Tinto Maps #11 - 19th of July 2024 - Scandinavia

[DoctorSnakes]

What's up with the naming of the locations/provinces? Not only is most of it modern, but there are also inconsistencies. For example, Trondheim is called Nidaros here, which was indeed (mostly) the name used at the time for the city (Trondheim was originally the name for the area in general apparently, attested here as "Þrondhæimi" and "Nidarose" in 1338). However, you then have Bergen instead of Bjørgvin (or a derivative of Bjørgvin, like "Biorghwin" attested here in 1337), which was the form used at the time. Forms closer to Bergen came at the end of the 1300s (source).

I would love to know by what criteria you pick your toponyms. For all I know, the inconsistency could be intentional, and you are trying to make the various names legible in modern Norwegian with some historical older forms sprinkled in. Without knowing the intentions behind the naming, there isn't much that me or anyone else can do to help with sources or other information. If one of the devs has already addressed this topic, then please reply to me with a link so I can read it.

Also, forgot to add: a very good source to find contemporary place names is the Diplomatarium Norvegicum which contains a lot of documents from the period in the original language. You can search through it here.

 

[GreenDragon1207]

The parish of Siikalatva did not exist before the year 2009. Instead, it propably should be named by one of the now nonexistent parishes like Piippola, Pulkkila, Rantsila or Kestilä. This is not a big issue tough and may just complicate location naming.

 

[Mister X]

Also, what is the population estimation for such unorganized "native land" such as for Sámi land and Karelia based on?
Terrain, climate, lifestyle? Would for example a sedentary, agricultural tribe in a warm, tropical flatland have a higher population potentially in the thousands?
For example, people along the Amazon had extensive agriculture and large settlements (based on archeological findings and early explorers' records from before they were decimated by the Pox), would "uncolonized" land like that have 1000, 2000, 5000 people in each loc, or something?

There were also odd "hybrid societies" in the Americas with high population density despite basically being hunter gatherers - like the natives of southern Florida, which started to "farm" the wildlife in ponds and such infrastructure with great efficiency; though I guess that makes them a sort of proto-pastoral or proto-agricultural society

 

[ArVass]

There were also odd "hybrid societies" in the Americas with high population density despite basically being hunter gatherers - like the natives of southern Florida, which started to "farm" the wildlife in ponds and such infrastructure with great efficiency; though I guess that makes them a sort of proto-pastoral or proto-agricultural society

Yeah, and these places had a much higher population density than these 100-300 counts shown in the TM. Iirc there are one or two that reach or almost exceed a thousand, so I guess it is possible that unorganized natives of better regions will have higher populations; which if I remember correctly might have been the case in EU4 too, where the size of native revolts depended a lot on region.

Hope they will confirm this

 

[Fjellfyr]

Is this really true for Norwegian? If I read the Eric chronicles, written in ca 1330, I can understand most of it, the only real challenge is to make sense of the weird spelling. It's Swedish granted, but still.

Example from wikipedia:

Birger jerl, þen wise man.
Han loot Stockholms stad at byggia
'med digert with oc mykin hyggia,
eþ fagerþ hus ok en goðan stað
alla leð swa gjort som han bað.
Þet er laas fore þen sio,
swa at karela göra þem enga oroo.
Þen sio er god, iak sigher for whi:
nittan kyrkiosokner liggia þer i
ok um kring sion siu köpstäde.

IMHO, this is more close to modern Swedish than Norse. Wouldn't Norwegian have followed a similar development pattern?

I found what you quoted easier to understand than I did for example trying to read original text of Magnus Lagabøte's landslov, from 1279.

To what degree its closer to norse vs modern norwegian I'm not going to make a guess at, and nynorsk/bokmål differs in how close they are to this txt, but there has definitely been some big changes since this was written.

 

[sevibab]

Based on this, my suggestion is to transfer some of the population from borgarting-region, to what would be primarily the long stretch hålogaland->sogn including trøndelag.

