctic and sub-arctic environment, your populations are probably going to be rather low due to the cold and the inevitable permafrost limiting the efficacy of agriculture. To give you an idea, modern Greenland has about 50 - 60 thousand people and a similar climate to what you are thinking of. Even if the population is combined with modern Iceland (another climate similar area) the total population would be something in the neighborhood of 400,000 people. Even on the very best of days, I would not imagine that an area the size and general climate of greenland could hold anything over 1 million people.
Naderion 01-02-08, 03:55 PM	Somehow missed the climate part. Considering that, I think an estimate of 400,000 is not that bad a guess.