# How many Hobbits are there?



## Beorn (Apr 12, 2003)

How large do you suppose the population of hobbits was? I would say nearly extinct: at Bilbo's party, there were 144 (a gross) people invited, and that was nearly everyone in The Shire, was it not?

Mike


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## FoolOfATook (Apr 12, 2003)

144 people were invited to the special dinner- there were more Hobbits than that at the party itself.


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## Sador (Apr 13, 2003)

And let's not forget Hobbits living outside the shire. Bree, Archet, Coombe, Chetwood and various small dwellings of "wild" hobbits throughout the west.


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## Aglarthalion (Apr 13, 2003)

Well, taking into consideration that The Shire is the where the major population Hobbits reside (and there wouldn't have been more than a few hundred there at most), together with the other separate dwellings of Hobbits as Sador mentioned, I wouldn't say there would be more than perhaps a thousand Hobbits in total population in Middle Earth. This figure, in my opinion, would be few enough to say the race of Hobbits was very close to extinction.

Edit: Changed my estimate to something more likely, from half a thousand to a thousand.


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## Sador (Apr 13, 2003)

Well given the size of the shire (?) and the number of villages and hamlets therein I might guess several thousand Hobbits in the shire and maybe a thousand elsewhere.


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## Aglarthalion (Apr 13, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Sador _
> *Well given the size of the shire (?) and the number of villages and hamlets therein I might guess several thousand Hobbits in the shire and maybe a thousand elsewhere. *


You think that many, Sador? Although you could very well be correct, I don't really think there can ever be an estimate which could definitely be said to be the Hobbit population, because the number of Hobbits in other locations in the Shire (and other areas) is never explained in any detail.


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## Lantarion (Apr 13, 2003)

Well the Shire was quite large, all in all.. It basically dominated Eriador, or at least central Eriador. But the wildlife and forestation was very dense in the Shire, and settlements might have been many but small and spaced apart.. 
There must be essays about this somewhere.


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## Aragorn21 (Apr 13, 2003)

Yeah, personally I think someone should line them up for a head count .


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## Sador (Apr 13, 2003)

I think there were more than 100 hobbits in Brandybuck hall, wasn't there? Not to mention the great smials or Michel Delving.
Even if they all lived on farms there would have to be more than a couple of hundred. They did like large families.


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## Beleg (Apr 14, 2003)

We should not underestimate the population of the West Farthing, considerablly more people lived there, since the biggest city of Shire was Michel Dwelling, and through the Geneologies in the end of LOTR, we find that families were wide-spread and indeed huge and four families possessed about 100 people at the time of War of the Ring, so according to my estimation the population of shire was somewhere between 10 to 15 thousand, A usual figure in Middle-Earth. Basically Bilbo invented everyone living around Bay-Water and Hobbiton and that produced quite a croud too, what about the people living in South Farthing, In Marish and BuckLand? They were unmerous people too, so it would be wrong to say that Bilbo invitied everyone in the shire to his party.


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## Ithrynluin (Apr 14, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Beleg_strongbow _
> *so according to my estimation the population of shire was somewhere between 10 to 15 thousand, A usual figure in Middle-Earth. *



I agree with this figure, Beleg. I don't see why the hobbit population should be sparse, since they lived in a fertile and fruitful land, had no "natural enemies" and were untouched by wars.


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## Lantarion (Apr 14, 2003)

But you must admit that there was an awful lot of open countryside; woods, fields, marshes.. Of course some of these must have been used for growing food, but still I have always understood that the Shire was very 'green' and had lots of open or wooded wilderness.
And Beleg, I think you mean 'Michel Delving' and 'Bywater'.. But great deduction, I think I agree.


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## JeffF. (Apr 15, 2003)

*In ROTK*

In the chapter, Scouring of the Shire, Tolkien mentions that the Hobbits numbered serveral thousand. This definitely included women and children but did not include the Hobbits of Bree and probably not those of Tookland or Buckland but it is hard to be sure. A paragraph in Unfinished Tales also says that the remnants of Gollum's people, the Stoors, were in the vicinity of Gladden Fields (but this is stated as being one of two versions, in the other there are no survivors of the Stoors who returned over the Misty Mountains).


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## pgt (Apr 16, 2003)

"everyone in The Shire"

Thas was just an 'expression'. Not everyone in the Shire was there - far from it. Mostly it was everyone of a similar social class as Bilbo and/or related to him as well as some of the locals.

"...various small dwellings of "wild" hobbits throughout the west."

Huh!?

---

Personally I would not argue with those guessing the higher figures here well into the thousands. Hobbits are fascinated by genealogy and it times there is a sense of the insurmountable data in this task - if only sub 1000 - that would hardly be that hard to map. Yes, I would agree w/ the higher guestimates of anywhere from 3000 to even much more.


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## Ardamir the Blessed (Aug 1, 2003)

> ...various small dwellings of "wild" hobbits throughout the west.


*Sador* is probably referring to this:

'At the Sign of _The Prancing Pony_':


> The Shire-hobbits referred to those of Bree, and to any others that lived beyond the borders, as Outsiders, and took very little interest in them, considering them dull and uncouth. There were probably many more Outsiders scattered about in the West of the World in those days than the people of the Shire imagined. Some, doubtless, were no better than tramps, ready to dig a hole in any bank and stay only as long as it suited them.


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## Celebthôl (Aug 1, 2003)

Well it depends at what time Mike is refuring to, pre-war of the ring id say around 5000 max all over, but post-war of the ring after kind Mr Aragorn gave them all that land about Tower Hills etc and let them grow in piece, i say it maxed out at about 10,000.


