How Many Hobbits? A Demographic Analysis of Middle Earth
Part 2 of this essay on Middle Earth population, mapping specific populations, is here.
Part 3 of this essay, providing 3,000 years of demographic history, is here.
Update 1: On further review, the initial version of this post systematically overestimated the populations of a few low-density regions, in particular Minhiriath, and to a lesser extent the Easterling/Haradrim areas, Eregion, Enedwaith, and West Eriador. I regret the error, but if you scroll down you’ll find some interesting new commentary on Minhiriath!
Update 2: Some diligent Tolkien fans noticed that my estimates of land area were considerably too small; Middle Earth is bigger than I was suggesting. I’m not sure how I got this so wrong. It was also noted that I was appealing to population densities typical in late-Medieval or Renaissance data, or else Classical data, whereas the late Third Age is better analogized by the early Middle Ages, with lower densities. Larger land area plus lower density is a lot of math changes for me, but it works out to a fairly modest difference in total populations. That said, pursuant to much convincing, I have come down off my very high estimate of populations of men in Eriador. I still cannot accept the totally-empty-Eriador hypothesis, but I’ve greatly reduced my figures for the old lands of Arnor, persuaded primarily by the fact that the bustling Eriador depicted in The Hobbit was actually struck out by Tolkien’s proposed revisions to The Hobbit to bring it into line with LOTR. But since those revisions never got canonized for real, I’ve elected to lower my estimates somewhat and assume a sharp population decline between The Hobbit and LOTR. More on that in the follow-up posts!
I’ve always loved fantasy, and, as long-time followers know, have done some dabbling in excessively-nerdy analysis of fantasy worldbuilding and demography. I’ve also recently dabbled in reconstructing population history in the near east. For those who don’t know me, I’m a demographer. I study population. And my first love in fantasy was, of course, Middle Earth.
As I’m back in a LOTR kick, I got curious: how many people live in Middle Earth? Being a demographer, I was mainly interested in the data side of things.
Tolkien is frustratingly vague about population. He almost never gives us estimates of settlement sizes, and many of the larger metropolises of Middle Earth (like Pelargir) never actually appear on the page. Sizable armies make frequent appearances, yet because his adventurers almost exclusively traverse the wilds of Middle Earth, we rarely see where those soldiers are coming from.
Nonetheless, devoted fans have attempted to cobble together some numbers. Stephen Wigmore is one of the most prominent attempts. Here are his articles:
The Battle of Unnumbered Tears
There have been some other online attempts, but most arrive at a similar place, for one simple reason:
Almost every attempt to estimate population in Middle Earth extrapolates from army sizes.
This is no surprise since those are some of the only numbers Tolkien does provide and, furthermore, historically, this is also how ancient populations in the real world are often estimated, so there are some credible rules-of-thumb out there.
So, to begin with, I wanted to take a new approach.
How Many People COULD Live in Middle Earth?
Let’s start from a novel place: assuming Middle Earth were normal, governed under normal demographic and agricultural rules for a society circa 1200 AD, how many people could survive in the regions we know from Tolkien’s legendarium?
To do this, I first had to divide Middle Earth into recognizable regions. Here are the regions I use:
Then I had to classify each region according to its population-relevant traits: climate, geography, water access, etc. Then I assigned population densities to each region based on its terrain mixes, with densities drawn from modern scholarly estimates of Medieval population densities. So for example, Belgium and the Netherlands had very high population densities over 100 people per square mile, whereas Mongolia or Scotland had very low, under 4 and sometimes under 1 person per square mile. So, for example, “Minhiriath” (yellowish central west coast) is coded as having about 2/3 of its land potentially arable land, 0% mountains, 14% forest, 5% swamp, 0% steppe, 10% coastal, 5% riparian, and 0% tundra. “Iron Hills” (upper right reddish) on the other hand is 12% arable, 68% mountain, 12% steppe, and 8% riparian. And so on, for every region, making my best guesses.
Now, an aside, here’s a map of Europe’s borders superimposed on Middle Earth:
The takeaway here is that my regions are smaller than most European countries. Take a relatively well-defined region like “Minhiriath,” center left. It’s a pretty big chunk of land on Tolkien’s map. And yet, it’s basically the size of Belgium and the Netherlands together, or a small share of England’s Medieval holdings in France. All of Rohan is perhaps the size of Hungary. Gondor is smaller than France, and I split Gondor into several regions. Middle Earth’s polities are pretty modestly sized!