You could also look up the population distribution from the census in the 1660s, which probably was the most similar census we have to the population in medieval Norway.

There, all of eastern Norway has a population of about 150k, while all of western Norway (Rogaland + Bergenhus in the game) had 140k, with about 25k in Rogaland (so ~115k in Western Norway north of Rogaland).

If the goal is to be as accurate as possible, eastern Norway should probably have around 150k people, and the rest should be distributed, some towards western Norway and some to Trøndelag

EDIT: Image of historical distribution of population. Also corrected a mistake (Borgarting -> eastern Norway)

 

[Daniel the Finlander]

Sweden's border in Finland
Sweden's border isn't exactly accurate on the map. However, there's a historiographical problem too: most of the border defined by the treaty of Nöteborg between Sweden and Novgorod in 1323 is nebulous and vague as much of it passes over uninhabited wilderness. It has the same problem as many "borders" in colonial America in the game’s time period, it was just a line that didn't really impact physical reality in any way. So defining Sweden's border in-game can be a little tricky.

Of course, you've also got the actual concrete and historically proven border slightly wrong too.

Marked in red is the part of the border clearly outlined in the (copies of the) historical treaty document and supported by physical border markers found in the area. The grey and dashed lines are just guesswork by later historians.

The treaty explicitly mentions Novgorod ceding the following territories to Sweden: Savolax (Savilahti), Jäskis (Jääski) and Agräpää (Äyräpää). Slight problem with your map: these places either aren't mentioned, or they're in the wrong place.

This is where the border between Sweden and Novgorod (Oreshek aka Nöteborg) should go. Note that it kinda goes through Olofsborg, but that's where the border starts getting murky/unclear anyways, so it's not really a problem. Can keep that location uncolonized, but Savilahti should be owned by Sweden.

Speaking of murky and unclear, what about the rest of the border? How much land did Sweden actually exert control over, and where did the wilderness begin? That is a lot trickier question.

I went through location by location, checking whatever easily available online sources to make a rough border. The problem here is that a lot of location names are inaccurate, having names of settlements that only really became relevant until later, even some that only became relevant beyond the game's timespan. But this post isn't about name suggestions, other posts focus on those. So I checked histories of local settlements to see where the border could go. For example, Joroinen wasn't founded until 1631, was known for its smiths in 1550s, was separated from Juva that was founded in 1442. Juva was confirmed to be settled and roughly within Sweden's sphere of influence in 1323. So, I would potentially put Joroinen within Sweden's control. The problem comes that some areas were still "wilderness" despite being nominally under Sweden's control, making it hard to say if Sweden should "own" the area. For example, the Rautalampi water route was said to be "along the Nöteborg border" but this area was wilderness and the claims mostly concerned hunting rights, so should Sweden actually own it? Another problem is big empty areas between centers of local government. Biggest headache for me was the gap between Hollola (On your map, Lahti, anachronistic name) and Savolax/Savilahti. From what I can tell, it wasn't really settled until late 1300s earliest, but leaving this big gap uncolonized would look weird.

I've marked these unclear borders with dashed lines to leave it up to you to decide the definition of country ownership. Solid line marks not only permanent settlement, but mentions in official documents/Swedish colonization/foundation of a pitäjä (parish) before 1337. Dashed line is wilderness, often with no permanent settlements, but still seen as "owned" land, as division of erämää-alue (wilderness areas) was important for hunting rights.

Sources: Wikipedia, various municipal websites, https://katternodigital.fi/fi/article/nain-pohjanmaa-asutettiin, https://savonhistoria.fi (highly recommend this last one). Yeah not academic sources, but they should suffice.

 

[Fjellfyr]

You could also look up the population distribution from the census in the 1660s, which probably was the most similar census we have to the population in medieval Norway.

There, all of eastern Norway has a population of about 150k, while all of western Norway (Rogaland + Bergenhus in the game) had 140k, with about 25k in Rogaland (so ~115k in Western Norway north of Rogaland).