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## Inderjit S (Aug 2, 2003)

> to, pre-war of the ring id say around 5000 max all over, but post-war of the ring after kind Mr Aragorn gave them all that land about Tower Hills etc and let them grow in piece, i say it maxed out at about 10,000



Well, The Hobbits had been living in relative peace for a great while. Undoubtley when the Gondorian forces with some Elves a lot of them fled into hiding, but they claim to have sent some archers with that army to overthrow Angmar, and it was only until after then that they became wholly independent and the Shire was established as a ’separate’ nation. They had first obtained the land that later became the Shire in 1601 T.A and 29 years later, they are joined by some migrating Stoors who had migrated to Dunland after leaving the Angle in 1356. (Though some returned to Rhovanion-these later became the group of Hobbits that Smeagol was a part of) 

They then suffered great losses in 1636, the year that the Great Plague first came from the East, and though it’s severity lessened, many were killed then, 37 years into the existence of the Shire. Since Tolkien states ‘many thousands’ were killed there, but the Hobbits managed to survive we can assume that they had a original population of 12,000+ but they were ravaged till they had a population of say 2-3 thousand, maybe more. 

The Shire land is a very hospitable one, it is said in the Prologue and Unfinished Tales to have been the former hunting ground of the King and he had many cornlands, vineyards and farms there. The Hobbits were able to maintain a decent standard of living for themselves and they prospered, for some 1400 or so years, and their numbers would have been high. They generally had quite large families, and so one can assume that they by the time of the WoTR had a population of 15,00+ as Beleg estimates .

We get hints from the book. Supposedly, there is a birthday every day of the years in Bywater and Hobbiton, thus they have a population number over 360, since Appendix D states in the Shire Calendar each month had 30 days. When Merry sounds the Horn the Eowyn gave him, we hear that there are ‘more then a hundred sturdy Hobbits’ after a few minutes or so, and many younger lads, with many more coming. This was the entire male content of Bywater, but many other farmers were coming up, so Hobbiton had quite a large agrarian population. One wonders whether the population of Boffins described in Peoples of Middle-Earth who lived north of the Shire came too. Some Hundred too came from Tookborough, (maybe as much as the Thain could spare as he sent a group to go after some of the ruffians who were besieging Tookland) whilst Pippin left many hunters around about Bywater and so one can assume that they had adult male population of some 500+ all together. 

But we here are dealing with very centralised population hotspots of Hobbits? What about their chief town Michel Delving? And all the other parts of the Shire? We can assume that the whole Hobbit population for Tookborough, Hobbiton, Bywater and adjoining farms must have been some 1500, give or take, and we never get accurate estimate of the population in the semi-independent Buckland, which was said to be densely populated, and in it’s chief town, Buckleberry must have had a large population.

We also find this interesting comment in _Of Dwarves and Men_ (hoME 12)



> Bilbo's statement (The Lord of the Rings I.162)# that the cohabitation of Big Folk and Little Folk in one settlement at Bree was peculiar and nowhere else to be found was probably true in his time (the end of the Third Age);# but it would seem that actually Hobbits had liked to live with or near to Big Folk of friendly kind, who with their greater strength protected them from many dangers and enemies and other hostile Men, and received in exchange many services


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## Eriol (Aug 2, 2003)

If I'm not mistaken, Sam had "several thousand" hands willing to help with the works of reparation of the Shire.


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## Inderjit S (Aug 2, 2003)

*Eriol's post*



> Meanwhile the labour or repair went on apace, and Sam was kept very busy. Hobbits can work like bees when in the mood and the need comes on them. Now their were thousands of willing hands of all ages....


 _The Grey Havens_


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## pgt (Aug 5, 2003)

Based on the clues from the books in general - 5K to 10K sounds fine by me.

But what if you consider the typically large families Hobbits apparently had. Also consider their long lifespans. And finally consider the general lack of constraints on population like severe weather or disease or lack of natural resources or raiding orcs or wars or whatever that normally serves to curb population growth. They had what, an orc raiding party many generations prior and a bad winter way back when...? At that rate you'd figure 100s of 1000s and bursting at the seams - which of course doesn't jive w/ the book at all.

Personally I never found the large hobbit family descriptions, healthy lifespans and apparently abundant natural resources of the Shire to reconcile themselves to the modest rural population sense I have of the shire.


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## Ardamir the Blessed (Aug 17, 2003)

Here are some quotes from LR that *may* give further clues about the population of the Shire:


> Anyway: there was this Mr. Frodo left an orphan and stranded, as you might say, among those ***** Bucklanders, being brought up anyhow in Brandy Hall. A regular warren, by all accounts. Old Master Gorbadoc never had fewer than *a couple of hundred relations* in the place.





> Before long the invitations began pouring out, and the Hobbiton post-office was blocked, and the Bywater post-office was snowed under, and voluntary assistant postmen were called for. There was a constant stream of them going up the Hill, carrying *hundreds* of polite variations on _Thank you, I shall certainly come_.





> They thought of the slanting light of evening glittering on the Brandywine River, and the windows of Bucklebury beginning to gleam with *hundreds of lights*.





> The village of Bree had some *hundred stone houses of the Big Folk*, mostly above the Road, nestling on the hillside with windows looking west.





> ‘Then why do you do their work far them?’ said Sam angrily. ‘Who sent you to Frogmorton?’
> ‘No one did. We stay here in the big Shirriff-house. We’re the First Eastfarthing Troop now. There’s *hundreds of Shirriffs* all told and they want more, with all these new rules.





> When Sam got back he found the whole village roused. Already, apart from many younger lads, *more than a hundred sturdy hobbits were assembled* with axes, and heavy hammers, and long knives, and stout staves: and a few had hunting-bows. More were still coming in from outlying farms.





> Still I [Cotton] reckon there’s not above *three hundred of them* [ruffians] in the Shire all told, and maybe less. We can master them, if we stick together.





> In the dark on the edge of the firelight stood a ring of hobbits that had crept up out of the shadows. There was *nearly two hundred* of them, all holding some weapon.


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## Beleg (Aug 18, 2003)

Thanks Herendil. The last Quote is specially revealing.