We can use the sizes and terrains described above to yield implied population densities. Again, these are not the densities that actually prevail in Middle Earth; they are the densities that would prevail if Middle Earth behaved like Medieval Europe. Note that these are also not maximum carrying capacities. Maximum carrying capacity of Medieval technology is probably about two to three times the actual typical density, for various historically contingent reasons.
Here’s a simpler map of regions with labels:
So, what population densities do we get under these assumptions?
Update 2: As noted above, I had a serious miscalculation in land area and also had overestimated population densities vs. Medieval comparators. Luckily these errors largely cancel out in terms of total population, but the resulting graph below has much lower numbers than previously shown.
Here’s a graph:
The most densely settled part of Middle Earth in this model is Lossarnach around Pelargir, at about 32 people per square mile. That’s higher than most actual Medieval countries — but again, Lossarnach is a lot smaller than most countries, so the existence of a small high-density region is plausible. Moreover, it’s high, but not that high. Here are some selected historic population densities 0–1000 AD:
Virtually all of the 1st and 2nd century Roman empire was more densely settled than almost anywhere in Middle Earth, despite still having vaste swathes of wilderness. Italy from 300–1000 AD was denser than the densest parts of Middle Earth. Note as well that the Roman Empire could sustain twice the density of Medieval Europe: as I said, carrying capacity is way above actual effective density in these kinds of contexts.
Large chunks of Middle Earth are very fertile land, and so yield high implied densities. All of Gondor and Eriador in particular is pretty decent land which could support many people. So is Erebor and its environs, as well as Eregion. The surprise contenders here are the Anduin Vale, the Enedwaith, and the western reaches of Eriador towards Lindon. That the Shire is fairly dense is no surprise, nor is Arthedain or Nurn. But Minhiriath also seems fairly dense. In this model, Rhun is slightly more densely settled than Rohan!
Here it is as a map of population densities in the 3019th year of the Third Age (TA 3019, the year of the Lord of the Rings):
So how many people could live in Middle Earth?
It’s reasonable to assume that if Middle Earth were populated in a similar pattern with regards to subsistence resources as Medieval Europe, that Middle Earth could have approximately 34million people. This is a sharp contrast to prior fan estimates of about 3 million people in northwestern Middle Earth!
You can see there’s a pretty significant population center around eastern Gondor in the south, the Anduin Vale, Eregion, and western Arnor. This all fits LOTR lore: Eregion had a large population of humans, Elves, and dwarves at various times, Arnor was once heavily settled, Gondor has always been a major population hub… the only real issue is the Anduin Value. On that I think maybe we just have to assume Tolkien under-described an actually-once-thriving society, or they just faced too-constant of orc raids or something. Meanwhile, the east is clearly less densely settled, giving rise to the more steppe-like culture of Rhun, Khand, the Wainriders, the Balcoth, etc.
But then we have to ask: what do you mean by people? Middle Earth has elves, dwarves, men, hobbits, orcs… who counts for population purposes?
My operating assumption here is basically that though hobbits are small, their voracious appetites mean they need similar land-per-Hobbit as humans need. Plus, though they may have high caloric needs, they also live underground, so can use a larger percentage of available land. Likewise, though Elves are immortal and thus can subsist on I suppose little or nothing so could theoretically reach extremely high densities, in practice Elves also have slow reproduction, are leaving for Valinor, and appear to have a preference for uncrowded living, so again, similar density as we would guess from humans seems reasonable.
Dwarves are the only real problem. What do dwarves eat? Can a dwarven city subsist on its own? I’m not sure. In theory dwarves muck about with this kind of calculation because they can turn low-population mountain regions into population centers. But since dwarf populations are quite localized in just Erebor and the Blue Mountains in TA 3019 (the period of the Lord of the Rings), I’m not too worried about this.
Orcs… well, we’ll come back to orcs.
Army Sizes
How big are the armies of Middle Earth? This should help guide us towards how many people actually do live in Middle Earth.
Again, Tolkien is frustratingly vague. But in TA 3019, we can make some guesswork. Minas Tirith, Osgiliath, Rammas Echor, and Cair Andros together are defended by, we are led to believe, fewer than 5,000 full-time professional soldiers and guardsmen. At the muster of Gondor’s fiefs, fewer than 5,000 additional soldiers show up. However, this muster is not a complete muster: we know for example the fiefs of Lebennin, Dol Amroth, and Lossarnach did not send their full musters because they were fending off the corsairs of Umbar. Likewise the fiefdoms in central Gondor, as Aragorn is able to gather men as he goes alongside his undead armies.