If the goal is to be as accurate as possible, Borgarting should probably have around 150k people, and the rest should be distributed, some towards western Norway and some to Trøndelag

Oh thats good, you if know where to get those numbers it would be great posting them as well.

Though black death likely changed distribution somewhat as its unlikely it hit every area equally. From what I've read in particular inner valleys was considered to have a bigger share of population pre-black death than it did in 1600s, but where its written its always said without quoting number estimates which deeply annoy me.

EDIT: Nice, saw your edit. Good graph.

 

[sevibab]

Oh thats good, you if know where to get those numbers it would be great posting them as well.

I added an image which has tried to encapsulate the change in composition of the historic population. There has been attempts to estimate the population in different districts from the censuses (the census in the 1660s only counted males). One such calculation can be found in the book "Norsk økonomisk historie 1500-1850 bind 1" by Ståle Dyrvik. I have not actually read it myself, but I have read some texts which has used it as a source.


There was actually an even earlier calculation as well, made by the historian Ernst Sars and based on a census in the 1500s, but I believe that one would be very inaccruate due to the effects of the black death still having a large effect on the population distribution. In the 1660s I believe the population had mostly recovered (though there were probably still some differences compared to before the plague, but we will never know exactly what those were).

 

[_Daito_]

Welcome everyone, today I’ll talk about the Scandinavian region. Part of it was the first maps we drew for Project Caesar back in early spring of 2020. Today we will look at all parts of the Scandinavian Peninsula (including Denmark & the Kola Peninsula). Greenland & Iceland will be looked at in a separate map talk.

Countries
View attachment 1165159
Scandinavia has only five location based countries at the start of the game. Denmark, who is in a bit of a crisis at the moment and their vassal Schleswig is in the south. On the peninsula proper, we have Sweden and Norway who are in a union at the moment as they share the same King. Scania was sold off to Sweden by the Danes five years before the start of the game.

There is no need to show off a Dynasty map, as Denmark does not exactly have a ruling King at the moment, and the rest is ruled by Magnus IV of the Bjälbo Dynasty.

Locations

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View attachment 1165164
While Scandinavia has a lot of locations, we have to remember that this is a huge area, and together with Kola & Karelia, it is the same size as France, Spain, Portugal, Italy & Benelux together.. The size of locations are smaller in the south, particularly where the population was and still is relatively bigger.


Provinces
View attachment 1165169
We have tried to follow historical traditional province borders here, but some ended up too big like Småland, Lappland or Österbotten, which were cut into pieces, and some are just too tiny to matter.

Now I wish I had time to write up a history about each province here, but I’ll just add a few fun tidbits.

Satakunta, which is the Finnish name, is named in Finnish like the old regions of Svitjod, which were divided into “hundreds”. It was also refered to Björneborgs län, named after Björneborg (Pori in Finnish), a town founded by Johan III when Ulfsby was no longer accessible from the sea. The regiment from the area was the last Swedish Army Regiment that has ever won a battle inside Sweden, and their military march is a song I think every Finnish Citizen want to play repeatedly on TV during the Olympics..

Småland, which is divided into Tiohärad and Kalmar Län here, should really be referred to as Småländerna, as there were 12 small countries there.. Compared to the 3 other much larger countries of Svealand, Östra Götaland and Västra Götaland. And now why is Östra Götaland not containing Kinda?

Topograhy
View attachment 1165173
It's mostly flatland.. I went by the rule that if the peaks are less than 500 meters it's flatland, and you need to have over 1,000 meters and rather uneven to be a mountain. Norway is interesting there.. We do have a lot of impassable areas in Norway, making this one of the most fun parts to play in.

Vegetation
View attachment 1165174
There are some farmlands in Denmark, Scania and in Götaland, but the rest is basically a big forest.. And up north it's even worse.