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## Ardamir the Blessed (Aug 23, 2003)

RotS, a draft of a passage in the Prologue:


> Even in Hobbiton and Bywater, and in Tuckborough away in Tookland, and on the chalky Indowns in the centre of the Shire where there was a large population


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## Khalam Brightblade (Jun 22, 2021)

Beorn said:


> How large do you suppose the population of hobbits was? I would say nearly extinct: at Bilbo's party, there were 144 (a gross) people invited, and that was nearly everyone in The Shire, was it not?
> 
> Mike


Hell no, just his Family, Friends, Tenants/Dependents, Suppliers & immediate neighbours. I44 pretty much his just his Bag End Estate. Bilbo was basically landed Gentry/lord of the Manor.



Sador said:


> And let's not forget Hobbits living outside the shire. Bree, Archet, Coombe, Chetwood and various small dwellings of "wild" hobbits throughout the west.


Yeah, there's another village in Stoorland/Breeland you missed out ...Staddle. So I'd say at least a thousand Hobbits in the Bree Land/Chetwood alone.
Buckland more densely populated so I'd guess at least 2000 there. Stoorland/The Marish could easily be a thousand or more too.



Aglarthalion said:


> Well, taking into consideration that The Shire is the where the major population Hobbits reside (and there wouldn't have been more than a few hundred there at most), together with the other separate dwellings of Hobbits as Sador mentioned, I wouldn't say there would be more than perhaps a thousand Hobbits in total population in Middle Earth. This figure, in my opinion, would be few enough to say the race of Hobbits was very close to extinction.
> 
> Edit: Changed my estimate to something more likely, from half a thousand to a thousand.


I think you're way on the lowball side with your figures. A few hundred in the whole shire? There's probably way more than that in Hobbiton alone. The Shire is peaceful, fertile & the size of the Midlands in the UK plus a third or so extra (28, 000 sq km). Even with a very low avg density of say 3 people per sq km that's about 84, 000 people. Given that Buckland, Breeland & Westmarch are outside the Shire's official borders we easily get a number around 100, 000.

Pop. in Midlands today 10m so go back to a Middle-Ages size of about10% of that still equals 1m. Factor in that they lost people in the War against Angmar, the Plague, The Golfimbul Orc Raid etc even losing 90% still leaves 100, 000 with a very low pop density. But we know that Hobbits were thriving, populous even so as there was obvious a population pressure that led to them colonising east of the Brandywine establishing Buckland. If the pop. was ridiculously low they have no reason to colonise there nor the manpower to do it. Oldbucks who became Bucklands were Chief Thanes of the Shire & wouldn't have up stakes without impetus to do so or ability to retain/direct a sizable following to come with them to clear/work the land. I reckon there are at least 5000 Hobbits in the Buckland in Bilbo/Frodo's time. Also it is clear that Hobbits were expanding beyond the Shire Farthing borders to the south, north & west ...especially in west as not only did Aragorn reaffirm the Hobbits autonomy/land rights in the Shire, but also granted a whole chunk of territory to the west ...The WestMarch expanding from the border at Far Downs to new border at the Tower Hills.



Lantarion said:


> Well the Shire was quite large, all in all.. It basically dominated Eriador, or at least central Eriador. But the wildlife and forestation was very dense in the Shire, and settlements might have been many but small and spaced apart..
> There must be essays about this somewhere.


Yeah even with a very low avg pop. density, just coz of the size of the Shire at about 28, 000 square km, even with just 2 people every sq km you get over 50, 000. It has to be more though coz we know there a handful of small towns & quite a few villages. If every village just 50-100 we still end up with quite a few but we know several villages bigger than that in 200-500 range. Hobbiton prob at least a thousand. The capital at Michel Delving "the Great Diggings" at least 1500-2000 in comparison. The whole of the Shire must be reasonably well stocked with Hobbits enough so that were still able to show their ownership/possession of it ...enough to warrant the reaffirmation by Aragorn Ellessar. Otherwise his own Dunedain/Arnorian Arthedain, Cardolan & Rhudaurpeople would be pissed at him giving empty fertile land to Halflings instead of to them.



Sador said:


> I think there were more than 100 hobbits in Brandybuck hall, wasn't there? Not to mention the great smials or Michel Delving.
> Even if they all lived on farms there would have to be more than a couple of hundred. They did like large families.


Yeah Brandybucks more established/powerful wealthy than well-to-do Baggins (before his treasure haul) Baggins had a 144 family, friends, tenants, clients at his party. I think the Brandybucks would have that just in family, & prob a thousand friends, tenants, clients at any party they threw. They are the second pole of power in the Shire, so at least 10% of Shire Pop. in Buckland alone ...but likely more as the Oldbucks formerly ruled the whole Shire & would have commanded a substantial mini-horde on their colonisation of the eastbank.



Beleg said:


> We should not underestimate the population of the West Farthing, considerablly more people lived there, since the biggest city of Shire was Michel Dwelling, and through the Geneologies in the end of LOTR, we find that families were wide-spread and indeed huge and four families possessed about 100 people at the time of War of the Ring, so according to my estimation the population of shire was somewhere between 10 to 15 thousand, A usual figure in Middle-Earth. Basically Bilbo invented everyone living around Bay-Water and Hobbiton and that produced quite a croud too, what about the people living in South Farthing, In Marish and BuckLand? They were unmerous people too, so it would be wrong to say that Bilbo invitied everyone in the shire to his party.


Yeah I think you're on the right track but still off the mark. Your 10,000-15, 000 figure is probably the lowball figure for each of the 4 Farthings to give 40,000-60,000 In Shire proper, plus 4, 000-6,000 in Buckland (prob more), plus at least around a thousand in the Bree-Land/Chetwood villages & farms, plus 4,000-7,000 in the Westmarch (between Far Downs & Tower Hills) which was later graciously gifted as addition to the Shire-Lands in recognition of the occupation/possession/usage of the land by the Hobbits. We see the centre of Shire quite densely populated with Hobbiton, Bywater (stable pop.) & other towns & villages but yes the population growth seems after the first eastwards smaller scale expansion into Buckland to have shifted to the west. 

