Need help building a realistic town in 10th Century Germany

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by phayman53

Using that article you sent, the population density in the German region in AD 1000 was only 21.4/sq mi. That is below the "minimum" in "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" and at the "Desolate" level on the donjon auto tool. No wonder the Dutchy of Saxony only has about 13 towns listed on it for the maps I can find for the 11th Century. I imagine some of those may even have a population of less than 1000 at that time too.

One of the surprising things that is JUST DIFFERENT than how most folks perceive populations today is that you can more or less assume "90% of everyone is on a farm somewhere."

I also use roughly that 10% figure to figure out how much of a town or rural area is "adventuring capable," meaning "of use as a henchman or ally" in broad terms. Those two groups overlap, but not completely.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by a humble lich

That article really surprised me. I had no idea the population density of Italy was so much higher than everywhere else. And Spain was so much lower than France/England/Germany/Italy. Spain had a lower population density than Scotland! Was that a result of the reconquesta?

That's interesting. I wonder where they got their figure for medieval Spain's population. What I'm seeing says under the Roman Empire, Spain had a population of up to six million people. That would be twenty-six or so people per square mile.

After the Roman warm period ended, population levels did drop.

I think the way these population figures are determined is by looking at the amount and type of arable land, and then figuring out how many people that much land can support. So it might be the case that the person who did the medieval estimate was assuming less arable land and/or farming methods that support fewer people per square mile.

Spain also has comparatively poor farmland, so it might be the case that some of that land was abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire. I know that in the Eastern Roman Empire, it was common for land to fall into disuse, and then at certain times it became economical to reclaim that unused land (what they called klasmatic land).

I found this paper called The Economic Consequences of the Spanish Reconquest: The Long-term Effects of Medieval Conquest and Colonization. It looks like they talk about population density in there. I have a couple of books that might provide an answer too, though most of my literature is on the Eastern Roman Empire.

[nondescript handle]

Don't know any English sources, but the Archaeological Museum Hamburg has a reconstruction of that time period: https://youtu.be/yy2t2ZoUefo

And remember: the whole reason for that settlement was that it is a ford on an important trade route (the Ox road: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A6rvejen). I guess most adventurer jobs would be as caravan guards, and there are already wealthy traders available as patrons...

Edit2:

would the town have been directly administered by the church? Would there have been a count or other noble(s) in charge (I can't find any record of that for this period)?

Originally only by the church, after 966 jointly with the House of Billung (of course they weren't personally present in the Hammaburg, Lüneburg was their seat of power and wealth). Later (around 1050 IIRC) they divided the city into an ecclesiastical and a ducal part, suggesting to me that the free form sharing of power didn't wored so well...

[dcarson]

I have a book, _Archaeology of the Roman Economy_ by Kevin Greene that talks about the climate and topography of Italy making the farmers more productive then many places. Longer growing seasons with grain in the valley bottoms and olives and grapes on the slopes. They were harvested at different times so farmers had more days they did productive work.

[AlexanderHowl]

The figures for Spain in the 10th century do not include Islamic Iberia. The Emirate of Cordoba alone had nearly five million people and Cordoba was the largest city on Earth with a population of 400,000.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Cordoba was the largest city on Earth with a population of 400,000.

I thought Keifeng, Chang'an, and Baghdad were pushing a million people at that time.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by dcarson

I have a book, _Archaeology of the Roman Economy_ by Kevin Greene that talks about the climate and topography of Italy making the farmers more productive then many places. Longer growing seasons with grain in the valley bottoms and olives and grapes on the slopes. They were harvested at different times so farmers had more days they did productive work.

Something like that is an important plot point in my Nordlond/Torengar setting. The center of the realm is nestled in between two large stable rivers and is ridiculously fertile.

The overall realm is about the size of the United Kingdom (or Minnesota, for that matter) at roughly 100,000 square miles (MN is 87,000; UK is 93,600) with a population of about 5.5 million, so about 55 folks per square mile; 21.2 folks per square km.

Up at the border, the characteristics drop to 10-15 folks per square mile, or perhaps 4-6 per square km, and a "totalitarian oppressive dictator" level of military/soldiery level.

The fertile core subsidizes the food production of the hinterlands. Magic is used to get in a few growing seasons where otherwise you'd only get one bad one.

That level of detail gives great color stuff.

[sn0wball]

100km north of Hamburg there still stood the viking settlement of Hedeby, adjacent to the Danevirke. Having a Wall - even one not being made from ice - stretching from seaside to seaside across the land, is an opportunity not to be missed. If there is opportunity for monster hunting in Saxony, it makes creating that wall guarding the lands of the Danes from threats coming from the south all the more sensible.

The Haithabu Museum has a couple of reconstructed viking houses in their original place. These can give you an impression how architecture looked like in that era.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by sn0wball

The Haithabu Museum has a couple of reconstructed viking houses in their original place. These can give you an impression how architecture looked like in that era.

Thanks for that. I've saved that link because I need it.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by phayman53

I am trying to build a historical fantasy campaign set at the beginning of the 10th century in Saxony. It will be a mix of monster hunting, defending against bandits and raiders, and some political intrigue. However, I have at least one historically minded player, so I am going to make the fantasy fit within the context of historical 10th century northern Germany (with the monsters that many people believed were real being real). As a backdrop I was hoping to set the campaign in Hamburg, which was founded as a missionary base in the 9th century, but its location on the Elbe River also made it an excellent trading center. It became an Archdiocese in 831, but was later united with the Archdiocese of Bremen after Hamburg was sacked by Vikings in 845. The reason I want to use it is that it is definitely on the frontier of the East Frankish Kingdom, which is on its last legs, so their is plenty of wilderness for monsters and witches to hide in. Hamburg is also at an intersection of contact between East Francia and both the Danes and West Slavic tribes, and also within the raiding range of the Magyars. All of this makes for excellent variety in factions and opponents.

My issue is that I am unsure how a Archdiocese like Hamburg would have been structured and run. In fact, I am having a hard time finding much information on the town in this period. The Archdiocese of Hamburg was united with Bremen about 60 years before the campaign starts, and the Archbishop usually ruled from Bremen as Hamburg seems to have been too much on the frontier and was looted by Viking and Slavic raiders at least twice (845 and 880). When the town was raided in 845 it only had about 500 residents, so it was not exactly a teeming metropolis. I am unsure of how big it was in the early 900s and would love to find some information on that.

Its not my speciality, but I don't think there was much we would recognize as a town north of the Rhine in that period. Instead, there were religious houses (cathedrals, monasteries) and especially important houses of the great, both of them with workshops and servants' quarters and a settlement for people serving them (maybe the lord has some blacksmiths, or the cathedral brings in some laymen from Milan to make parchment, and of course people will come by with exotic luxuries like Irish cloaks or Greek silk to sell and need a place to stay). You might get a few thousand people, an impressive stone church or palace, a wall and ditch around it all and places for ships to land and foreigners to sleep on shore under protection of the lord or the bishop while they did their business, but it would be very obvious which house is the big house and how many of those people would go away without them, and this is before the northern towns form communes and start really asserting themselves as collectives.

You could try looking up the archaeology of York, there are lots of resources in English in libraries and online and it was one of the big towns in the North Sea region. For Hamburg most of the resources will be in German and Danish. There is also an English book on Dithmarschen which has a short history of the period, and things like the South Baltic peoples who held to paganism and independence for centuries after the Franks stormed into the region. Maybe it is the one by William Urban?