Climate
View attachment 1165176
Yeah, well. There is a reason I moved to Spain..


Cultures
View attachment 1165177
Most of the north east is still Sami, and the Finnish tribes have not unified into the more modern Finnish culture. We decided to call the modern Meänkieli with their more ancient name of Kven. We still have Gutnish on Gotland, but the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish cultures have been becoming more monolithic already.

Religions
View attachment 1165178

The Finnish are mostly Catholic, but the Sami, Tavastian, Savonia, Bjarmian and Karelians are mostly still following their old pagan beliefs. There are still some Norse people in the forests of Dalarna and Västmanland..

Raw Materials
View attachment 1165180
It is mostly lumber, fish, wild game, fur and iron. We of course have the famous copper mountain as well.

Markets
View attachment 1165181
Scandinavia is divided by the rich markets of Lübeck and Riga. A strong Scandinavian country will probably want to set up their own unified market.


Population
View attachment 1165182


Not many people live up in the north..

Spoiler: Location Pops

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I liked nice round numbers as estimates, but the team I hired for content design are mad men, and wanted the distribution to feel more organic.. For the far north of Scandinavia we know that people were semi nomadic, and that some people lived there.. But if it was 100 there, or 250 there or 20 there it's just guesswork..


And let's end with a quote from the Greatest of Poets..

Jag vill, jag skall bli frisk, det får ej prutas,
Jag måste upp, om jag i graven låg.
Lyss, hör, ni hör kanonerna vid Jutas;
Där avgörs finska härens återtåg.


Next week Pavia is back with some German maps…

Maybe you could change Loleås border a bit. Looks too square to me. More organic borders would look better.

 

[Red_warning]

I found what you quoted easier to understand than I did for example trying to read original text of Magnus Lagabøte's landslov, from 1279.
View attachment 1166228

To what degree its closer to norse vs modern norwegian I'm not going to make a guess at, and nynorsk/bokmål differs in how close they are to this txt, but there has definitely been some big changes since this was written.

I think the 1100s - 1300s must have been focal points in the development of the Scandinavian languages due to simplification of grammar and German influence, so perhaps even in a small amount of time there might have been significant changes. 1400s written Swedish for example is almost identical to modern Swedish in comparison to the centuries before.

 

[Fjellfyr]

If the goal is to be as accurate as possible, Borgarting should probably have around 150k people, and the rest should be distributed, some towards western Norway and some to Trøndelag

Quick clearup question, you used eastern norway and then borgarting with the same figure. Borgarting was the coastal region, while eidsivating was for opplandene/inner eastern norway.

Did you mean 150k for *eastern norway as a whole*, or specifically borgarting? I've not included eidsivating's figures as they were not covered by skipreide, but that region is about ~30k in Project Caesar at a quick glance on top of the almost 190k figure for borgarting-region.

 

[BurnBird]

Intre Österbotten province (Sisä-Pohjanmaa in Finnish, I think): Kainuu (Kajanaland in Swedish) might be a better name for this province, especially if some of the westernmost locations are switched to other provinces.

This is not specifically aimed at you, but a lot of people here seem to have no idea how large the historical county of Österbotten/Pohjanmaa used to be. Splitting it into two parts, still representing the whole doesn't seem that crazy to me.

Eastern Lappland province (Itä-Lappi in Finnish): decent name, I suppose. Might a be good idea to rename this just to “Lappi” when dynamically named in Finnish.

While it makes sense for modern Sweden and Finland to call their area of Lapland just Lapland (Lappland/Lappi) it doesn't make much sense to do this during this time period. The whole region is called Lappland/Lappi and before Sweden lost Finland, the combined Swedish and Finnish Laplands were a single county, just called Lappland/Lappi. I think it would make the most sense to keep the directional names and not call a single one just "Lappland/Lappi" as if the others don't exist or are less part of Lapland.