Someone mentioned "wild" populations" outside the Shire & Hobbits themselves know of outsider Hobbits. No big stretch of imagination to think there are Hobbit settlements/farmholdings beyond the official borders in the north and south both pre-existing the Shire & later colonisations/recolonisations by Shire lads wanting to stretch their legs & make their own way free from the thumbs of their fathers, older brothers, uncles.



Ithrynluin said:


> I agree with this figure, Beleg. I don't see why the hobbit population should be sparse, since they lived in a fertile and fruitful land, had no "natural enemies" and were untouched by wars.


Definitely not sparse & way more than 10,000-15,000. Otherwise they just can't hold claim to the land through possession & use & and ability to guard their borders from bands of humans looking to take some fertile land to farm. If they are too few they lose their land-rights as no King, not even Aragorn would be stupid as to try and deny empty fertile land to his subjects who had been living in marginal land north & south of the Shire.


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## Olorgando (Jun 22, 2021)

Taking, with all due caution, Karen Wynn Fonstad's figures in her "Atlas of Middle-earth", the Shire pre-war extended 40 leagues / 120 miles / 192 kilometers east-west, and 50 leagues / 150 miles / 241 kilometers north-south. Fonstad gives the Shire's size as about 21,400 square miles, or 55,402 square kilometers. That's about the size of Croatia, and a lot larger than say Slovakia (49,035 sq km), Denmark (43,094 sq km), the Netherlands (41,543 sq km), Switzerland (41,285 sq km), or Belgium (30,528 sq km), all of which have a current population exceeding 4 million, up to the 11 million of Belgium and 17 million of the Netherlands. Assuming Khalam's above estimate of Middle-Age populations being 10% of today's to be reasonably accurate., that would still give us more than 400,000 at 10% of Croatia, which is decidedly more hilly, even mountainous than the Shire


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jun 22, 2021)

I doubt Hobbiton could boast a thousand inhabitants, though, if it couldn't support even one tavern.


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## Alcuin (Jun 22, 2021)

Continuing in the current vein, Google lists the area of England at 50,301 square miles. Wikipedia asserts the population of England, a relatively prosperous and well-ordered corner of the world in AD 1000 when Æthelred the Unready (“Unready” means “poorly advised” or “unadvised” (he was indeed poorly advised), not “unprepared”) sat as King of England, at 1.6 million souls, giving us a population density of about 31.8 people per square mile. If the Shire is supposed to be similar to England at about this time, then assuming Fonstad’s estimate of 21,400 square miles for the Shire is correct, that would equate to a population of over 680,000 thousand Hobbits. If instead we use the population of Europe about that time, presumably about 56.4 million people (Wikipedia) and 3.9 million square miles (Google), then at a density of about 14.3 people per square mile in AD 1000 gives us a population of 307,000 Hobbits. 

I think it could be argued reasonable to cut these population density estimates in half or even more, to Dark Age levels (whatever that may be). At the end of the Third Age, the Hobbits were living in an isolated economy, trading only with Bree, a few Rangers, and Dwarves in and travelling to and from the Blue Mountains; they seem to have had little dealings with Elves, though this was not unknown. (Bilbo, for one, had considerable dealings with Elves even before his Long Expected Party.)


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## Khalam Brightblade (Jun 22, 2021)

Lantarion said:


> But you must admit that there was an awful lot of open countryside; woods, fields, marshes.. Of course some of these must have been used for growing food, but still I have always understood that the Shire was very 'green' and had lots of open or wooded wilderness.
> And Beleg, I think you mean 'Michel Delving' and 'Bywater'.. But great deduction, I think I agree.


Well even in the marshes/swamps must be plenty of Hobbits living in the there much the same as the Delta Swamp Arabs of the Arab-Al-Shatt in Iraq & other swamp/delta/river bog land peoples eg boats, fishing, living on islands (natural & hobbit-made), on stilt houses, in raft-houses, also I think a lot of Hobbits in the forests too ...Foresters/Hunters supplying wood for fires & construction & Deer Meat etc to the townies for . The Hobbits love the hills & they have hills in north, west & south. So like the Highlands of Scotland, Vietnam etc there would quite possibly a sizable pop. in the hill valleys/foothills ...terraced farms. Also we know they like digging as several of the towns/villages have the name of Delving so they're mining for Gold, Metals ...iron, copper, tin for their ploughs, barrels, carts etc. So villages not just supprting farming, but mining, forestry. On the rivers/in the marshes they've got villages supporting a fishing 'industry' to supply fish to the townies.

The Shire is very big, Hobbits are very small, an average hobbit probably only eats half to two thirds of an average human even after 6 meals instead of 3. If their farms average same size as a human's (they can also have more farmers on that farm), but yielding 1/3 extra as surplus means the Hobbit Farmers supply quite a surplus of crops & meat enabling growth of a pop. of 25%-33% of Hobbits to congregate in towns, take up trades & crafts to in turn supply goods to the farmers eg ploughs, horseshoes, cutlery, clothes, drapery/"manchester" etc & to add value to farmers produce eg Mills, Wool-Scourers, Looms For Clothes & Linen. If their farms are half or 2/3 the size of a human farm they can fit more farms on the land to get the same result ...a greater surplus.

In medieval times Market Towns & larger Villages made up minority (maybe 10%) as overwhelming majority of people in very small hamlets or simply just spread out over the land in smallholding homesteads. It was only once enough surplus was produced that towns/villages really started to grow & once the farming got more efficient/productive less were needed on the land leading to enclosures/rise of industrialisation. Hobbits with head start of good surplus prob ahead of Humans on 'industrialisation'.