On the whole, my guess is Gondor’s total muster is around 25–40,000 men. That includes local guardsmen, militia, professional soldiers, household guards, naval marines (Gondor had a navy!), etc. Of those, fewer than 15,000 are actually deployable in an expeditionary force, and that’s before the Siege of Gondor really takes off, dinting their numbers.
Rohan we know fielded 18,000 riders a century or two before TA 3019, plus additional infantry raised as militia. Theoden rides to aid Minas Tirith with just 6,000, but that’s because he’s in a hurry not because he only has 6,000. It’s reasonable to suppose Rohan can field maybe 25,000 men at total fighting strength, but nowhere near that much on campaign. As I’ll note below, the true figures for Rohan may be a bit lower.
At the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, there are at least 3 times as may Haradrim riders as riders of Rohan, so 18–20,000, presumably plus additional infantry. Saruman’s army has perhaps 10–15,000 orcs, plus some thousands of Dunlanders.
Stepping back to TA 2941 at the Battle of Five Armies, we know that Thranduil goes into the field with about 2,000 Elven warriors, and the Iron Hills dwarves show up with under 700 Dwarves. There are a few hundred men of Lake Town in the mix as well. These armies are said to be outnumbered several times by the goblins, suggesting at least 9,000 goblins, perhaps as many as 15,000. Of course, it’s plausible that neither the Dwarves, Elves, or Lake Towners were deploying their whole strength, as none of them anticipated fighting a major set piece battle against an evil army.
What can we conclude about population from these figures?
Wigmore arrives at somewhat similar guesses about army size as I do. Take Rohan: he suggests 15,000 riders and 20,000 infantry. This is a lot more than I suggest, but the difference is mostly on the infantry side where we both admit there’s a lot of squish. Then he does some multiplication. He assumes that Riders are somewhat equivalent to knights and that the infantry are equivalent to Anglo-Saxon freemen, so this isn’t a census of the male population. He suggests perhaps there are 7 more men per rider, and 3 more men per infantrymen. So, formally, the prime-age male population is:
(Riders X 8 ) + (Infantry X 4) = Prime Age Males
That yields 200,000 men. Then he assumes prime-age men are 1/3 of the population (+1/3 prime age women, +1/3 children), yielding 600,000 people in total. In total, that’s a ratio of 16 civilians per soldier.
How plausible is this?
One way to check it would be to look at major battles and wars of the Middle Ages, check army sizes, then compare to populations, to see what typical conversion ratios are. I didn’t do a full census, but just checked a few famous battles:
There is nowhere with a ratio as low as 17, and the only close cases are Vikings and Georgia defending itself on its home turf. On average, battlefield armies clock in at about 1 soldier per 60–120 civilians in the supporting population. So if we assume that Rohan as a deployable army of 10,000–20,000 men, and that there will be 60–120 civilians per soldier, that yields a Rohan population of… 600,000 to 2.4 million. For comparison, my geographically based estimate was 1.2 million. Here’s how these look in a graph:
So Wigmore’s estimates are at the very low end, and are consistent with Rohan only actually being able to field 10,000 men at the most, and with relatively intense mobilization at that. The geographic data supports the idea of a field army of between 6,800 and 13,000, which to be honest seems about right! If we assume that Rohan is just a bit more heavily mobilized than was typical for medieval societies, you can easily get from the geographic estimates to the army sizes. It’s quite hard, however, to get from Wigmore’s numbers to army sizes.
What if we turn to Gondor? Wigmore puts Gondor’s population at perhaps 1 million. The geographic approach puts it at almost 5 million (excluding Ithilien which I’m assuming is depopulated). And what do we get if we assume an army of between 15,000 and 35,000 with 60–120 civilians per soldier? About 900,000–4.2 million.
Again, Wigmore’s figure is just in the realm of plausibility. The geographic data here implies something on the high end of historic army ratios. On the other hand, Gondor’s army is a lot smaller than we would expect based on the size and fertility of its land, which makes sense if you assume Gondor has been worn down over the years by constant warfare.
