Quote:
Originally Posted by skip spence
Haha you are quite right of course. Haven't read The Hobbit in ages.
Having read the Lord Of The Rings within memory's grasp I can't help but wonder into what parts Bill, Bert and Tom strayed earlier to find such plentiful game. The lands West of the Misty Mountains seems all but empty of people in the latter book. Maybe the trolls ate 'em all.
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This is one of the problems Tolkien seemed to be trying to explain in his later days.
One possible solution is that the lands were occupied, just not with a sufficient number of people to form a collective civilization of any kind.
For instance, we know that the Dúnedain still existed into at least the thousands in the Third Age (The minimum to retain a genetic viability). That would mean at least one or two significant settlements, at least.
And that the Dúnedain were outnumbered by Men in the area... So the rest of the Population of Arnor was not wholly destroyed, but certainly diminished beyond an ability to form any type of State, or collective aid. We did see areas like this in Europe at various times, especially after some of the various Plagues that swept through Europe.
So taken that the Trolls mentioned a "Village and a half" in regions far to the North in Eriador, we can expect that scattered villages existed throughout the region... They are just not brought into the stories, especially not
The Lord of the Rings as the entire trip through Eriador was made with the intention of avoiding all observation (save for the stop in Bree). So... They would have avoided all known established settlements or villages in Eriador, which I imagine Gandalf and Aragorn would have been especially aware of.
Outside of Eriador, we do see pretty significant settlement of humans. It is likely that Dunland is an example of how occupied the rest of North Western Middle-earth is. There are enough disparate villages to support a population of a few hundred thousand (In all of Eriador), which makes it roughly 1/10th the Population density of Europe during the Middle-Ages at its lowest population (which contained only a few million people - I cannot remember which Black Death it was that caused the deaths of almost ⅔ of the population, but it left Europe nearly "Vacant" as far as population goes).
And we know that in the northern valleys of the Anduin that the people of Beorn had multiplied to populate that region. And Dale had re-established itself as a sizable realm.
MB