If only 10% of Hobbits in the named towns & villages, there's 90% spread out in un-named (on map) hamlets & in the family/sub-clan smallhold/homesteads. Even taking a small figure for avg pop. of all the named towns/villagesthe Michel Delvings,Bywaters, Nobottles etc you end up with at least 20, 000. If that's 10% of Hobbits you get 200, 000 hobbits, If that's 25% of the Hobbits then you've got a 100, 000 Hobbits, if it's a third of the Hobbits then that's 60, 000 just there ...plus extra for Buckland & Westmarch which are out of bounds of the Farthings so maybe an extra 5000-10, 000 ...plus there are likely some Hobbit communities & farmsteads beyond the Farthings borders in north & south. Knowing that they had pushed into Buckland & Westmarch it makes sense they would have been doing the same on a somewhat smaller scale in the north & southy like they did in the east & ewest.

Hobbits producing bigger surpluses & earlier than humans would have an economic head start. I wouldn't be surprised if the Baggins, The Sackvilles, the Tooks etc were quite wealthy due to trade with the scattered humans of north & south Eriador. Also impossible to believe there was no trade with Cirdan's Mini-State centred on the Grey Haven.



JeffF. said:


> *In ROTK*
> 
> In the chapter, Scouring of the Shire, Tolkien mentions that the Hobbits numbered serveral thousand. This definitely included women and children but did not include the Hobbits of Bree and probably not those of Tookland or Buckland but it is hard to be sure. A paragraph in Unfinished Tales also says that the remnants of Gollum's people, the Stoors, were in the vicinity of Gladden Fields (but this is stated as being one of two versions, in the other there are no survivors of the Stoors who returned over the Misty Mountains).


No, that several thousand only referred to those of all ages able to come & assist in the recovery/rebuild effort in central Shire. Saruman's scouring only really affected the central Shire as he did not have the manpower to garrison/occupy & build factories in every village in the north, west, south & east ...I don't think Buckland was touched at all. For me I read the several thousand as the spare manpower/able-bodied in the central Shire & the closest areas of the four farthings adjoining the Four Farthings Stone that were close enough, able to be spared from the neighbouring villages & farms. I'd take it as a tithe at most with the largest part being what would be their army manpower if necessary. The cream of the crop ...their equivalent to our 18-40 years old lads of fighting age leavened with their equivalent of our older hale & hearty 40-65 year olds still fit and strong and able to kick arse.

In effect with the reconstruction the several thousand constitute a Land Army/National Reserve, if not a military army.



pgt said:


> "everyone in The Shire"
> 
> Thas was just an 'expression'. Not everyone in the Shire was there - far from it. Mostly it was everyone of a similar social class as Bilbo and/or related to him as well as some of the locals.
> 
> ...


Way, way much more. Based on pop. estimates re Domesday Book, proportionality of town/village pop. to rural in hamlets & farmsteads coupled with size of Shire & estimations of avg pop. per sq km densities, even at ridiculously lowballed low end you've at least 28, 000 Hobbits in the Shire. But here's the kicker, they were thriving, prosperous, well-fed. Large families common. Pop. pressure led them to colonise ...first the Bucklands outside shire bounds to the east & then westward beyond their official border at the White Downs first to the Far Downs then to the Tower Hills. Aragorn recognised the changed circumstance on the ground not only reaffirming the Shire grant but expanding it to include the Buckland & the Westmarch. They probably had some settlement over the borderline in the north & south too. I also firmly believe that other non Shire communities still existed in north, east & south too. In whole history of human migration never the case that an entire people upped stakes & left to a destination with the entire migrating group at the final destination. Always some who say nah, I don't want to leave that stay behind. Of those that go groups always split off ..."this place looks pretty good, we can do well enough here", the line of thinking of a "bird in the hand is wotrth two in the bush". Take something good right now instead of waiting for the possibility of something even better. Not just people getting tired of the journey but politics as well. A dude who has leadership skills has opportunity to stop playing second fiddle to the bossman & become a bossman in his own right. Nomad groups always splitting & reforming



Celebthôl said:


> Well it depends at what time Mike is refuring to, pre-war of the ring id say around 5000 max all over, but post-war of the ring after kind Mr Aragorn gave them all that land about Tower Hills etc and let them grow in piece, i say it maxed out at about 10,000.


They weren't merely given the land ...it was in recognition that the Shire was bursting at the seams, that the Hobbits had already pushed west of the Westfarthing border to occupy the land between the White Downs & the Far Downs with a lot of settlers too between the Far Downs and the Tower Hills. This was their second wave of expansion after the bossman Oldbuck Hobbit stepped down as High Nabob, giving over the reigns to number two bossman Took and took his Family, Clan and followers to settle in the Buckland.



Inderjit S said:


> Well, The Hobbits had been living in relative peace for a great while. Undoubtley when the Gondorian forces with some Elves a lot of them fled into hiding, but they claim to have sent some archers with that army to overthrow Angmar, and it was only until after then that they became wholly independent and the Shire was established as a ’separate’ nation. They had first obtained the land that later became the Shire in 1601 T.A and 29 years later, they are joined by some migrating Stoors who had migrated to Dunland after leaving the Angle in 1356. (Though some returned to Rhovanion-these later became the group of Hobbits that Smeagol was a part of)
> 
> They then suffered great losses in 1636, the year that the Great Plague first came from the East, and though it’s severity lessened, many were killed then, 37 years into the existence of the Shire. Since Tolkien states ‘many thousands’ were killed there, but the Hobbits managed to survive we can assume that they had a original population of 12,000+ but they were ravaged till they had a population of say 2-3 thousand, maybe more.
> 
> ...


Most on the right track of anyone here, but your figures still too low. A larger starting population for one as the Hobbits en masse migrated from the Anduin river valley. Very fertile river valley & very large with hobbits stretching out all along from north to south. Hobbits didn't all leave in just one migration though. At least two major initial migratory groups/paths taken one going south, one going north ...both left groups scattered along the way. The Hobbits were numerous enough to have formed three distinct Kindreds ...one in the northern Anduin, one in central Anduin/Gladden River Valley & one in southern Anduin down by Lorien & Rhovannion.