Next we can turn to Thranduil’s realm. We know Thranduil fields at least 2,000 elves in his army; Wigmore suggests 3,000 is a plausible number. He supposes that 1/4 Elven adult males is a warrior, and there are 1.5 times as many women and children as there are adult males (fewer kids due to lower Elven reproduction rate vs. lifespan). That yields 30,000 elves in Mirkwood. But, much of Mirkwood is depopulated! Using Fonstad’s map of Thranduil’s realm, we can guess that Thranduil’s people occupied about 1/6 of northern Mirkwood, so their implied geographic estimate is about 57,000.
Turning to army sizes, the matter does become complicated. Elderly elves can still fight. The child share of Elven population is extremely small. To be frank, I think we should treat Elves like Vikings or Georgians: they mobilize at a rate of 20–40 civilians per warrior rather than 60–120. Here’s what we get:
Wigmore here seems much too low; even the geographic estimate is too low compared to army ratios. On the other hand, the elves who remain in Middle Earth may be uniquely martial. So, what ratio would we need to have to produce Wigmore’s estimate or the geographic estimate? Well, the ratio of Soldiers to Geographic Estimate is 17, while the ratio of Soldiers to Wigmore Estimate is 10. Were 1/10th of Elves combatants in Thranduil’s realm? Maybe so!
But if you’re following along here, you can see there may be an argument for an appreciably higher population. In all three areas where we have estimates, Wigmore’s figures seem to be at the very low end. Meanwhile, in the one area we have considerable population, the Shire, Wigmore countenances populations of perhaps 150,000 Hobbits: in TA 1975 the perhaps 20,000 Hobbits of the Shire contribute likely under 200 archers to the host of Earnur against the Witch King, even though the evil is literally at their gates: that’s a ratio of 100:1! But in the Battle of Baywater, there are under 500 Hobbits, perhaps under 400, of perhaps 150,000 Hobbits: a ratio of 300:1 literally in their own backyard!
Is it a coincidence that Shire populations are so inflated relative to Hobbit military capabilities? No, for two reasons: first, Hobbits are peacable folk. But more importantly: we actually have detailed descriptions of civilian life in the Shire. One imagines that if Tolkien gave us stories of farmers in Minhiriath, we’d all suppose Minhiriath to be densely populated! In Wigmore’s telling, Hobbits make up perhaps 5% of the total population of northwestern Middle Earth (1 in 20!). In my geographic estimates, they make up under 1%. Given that Sauron has apparently not heard of the Shire, Hobbits making up maybe 1% of Middle Earth’s population makes quite a lot more sense than 5%.
Toward a Resolution
One key factor my geographic approach does not account for is history. The model estimates some residents of Dagorlad, Fangorn, the Dead Marshes, and other obviously depopulated areas. More generally, it doesn’t account for the real problem of general structural pressures for depopulation: marauding orcs, plagues, bandits and highwaymen making life miserable in the absence of a functional state, etc.
To account for that, I incorporate history. How I did this is a topic all its own, so you can flip to the third post in this series on 3,000 years of population history if you want more details! But suffice to say, Tolkien depicts a setting which is pretty throughly depopulated compared to Medieval Europe. Urban centers are few, vast wilderness extends through whole regions, roads and bridges are abandoned. Combing through the Tolkien source material, I’ve tried to produce population estimates that make sense of what we know.
So, here’s what population densities now look like:
This yields a total population of northwest Middle Earth of about 6.8 million humans, elves, dwarves, and hobbits. As you can see, much of Middle Earth is extremely sparsely settled. The major population centers become Gondor, Rohan, the Shire, Lothlorien, and Eregor/Dale.
Update 1: I initially said there was also a significant population in Minhiriath. I have revised that. When Boromir crosses through Enedwaith, it is utterly depopulated. Tolkien describes it as populated only be wild-men in the western woods of Eryn Vorn. The region once was home to a vast metropolitan shipyard and Vinyalonde/Lond Daer, but that is long since abandoned by TA 3019. The relevant error on my part was categorization: I treated Minhiriath as arable land. But Tolkien is clear Minhiriath is actually forestland that has been logged beyond all recognition for millennia, and then scorched and burnt repeatedly by Sauron. While it once had a bustling population with known urban hubs at Tharbad and Lond Daer, by TA 3019 there has been an epic collapse in Minhiriath’s population. A good analog for this is the collapse of Maya population in the late classic period, when, even before the arrival of Europeans, Maya overpopulation caused a resource crisis which led to a population collapse, which led to the collapse of urban centers, which led to the jungle taking over former farmlands, which led to there never being a population recovery for the Maya. Minhiriath’s case isn’t identical, but it has obvious resonances, so I have pushed its population way down, as also to a lesser extent in Enedwaith.