 

[sevibab]

Quickl clearup, you used eastern norway and then borgarting with the same figure. Borgarting was the coastal region, while eidsivating was for opplandene/inner eastern norway.

Did you mean 150k for *eastern norway as a whole*, or specifically borgarting? I've not included eidsivating's figures as they were not covered by skipreide, but that region about ~30k in Project Caesar at a quick glance.

Apologies for the mixup, you are of course correct.

All of eastern Norway had around 150k people. If we use the 469k figure and 34% of total population we get to 160k, which is probably a good number.

EDIT: Of course the 1660 census probably did not include Bohuslen( or Jemtland, but the population there is very low anyways) as it was ceded to Sweden beforehand, so that needs to be accounted for

 

[ivj9]

I found what you quoted easier to understand than I did for example trying to read original text of Magnus Lagabøte's landslov, from 1279.
View attachment 1166228

To what degree its closer to norse vs modern norwegian I'm not going to make a guess at, and nynorsk/bokmål differs in how close they are to this txt, but there has definitely been some big changes since this was written.

I can read every single word of this as an Icelander, so no need to guess here. This is a blatantly Norse text. The other text is a little more difficult, but definitely not closer to modern Swedish than Norse, I think.

Having a Niðarós, Björgvin, Stafangur, Kaupmannahöfn, etc. on the map would definitely be really cool. If Paradox prefers these old names, you can almost merge them with Iceland's naming localisation in Scandinavia, small orthographic tweaks aside.

 

[BurnBird]

Marked in red is the part of the border clearly outlined in the historical treaty document and supported by physical border markers found in the area. The grey and dashed lines are just guesswork by later historians.

Is it intentional that the line you drew doesn't at all match the line on the picture from Wikipedia you provided? On the Wikipedia map, the red line stops right by the lake before Olofsborg, before swooping eastwards and then quite neatly following the location borders in-game.

 

[Fjellfyr]

I can read every single word of this as an Icelander, so no need to guess here. This is a blatantly norse text.

Having a Niðarós, Björgvin, Stafangur, Kaupmannahöfn, etc. on the map would definitely be really cool. If Paradox prefers these old names, you can pretty much merge them with Iceland's naming localisation in Scandinavia, small orthographic tweaks aside.

I'll grab some screens of region names from Magnus Lagabøte's landslov if you'd like a look at some names, as they were 48 years prior to game start.

I think it shows that by this point the old r-endings had started falling out favour.

 

[Killerrabbit]

With the talk about Bergen vs Oslo region's population on previous pages, I wanted to go look for some sources for population estimates for Norway.
Overall population is more than fair at 469k, as historians say Norway's population was between 350k-500k with leaning towards the higher end. We do not need to increase it, but is it correctly distributed?

Now, we don't have any hard numbers on population from 1300s, and anything we have tend to be estimates based on numbers from 1600s. However, something we DO have hard numbers on is the military expectations of the various regions, with exception of the region north of hålogaland and the region between trøndelag and borgarting (so the inner valleys).

To keep things short, in 1300s the administrative unit of skipreide wasn't just a taxland, but also organisational units that were expected to build, maintain, and crew a ship. The military service was known as leidang. We do know 4 things:

1) How many ships each region would have
2) The make of these ships, and thus how many oarsmen they would have, and estimates to what a full crew would be as well. Full crew was about twice as many as oarsmen.
3) The rules for how large part of the population could be called into service
4) That you were mandated to (with only a few exceptions) serve in the region which you lived in, and that serving leidang on the wrong ship was equivalent to not serving, making you liable for fine and punishment.

The ship makes were tjuesesse (20-seater), tjuefemsesse (25-seater) and tredvesesse (30-seater). There would be two oarsmen per seat. Full crew seem to have been estimated as twice as many as the oarsmen, with 30-seater having 120 as crew, and 25-seater with 100 as crew. Source for this is "Norsk forsvarshistorie, bind 1: Krigsmakt og kongemakt".