Later migration groups joined those scatterings and also followed the Shire settlers to join them there later. Later many from the scatterling communities came to Shire/coalesced there. Not all Hobbits left Anduin/Gladden River/Gladden Fields & the other tributary river valleys., not all scatterlings joined the Shirelings, not all scatterlings/shirelings stayed in their colonies ...some turned their backs and returned to the Urheimat. As for the plague the fact that it ravaged many thousands actually provides evidence for a higher pop. as even the Bubonic Plague only had a mortality rate of 1%-15% treated or 50% untreated. Septicemic Plague was 40% treated and left untreated had a 100% death rate of those infected ...but here's the kicker, not everyone got infected. 

Plagues did so much damage coz concentration of pop. in cities, large towns/villages. It had less chance to reach those in the countryside. In England with it's urbanisation the Plagues had lots of fuel for the fire but in the Shire with a more distributed pop./less urbanisation with only small villages the Plague would burn out quicker with less vectors for transition, By same token though coz of that mortality rate the fact that "many thousands" died means that on a 50% infected death rate there is another 50% "many thousands" who lived on (and that's just those infected and surviving, never mind all the uninfected in the deep countryside. Hobbits healthy fed, healthy lives too ...no open sewerage in the streets, mostly involved in physical activity, stronger constitution, knowledgable of herbal medicine etc would probably do a lot better than the humans of the great cities of Gondor etc. 

Let's say 7000 dead, 7000 infected and recovered/survived & 7000 uninfected means at least 21, 000 Shire colonists at time of Plague. 
They took a substantial hit but not a totally disastrous one. Then with further waves of colonists, probably survivors from quite a few now untenable small scattering settlements plus further migrants from the Old Homeland they probably soon were back to the twenty thousands. Hobbit generation say every 33 years (compared to human 25 year generation), large families normative so even being conservative with four kids per mum & dad we have 36 generations over 1400 years. If base pop. 20, 000 just after the plague. (I think it's a bit higher than that though coz they had one generation of breeding in the shire before the Plague so prob 25, 000) then My maths brain is lacking here but there's going to be a hell of a lot of Hobbits springing forth as they go forth & multiply.

[NB That was the worst case scenario too btw with an untreated Bubonic Plague (also quite similar to treated rate of the Septicemic Plague). If Bubonic plague with worst case treated infected death rate of 15% then that means about 45, 500 starting pop of those infected (dead & recovered) plus all those not infected so let's say 60, 000-65,000 to factor in that they had a generation of breeding before the plague too) starting pop.] If we we assume a quarter or a half or a third of the hobbits not infected by the Plague we get 75,000-80,000 to 90, 000-95, 000 Hobbits, say 100, 000 for nice round figure]. Untreated septicemic plague 100% deadly but not everyone got infected so even if everyone who gets it dies but if only half of the people get it you still can have a large survivor pop. If you had 20, 000 to start and lost half with 10, 000 rebuilding, bolstered by further waves of migration in aftermath you scould be back to the 20, 000 or so mark. 36 generations later you still have quite a lot of Hobbits in the Shire. 

They suffered a minor set-back 272 years prior to There & Back Again or LOTR? ...not sure which one where they suffered depradations due to raids then a full-on attack by a tribe of Goblins/Orcs led by Golfimbul. The Hobbits were numerous enough to field an army that met the Orcs on the field of battle & routed them. Bullroarer Took was skilled enough & strong enough to behead Golfimbul where his head flew threw the air and fell into a Badger Hole, thus the Hobbits invented Golf. They don't get mentioned in the books but every Hobbit town/Village most likely had a golf course just like NZ, Middle-Earth, Inc LOL


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## Olorgando (Jun 23, 2021)

Khalam Brightblade said:


> Hobbits with head start of good surplus prob ahead of Humans on 'industrialisation'.


Ah, no. Industrialization was absolutely anathema to JRRT. His Hobbits were clearly based on an English pre-mechanized agricultural system.
As he wrote in the "Prologue" in "Fellowship:

"Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favorite haunt. *They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom,* though they were skilled with tools."

This last statement points to pre-industrial artisanship. JRRT modeled his Shire on childhood memories of living in the hamlet of Sarehole on the outskirts of Birmingham (by now swallowed by the urban area - quite possibly already so in JRRT's lifetime). The whole point about the chapter "The Scouring of the Shire" is that Saruman tried to *introduce* industrialization to the Shire, and had succeeded to a point. The efforts of Sam and his helpers was to get rid of every vestige of Saruman's misdeeds and restore the Shire to its former state, or as closely as possible to it.
This part of the book is totally absent in the films.


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## Khalam Brightblade (Jun 24, 2021)

pgt said:


> Based on the clues from the books in general - 5K to 10K sounds fine by me.
> 
> But what if you consider the typically large families Hobbits apparently had. Also consider their long lifespans. And finally consider the general lack of constraints on population like severe weather or disease or lack of natural resources or raiding orcs or wars or whatever that normally serves to curb population growth. They had what, an orc raiding party many generations prior and a bad winter way back when...? At that rate you'd figure 100s of 1000s and bursting at the seams - which of course doesn't jive w/ the book at all.
> 
> Personally I never found the large hobbit family descriptions, healthy lifespans and apparently abundant natural resources of the Shire to reconcile themselves to the modest rural population sense I have of the shire.