Update 2: In general, subsequent updates have pushed density estimates downwards due to expanded land areas and reduced density figures. Many thanks to the loyal Tolkien fans who have given so much feedback!
Here is how that looks plotting regional densities:
So Belfalas and Lossarnach have similar population densities as Medieval Austria, Slovakia, Bulgaria, or the Netherlands. Well-settled places to be sure, but not by any means major cosmopolitan urban centers. Rohan and Central Gondor/Lamedon are a bit lower. Nowhere is as densely settled as, say, France was 300 AD-1000 AD. Northern Rhovanion around Dale, Erebor, and Esgaroth is about as dense as Great Britain was in the era of persistent Viking raids. Everywhere to the right of Near Harad as similar densities as the Nordic countries or the Asiatic steppe. I think this all seems pretty reasonable! Areas regions like Arthedain or Rhudaur contain only such vestigial populations as can survive as diffuse pastoralists, isolated farmsteads, wilderness wanderers and hermits, or secluded villages. A subsequent post will elaborate on Eriador in much greater detail.
By the way, for fun, we can instead use Wigmore’s estimates, and then extrapolate from the relative densities he estimates vs. my estimates above to impute similar relative densities for areas Wigmore doesn’t describe, to guesstimate what densities would need to be to give ~3 million residents of Middle Earth. Here it is:
Now that is a map of some wide-open-spaces! That definitely captures the LOTR movies vibe of totally empty countrysides!
But I think it’s wrong. Is Rohan really the most densely settled part of Middle Earth? Its biggest urban center, Edoras, as I’ll describe below, is peanuts compared to Minas Tirith (or, likely even moreso, Pelargir). Its landscape is described as far less village-covered than the Shire. I think this map assumes far too much that because a region doesn’t appear in the main story, it is therefore depopulated. Wigmore’s implied population map is basically just a map of population centers observed by the books — it would be foolish to assume that’s actually the entire population of Middle Earth!
The best estimate of human, Elven, Dwarven, and Hobbit populations in Middle Earth is about 6.7 million. In the next post, I’ll break this down for the four populations.
Finally, as one last bit of fun, we can ask, “What population density prevails in each region as a share of its normal supportable density?” Basically, “Which regions does Tolkien imply are most depopulated vs. what we would expect from their geography and climate?”
Lothlorien is the least depopulated place. It’s a place saved from the ravages of the world by Galadriel’s power. Rohan is next: it is comparatively “recently settled” by a vigorous people who have evidently grown numerous and pushed other peoples (especially Dunlendings) off their land. Then several Gondorian areas are relatively fully populated — but after that, everywhere is more than 50% below expected population. The depopulation is especially severe in the lands west of the Misty Mountains: Minhiriath, Rhudaur, Eregion, Angmar, Harlindon, West Eriador, Arthedain, Forlindon, Cardolan… the only place west of the Misties which is not ruinously underpopulated is The Shire.
Notes on Minas Tirith, Bree, Edoras, and Lake Town
We only have detailed descriptions of three cities in Middle Earth: Minas Tirith, Lake Town, Edoras, and Bree. I want to take a moment to estimate their population. To do this, I will use their exact dimensions as described in Karen Wynn Fonstad’s fabulous Atlas of Middle Earth, and multiply that by plausible estimates of urban density.
But what is a plausible estimate of urban density?
For that, I use several well-studied medieval population centers: London, Paris, Constantinople, Antioch, etc. Here are some general figures for built up area and population:
So you can see, there’s a LOT of fluctuation, but we are talking pretty routinely about tens of thousands of people per square mile.
Lake Town
Here’s Fonstad’s map:
That yields a total area of Lake Town of about 81,000 square feet. If we assume Bruges-like density since that’s a similar kind of settlement, that gives us…. just 250 people in Lake Town, which we know is wrong, since Lake Town sends at least a few hundred fighting age males to the Battle of Five Armies, and that’s after a dragon attack killing many and with many left behind to rebuild.
If we instead assume that 200 fighters make up Lake Towns “army,” our army ratios give us 12000 to 24000 people in Lake Town, which is way too high. If instead we assume Lake Town sent almost a full census of its fighting-age males to the Battle of Five Armies as a show of force, that gives us about 1500 people in Lake Town, for a density of 413,000 people per square mile.
