FOOD (3.X): Creating Villages
Honestly, the last few months weren’t the easiest or the funniest I had, but the war should not stop us from living, otherwise the evil wins regardless it kills us or not. If anyone would like to donate for a good cause in Ukraine, I’ll leave few options in the very end. Otherwise, it’s time to apply everything we know about peasants and lands to imagine a (very basic) village, town, and a country.
So far, we now know everything that matters for imagining up a believable fantasy settlement, be it a single village in the middle of nowhere, a secluded town or a whole country of such towns and villages. Let’s begin.
Ironing out kinks: proper land use
One large thing I missed and was reminded is that not all land a village uses is the cropland or designated pasture.
In 1300–1500 England (yep, the same 2005 Allen compendium), only 14 millions acres, basically a third of a 34 million acre land, were actually designated and actively used for agriculture by its private owners; in 1850, it was already 31 million acres. The rest, the so-called “common land”, were used collectively by the commons of the land for different purposes as permitted by the land-owner: mainly for cattle and pig to feed, but also for fishing, gathering firewood, digging for sand or clay etc. Some wasn’t used at all: roads and trails, mountains and barrens aren’t that good for peasant needs.
Obviously, the common land control is mainly a feature of a more civilized and tightly packed High Medieval country, where every bit of area is owned and personally governed by someone, be it the local land-owner or a king. In the less populated frontier, every bit of conveniently-placed land around the village was cultivated or used regardless of the designation and nominal ownership, the only problem was its safety and distance.
So, whichever estimate from the previous article you took for the land use, it’s basically the lower end of the range, not the maximum. Besides the cropland and pasture, every village uses plenty of additional land both for agricultural and non-agricultural purposes.
Sample Village: Sadholl
So, let’s imagine a large and apparently proud rural village of Sadholl, inexplicably inspired by the Western genre, in the really, really faraway realm of the Setting Suns.
It’s not the peak of the local civilization, so most innovations are not there: crop yield is lower because the crops are less refined, ploughs are not as good, and farming techniques are really outdated. Overall, the life in Sadholl is as hard and as honest as it gets, two or three centuries harder than what you’d get in more modern part of the land: the divide between the “core” and the “periphery” is much larger than we are used to.
Sure, everyone will be a peasant out there. Instead of a more well-off 75/20/5 of the High Medieval England, let’s go for the more pessimistic 87/10/3 of the Dark Ages and dark fantasy: 3 urban dwellers, 10 rural professionals, 87 ordinary peasants.
So, the 100-something proud dwellers of Sadholl would feed 3 true urban citizens, but these are obviously out of scope: we don’t get to see where the village’s taxes and traded goods eventually go.
It’s not always real people, actually, but more of a statistical concept: the village of Sadholl feeds ¼ of a real urban dweller somewhere in the capital city, ½ of a local land-owner, a single soldier, and few regular servants and townsfolk nearby. Even if all extra produce from Sadholl goes to the local noble, you’d need at least two villages like that to provide for a simplest gentry (i.e. non-working land-owners who live from land rent) household of 5–6 people. A more well-off noble in a stereotypical castle would require much more to live by: a large owned estate, several villages and smaller hamlets, and maybe even a local town.
The 10 rural specialist population basically can add up to 2, maybe 3 smaller households (you can look here for for a primer on demography and family size, at least until I manage to put together one of my own) of the most vital and prized professionals: cleric, blacksmith, and a doctor (or, given the age and the style, a healer or a witch-doctor). Additionally, there is likely at least a single millhouse and some smaller specialist workshops, but the village isn’t large enough for its owners to live mainly by the trade and count as full-fledged specialists.
The rest 87 people are the ordinary farmers, who do their own pottery, carpentry, stonemasonry, and whatever else. Some of them, the ones with specialised equipment or really impressive skills, can barter around: if you want a decent oven, for example, trading some food or favors for help from a semi-professional usually gets you much better result than making it yourself.
These 100 people of various ages and professions would require at least 100 hectares to feed: it’s not that hot and fertile out there in Sadholl, so agriculture isn’t that easy. To put this number into perspective, you’d need a giant square with 1-kilometer long side to feed this small village.
No real village will have the arable land as conveniently located though: terrain is riddled with hills, riversides, rocky areas, and barren lands— this means that these 100 hectares will be divided into much smaller arable patches that are (if the owners are lucky and/or are good friends with village authorities) conveniently grouped together for better access in a much larger area of village-owned common land.
Adding Structure
Demographic and social structure is a giant topic that requires a whole new series for itself, but we may just take some available data for granted without additional adaptation in our example village.
With the mean household size of 5.75 from St. Germain data I already referenced earlier in the series, it means there are 17 households in the village of 100 people, and the mean land use is 1.5 hectare per capita.