Longer lifespan does mean more elders in pop but also slows down generation time. Humans reckon a generation at about 25 years, but Hobbits instead of getting their Key & Super-Mug at 21 get it at 33 years old. Humans start families in late teens/early twenties in medieval time but Hobbits are starting families in their thirties/forties, but yes big families, even just with four kids still means a lot of pop. growth.We know Sam & Rosie have twelve kids & i'm sure there not too outside the norm. It was common for our ancestors to have that many. My great grandmother had 12 kids, My Grandma had 4, my mum had 4, my sister has 5. Religion LOL. I'm sure the Hobbits have some kind of nature-based religion too even though JRRT never talks about it. We know they had substantial pop. coz of organised colonisation of the East Bank of the Brandywine led by Thane Oldbuck who ceded authority in Shire to The Took. Directed from the top, taking a significant pool of manpower to clear the land & establish villages & farms means they had numbers. I think the case is that there are many unnamed villages not marked on map. Michel Delving is in the far west on the border yet has become the seat of the Mayor, the practical Gov of the Shire with The Tooks closer to the old heartland now reduced to a more ceremonial role. Buckland is pretty much autonoumous of the Shire Gov though. Michel Delving suggests to me that the weight of Shire growth since the first colonisation to the east has been in the west, so Michel Delving is now the capital closer to the action as it were instead of Old Hobbiton of the Bucklands or Tookland of the Tooks. Even just counting up all the named towns/villages with modest counts for each you get a substantial number. Add in that majority 80%-90% of poplutation in medieval times was rural living in hamlets of just two or three families or on farmstead/homesteads you get quite a large number just based on a very low avg pop. density per sq km. The Shire is large. Each farthing is pretty much equal to a county/ district/English Shire in itself. From what I've read Tolkien indicated it was about the size of the Midlands of England, quite a substantial portion of the realm of England, being in a large part coterminous to the old pre-England kingdom of Mercia.

Ac
cording to my analysis at least 100,000-150, 000 Hobbits with a best case scenario actually being around 500,000 Hobbits.



Olorgando said:


> Ah, no. Industrialization was absolutely anathema to JRRT. His Hobbits were clearly based on an English pre-mechanized agricultural system.
> As he wrote in the "Prologue" in "Fellowship:
> 
> "Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favorite haunt. *They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom,* though they were skilled with tools."
> ...


That's why I put 'industrialisation' in brackets. But the Hobbits were industrious, 'industrial' with industry occurring nevertheless. Blacksmiths, Metal workers, Animal skinners, mining, forestry etc all using industrial processes ...it's just a matter of scale. Yes Tolkien decried industrialisation for his vision of a clean green ordered pastoralist ruralism, but that was all made possible by Water-Mills, Forge-Bellows, Hand-Looms, Grain Mills, tanneries, abbatoirs etc Hobbits clever & hardworking, surplus food, surplus time would be improving their tools/processes all the time.

What you refer to as Artisanship/craftmanship in small workshops/"businesses" existed in itself as a smaller scale industrialisation. Tolkien failed to see that the seeds of industrialisation were planted long before the "Dark Satanic Mills" whill just expanded on/increased in scale what had already gone before (since the middle ages & beyond even) as well as concentrating it into (initially) a small number of central towns which soon became cities as they sucked up surplus rural pop. which had become surplus due to ever-increasing efficiency/productivity due to improvement in Mills, ploughs etc.

The reason Saruman was able to move so quickly & get those factories up & running was 100% possible coz the Hobbits already had the groundwork laid, the engineering, building knowledge etc and many Hobbits who hadn't quite yet seen the possibility of expanding their operation or caught a glimmer of how to do it or have a why to do it were quick to comprehend Saruman to an extant (even if they didn't see the damage it would do, just like us humans didn't for a long time).

They could restore the Shire close to original state with not too much difficulty as Saruman did not have the machines/factories chugging for that much time, but imho LOL the genie was out of the bottle, but I think the Hobbits under own direction & having seen the awfulness of the belching black smoke factories & toxic sludge would still proceed with industrialisation, just at a slower pace & in a more green/environmental consciousness. 

Saruman's knowledge (both good & bad) still existed in the heads of the Hobbit Foremen, Smiths etc. He was most advanced in Middle Earth in his knowledge of Science/Engineering yet still lacking in his knowledge (or his means) as he didn't unleash any major war-weapons like Tanks or even just armoured wagons, rocket (gunpowder)-fired arrows/bolts, cannons, rifles etc. Gondor quite civilised but Tolkien totally glided over fact of scale of industrialisation/engineering required in the walls, the gates, the tower of Minas Tirith etc or in their ships, armour etc.



Olorgando said:


> Taking, with all due caution, Karen Wynn Fonstad's figures in her "Atlas of Middle-earth", the Shire pre-war extended 40 leagues / 120 miles / 192 kilometers east-west, and 50 leagues / 150 miles / 241 kilometers north-south. Fonstad gives the Shire's size as about 21,400 square miles, or 55,402 square kilometers. That's about the size of Croatia, and a lot larger than say Slovakia (49,035 sq km), Denmark (43,094 sq km), the Netherlands (41,543 sq km), Switzerland (41,285 sq km), or Belgium (30,528 sq km), all of which have a current population exceeding 4 million, up to the 11 million of Belgium and 17 million of the Netherlands. Assuming Khalam's above estimate of Middle-Age populations being 10% of today's to be reasonably accurate., that would still give us more than 400,000 at 10% of Croatia, which is decidedly more hilly, even mountainous than the Shire


Wow, that's nearly twice as big as what I was basing things on as i thought Tolkien had said that he based it on the Midlands size wise Wikipedia says 28, 000 sq km/11,053 sq miles. There is room for shrinkage/growth there though as some areas are sometimes included or left out in what is considered the Midlands. There's a couple of shires that sometimes gets included.

The Wikipedia article on the Shire says 47, 000 sq km but according to your reckoning Fonstad gives 55,402 km. I had forgotten all about Fonstad's book, I had it when I was a teenager. 