On the whole, these numbers don’t work out. Lake Town doesn’t work out rationally, unless you assume there are considerable shoreside settlements (and maybe there are some!). But I think 1500 people in Lake Town and an appreciably bigger overall settlement are reasonable guesses. Wigmore puts it something like 500–700, but that makes hash of the one reported army size.
Bree and Breeland
When the Hobbits arrive in Bree, how many people are there in that town?
Well, here’s Fonstad’s representation of Bree and Breeland (which includes the towns of Archet, Comb, and Staddle):
Tolkien says there are at least 100 “stone houses of the big folk.” At a reasonable family size per house of 6, that gives you 600 humans in stone houses. Assuming a similar Hobbit population, that gives you 1200 people. But then you have to consider there may have been additional houses which weren’t stone! It’s unclear if Tolkien meant to say only 100 houses in total. If we take Fonstad’s map as gospel, the built-up area of Bree (about 1/2 the area instead the hedge, dike, and hill) is about 0.6 square miles. Using the population density of Florence, another inland settlement in a hilly area that in the medieval period was not built out to its walls, that would give us about 4500 people in Bree. If we then use Fonstad’s relative areas of Bree, Archet, Coomb, and Staddle, and assume 20% lower density in the outlying settlements, we get 1400 more people in Breeland, for about 6,000 peope in Breeland total.
But maybe we’ve overestimated Bree’s density. If we cut density in half, we end up at 3,000 people in all Breeland, of which 2250 in Bree proper. I think estimating Breeland at 3,000–6,000 is reasonable. It’s the largest settlement in the region, and if we take all of my designated Arthedain region to have about 190,000 people in the whole area, a largest settlement of 6,000 is plausible. Medieval Europe was much more urbanized than Arthedain, and had about 10% of the population in “urban” areas over 5,000 people. If we assume Bree to be the only such center, at 6,000, that makes 5% of the population in “urban” centers. At 3,000, it’s 2.5%. Neither of these seems crazy to me, though I’m biased towards maybe 3,000–4,000 people in Breeland.
Minas Tirith
In Minas Tirith we finally come to one of the real urban centers of Middle Earth. Here’s Fonstad’s map:
These measurements put the total square footage of Minas Tirith at just around 1 square mile.
What density should we apply to this?
Well, I think we have a near perfect match. Here’s a map of Antioch:
A fortress, garrison city between a river and a mountain. Also, Wigmore notes that Tolkien seems to have explicitly modeled a lot of Gondor on the Byzantines: it’s possible part of the inspiration for Minas Tirith actually came from Antioch! Certainly the Siege of Gondor proceeds with remarkable similarity to the crusader siege of Antioch in many regards.
So I take Antioch’s 1095 density of about 40,000 people per built-up mile to apply to Minas Tirith, yielding a population ultimately of around 42,000 people in Minas Tirith. This yields the idea that Minas Tirith can durably maintain 300–800 professional soldiers from its own resources, which is nice since the conventional figures in the fandom for the Minas Tirith Citadel Guards is around 250–1000. So a city of 40,000 Gondorians seems about right from what we know of Minas Tirith’s local military capacity.
Now, this does put about 20% of Anorien’s population in one big city, an area of concern. But I think we can justify this on historic grounds: Gondor’s population really had concentrated in a few defensible areas by TA 3019! Minas Tirith was the consolidated descendants of refugees of Minas Ithil Osgiliath, Ithilien, and northern Anorien. High threat from violence does tend to generate population concentration in defensible areas.
So I think 42,000 people in Minas Tirith is a credible estimate. Of course, by the Siege of Gondor, most residents had been evacuated southwards to safer places, so the city as we see it in Return of the King is not at full population.
Edoras
Finally, we come to Edoras. Here’s Fonstad’s map:
This gives us a city of about 0.3 square miles. Again, I think Antioch is a good comparison for a steep hilly fortress town which also serves as a military site and administrative capitol. This gives us about 12,000 people in Edoras. That puts about 2% of Rohan’s population in an urban settlement (assuming there are no others over 5,000?), which is a bit low, but if we assume that the Rohirrim prefer to live with lots of pastureland and that many are pastoralists, it makes sense.
So, final verdicts:
Lake Town- Maybe 1000–1500 people, but the settlement has gotta be a bit bigger than Tolkien lets on
Breeland- 3,000–4,000 men and hobbits combined
Minas Tirith- 42,000 inside the walls, and more out in the Pelennor
Edoras- 12,000 inside the walls, and plausible tons of farmsteads within a few hours ride