A sixth, three of them will be much smaller and poorer: 1–4 hectare land use, 4–5 family members, and barely scrapping for themselves. Cattle probably is scarce, food may be short during long winter and early spring months, and most of these people would never shy away from any way to bring some additional food into the family. Some of these villagers may be poor because they are simply younger, just few years after separating into their own household, some of them are just unlucky, disliked, or suffering from their poor decisions/bad habits.
The local middle class, basically half of the village, lives in larger families of 5–6 people, and uses 5–10 hectares of arable land per family. These people are the village, reliably able to feed themselves, but not rich enough to waste food by hiring additional workers, making extravagant decisions or having political ambitions. These ones are the blandest and “peasantest” of them all.
The wealthiest 5 families live in even larger estates of 5–10 people and usually own around 15 hectares of arable land (and the richest family or two owns more than 20). There aren’t many grandmothers and grandfathers in Sadholl — people don’t live very long here and tend to split into separate households early — but if there are some, they are in this group. These people have the best cattle, best available equipment, most fertile and most conveniently placed land, they may fund small feasts or hire help during the hayday. Families often engage in village drama or political struggles among themselves, have extra food, and likely even some money and valuables stashed into a secret place — basically, these are the more interesting, but nosy and arrogant folks.
The local professionals and semi-professionals usually fall into the latter group or make up even more privileged one: knowing an exclusive trade makes people really rich in the village. Local cleric is single and busy enough with his administrative and clerical duties to not care about owning the land. The doctor may have few children and apprentices, and does not work land besides a tiny garden for medicinal herbs. The blacksmith has large family, owns some land and cattle, and is a real political powerhouse in the village. Quite likely, he is at odds with the mill owner: the blacksmith is basically a net importer with a vast domestic market of villagers and strong ties to cattler community (actually, a typical horseshoe requires changing every 4–6 weeks); the miller is a natural exporter, and directly interested in farming: these families are not enemies per se, but the ways they want the local community to develop are very different. Local huntsmen make up the third local political party: interested in both iron gear and ready food supplies, they balance the two other political powers and bring some rare coin to the village.
This makes up an organic settlement with several ready-made conflicts even if you don’t add any additional plot, structure or diversity yourself: thinking about the economics beforehand makes everything much fancier and easier from the very beginning.
Sample Town, Sample Country…
You can easily scale this thought process up to imagine a larger society.
The large city of Tombstone… or, let’s say, the Tombstan, is obviously inspired by the Western genre too. Unlike the Sadholl, it’s actually booming: the locals recently found some silver in the vicinity, and are riding the high wave till it crashes.
1000 proud citizens of Tombstan obviously aren’t growing their own food: there are fisheries around, there are smaller gardens in the outskirts, some local townsmen grow pigs or chicken, but overall the city gets 90% of its food from elsewhere. Let’s say, a third of that is bought in the less frontier regions for the silver and other resource exports: 30% of the food comes from maritime supplies, and the rest, 60% has to be supplied by the local peasants.
As the vicinity is slightly more modern than the middle-of-nowhere Sadholl, let’s go for the 75/20/5 composition: 600 hungry Tombstoners require a local rural population of 9 thusand peasants around the city, and extra 2500 rural professionals just live in these villages. Almost 12 thousand people to support a small town — and that’s the result of generous food imports: a 1000-person town that doesn’t export or import much basically can exist only as a part of 20 thousand people large agglomeration.
As every person requires at least a hectare of arable land to grow crops for, we are talking about 13000 hectares, 130 square kilometers (50 square miles) of pure crops. If the area is as densely cultivated as 1300-something England (with 1/3 of country area being crops), which is very unlikely in frontier, the local agglomeration is 400 square kilometers large, a half of the modern-day Greater Paris. Basically, all the locals in a giant blob of at least 10–20 kilometers around the city feed Tombstan either by trade or taxation: you could walk from the city gates for half a day and still end up not leaving its agglomeration.
The whole vaguely united “country” these places are located in, the Land of Setting Suns, is populated by 2 million people. 100 thousand people (including the ones in Tombstan) are proud urban dwellers, the rest 1.9 millions are peasants that have to cultivate at least 2 million hectares/20 thousand square kilometers/8 thousand square miles of cropland. Basically, we are talking about easily a half of the modern England, or even more if population/crop density isn’t as large.
Epilogue
Villages, towns and countries shouldn’t be just some places in your books or games. They are people, and people can be interesting if imagined with care. Even a village of the blandest Medieval-like peasants may still be complex and interesting as a setting, if you use enough imagination and time… and sprinkle some economics on top to make it all believable. A generic sample village of 100 peasants, may not be that interesting as a location… Sadholl, a complex depressed settlement in the frontier part of the Land of the Setting Suns — a settlement that creates its own demographic and social structure, has different cliques and complex social dynamics, and even develops some local political struggle— will be much better.
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