I didn't go delving for actual pop. numbers c 1066-1200's, I was going by vague memory & a calculation based on a very low avg pop. density per sq km. With the size of the Shire with low avg pop. density we end up with a lot more than all the low estimations that were put forward here. 
For your Croatia example even if we said a radical 1% due to the setback of the Plague, The White Wolf Winter, the Golfimbul Raids & Attack that would be 40, 000 Hobbits based on a low pop. density just considering the land area. The other approach (more complicated) is to get the base pop. number sussed at original founding & work out the generational increase which can have wide variation depending on average size of families. Avg of 4 Kids gives you a lot, 6 even more, 8... then factor in the death rates/infection rates of plague, famine death rate/some historical medival cold snap death rate & a death rate from viking raids to represent the Orc raids/attack. 

All my attempts at reckoning indicate about 40, 000 conservative, 100, 000 moderate, 400,00-500,00 optimistic/radical
I'm not a statistician/mathematician though . Any maths experts here?



Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> I doubt Hobbiton could boast a thousand inhabitants, though, if it couldn't support even one tavern.


Well I was a kid in a town of 3500 which had 4 taverns/pubs so one per 875 people, so if your right that there's no tavern in Hobbiton then we have kind of a lower marker for the town ...say 500-750, but Hobbiton is indicated as substantial with a several smaller satellite villages & Family/Clan burrows nearby too. It & the central villages on The Water bore the brunt of Saruman's industrialisation and several thousand came to help smash, repair, rebuild, clean up. I think this a just representing the central core of the Shire ...those within close reach of the Three Farthings Stone. There are enough named villages over the whole Shire that even with low figures it adds up quickly to a good size pop. throughout the land



Alcuin said:


> Continuing in the current vein, Google lists the area of England at 50,301 square miles. Wikipedia asserts the population of England, a relatively prosperous and well-ordered corner of the world in AD 1000 when Æthelred the Unready (“Unready” means “poorly advised” or “unadvised” (he was indeed poorly advised), not “unprepared”) sat as King of England, at 1.6 million souls, giving us a population density of about 31.8 people per square mile. If the Shire is supposed to be similar to England at about this time, then assuming Fonstad’s estimate of 21,400 square miles for the Shire is correct, that would equate to a population of over 680,000 thousand Hobbits. If instead we use the population of Europe about that time, presumably about 56.4 million people (Wikipedia) and 3.9 million square miles (Google), then at a density of about 14.3 people per square mile in AD 1000 gives us a population of 307,000 Hobbits.
> 
> I think it could be argued reasonable to cut these population density estimates in half or even more, to Dark Age levels (whatever that may be). At the end of the Third Age, the Hobbits were living in an isolated economy, trading only with Bree, a few Rangers, and Dwarves in and travelling to and from the Blue Mountains; they seem to have had little dealings with Elves, though this was not unknown. (Bilbo, for one, had considerable dealings with Elves even before his Long Expected Party.)


On the right track indeed. 

According to the wikipedia article on the Midlands it is 28, 627 sq km/11,053 sq miles, but that goes up or down due to midlands shrinking or expanding according to what included or left out in what is considered Midlands. Fonstad's figure is almost double the size of the Midlands as given in the wikipedia article. There are a couple of shires though that sometimes get added into what constitutes the Midlands so could explain some of the difference.

The wikipedia article on the Shire though says it is roughly the same as the Midlands but gives a larger figure of 47,000 sq km/18, 000 sq miles (a bit over a third bigger than stated in the Midlands article, which could also be explained by addition of another shire or two to the Midlands).
That's about 30% of England roughly I think. On the map I saw it looked like a third (or just under?), maybe 40% (at most) of England. 

The avg pop. density is way higher than I thought though. I was basing my calculations starting from Less than 1 per sq km/1 per sq km/2 per sq km/3 per sq km etc and I only went as far as 5 per sq to get to 100,000-125,000.

So if the Shire is half the size that Fonstad gives we get an upper number of about 340, 000 & the lower number would be about 153,000. If we cut the pop. by a quarter due to the Three Disasters we get an upper number of 255,000 8 a lower of 114,750, if by a third we get 226,667 upper & 102, 000 lower, If we cut it by a half we get upper 170,000 & lower 76,500, if we cut by 2/3 we get 113,333 for the upper & 53, 000 for the lower, if we cut by 3/4 we get 85, 000 for the upper & 38, 250 for the lower, if we cut 4/5ths we get 38,250 for the upper & 30,600 for the lower, if we cut by 9/10 we get upper of 34,000 & a lower of 15,3000. I don't know what the various pop. densities are for each calculation but it goes down to a super low avg pop per sq mile

I think the economy/trade was a bit stronger than you give credit. The Hobbits would have tradeed with the small scattered human settlements/farms in the north & south. I think i read somewhere that the Hobbits had trade with Cirdan's Elves occasionally at the Tower Hills. There were quite a few Dwarves in the Blue Mountains & if Hobbits weren't making all metal goods themselves &/or getting all their own metal through mining then they were getting it from the Dwarves. I think the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains would be after foodstuffs from the Hobbits. The Hobbits were on fetile land, producing surplus. we know there was a class of well-to-do landowners/landed gentry in Hobbitry ...Bilbo, Frodo, Fredegar, Peregrin & Meriadoc, even Lotho & the Sackvilles. They weren't just wealthy by food supplies but by gold & gems as well. The economy was developed enough to have money in circulation & a class of Artisans/Tradesmen ...Millers, Smiths, Bakers, Furriers, Cartwrights etc etc. The ruffians didn't just grab up food but gold, gems, silverware etc

They had lived in peace for a while, land fertile, large families, room still for new farms, definite expansion east & west & probably north & south as well says the population more like to be higher than lower. Somewhere in the middle of the ranges above seems about right.


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## tomthehobbit (Jul 20, 2021)

Right... Lets cut the crap.. Im a Hobbit so i think i should know the general population of my people. 

The correct or nearest correct answer goes to @Khalam Brightblade. 
You realy went deep with the research. 
10 points sir.


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