The rule for military service was, according to gulatingsloven "One per seven heads" could be called in. For this purpose, men and women counted both as heads, and depending on reading it was either anyone above the age of 7 or anyone above the age of 3. For all intents and purposes, it was "overall population." To my knowledge the different regions all had equal application of this rule after Magnus Lagabøte's Landslov. The leidang was also meant to be adjusted according to whatever was the population, though to what degree that happened who knows. Borders for these regions had been adjusted within 50 year of gamestart, and the leidang would be called into service for a century after this time, so it was not yet turned into units that were for tax purposes.

View attachment 1166183View attachment 1166216

So I decided to set up a table. Again, do note a full crew would be twice as many as oarsmen, and so min pop would rise accordingly to double. But those are estimates, instead of hard numbers, so I preferred to use what we're certain about. If you just quickly want oarsmen numbers for verification, you can see the picture or see the table here on the bottom of wikipedia. https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidang

Province	Oarsmen expected	Min Pop for oarsmen	% of leidang	Caesar's pop	% of Caesar skipreide pop
Hålogaland	520	3640	3.9%	4860	1.2%
Naumadal	360	2520	2.7%	2185	0.5%
Trøndelag	3200	22400	23.7%	67155	16.2%
Nordmøre	800	5600	5.9%	13101	3.1%
Romsdal	400	2800	3%	7066	1.7%
Sunnmøre	800	5600	5.9%	6103	1.4%
Firda	1000	7000	7.4%	7066	1.7%
Sogn	800	5600	5.9%	8066	2.0%
Hordaland	1200	8400	8.9%	52075	12.6%

Rogaland	1200	8400	8.9%	31194	7.5%
Agder	800	5600	5.9%	26070	6.3%
Borgarting	2400	16800	17.8%	188229	45.5%

Based on the military expectations, I do think that population is a bit wrongly distributed. If borgarting was truly this populated, it would have carried a bigger share of the leidang, in particular since it would be in the borderland. Bergen and Nidaros were also the two most populated settlements.

Naumadal-region seem most critical to change, as it can't actually field its oarsmen with Caesar's pop, much less the full crew. South-western part of Gulating seem to be mostly fine, while the north-western part seem underpopulated. Several of these regions barely meet minimum pop for oarsmen, and fall short of whats needed for legally making a full crew. The "min pop needed" total add up to less than 100k, so any of these regions would be several times more populated than that, and the entire region in Caesar has 410k, so these places could get a bigger share of pop. Trøndelag also seem to carry less of a "population center" than it truly was back then.

Based on this, my suggestion is to transfer some of the population from borgarting-region, to what would be primarily the long stretch hålogaland->sogn including trøndelag.

Yep, this is a good method. Though one also need to make a guesstimate first on the inland areas - including Jemtland and Herjedalen, as well as Finnmark and the north of Troms. Most of those I think are sparsely populated, with the exception of the southern part of Opplandene.

And the record of Magnus Lagabøte should be closer to a correct estimate than the older Gulatingslov one, right?

Taking everything into account one could end up with about:

12.000 in Bohuslen (seems a tad low, I've seen both quotes of 8 and 16 ships...)
23.000 in Østfold
11.000 in Oslo and immediate surroundings + maybe a few extra urban pops
12.000 in Vestfold
14.000 in Skien and Grenland (?)
40.000 in the rest of Inland Norway? (Romerike, Oppland, Hedmark, Upper Telemark, Ringerike, Valdres, Hallingdal, Hjemtland, Herjedalen)
23.000 in Agder
50.000 in each of Hordaland and Rogaland
23.000 in each of Sogn, Firda, Sunnmøre
11.000 in Romsdal
17.000 in Nordmøre (excluding areas that are in Trøndelag)
112.000 in Trøndelag
18.000 in Hålogaland + the sami population
Perhaps 4-5000 norwegians in Troms and Finnmark? + sami population

That's assuming one doesn't count the western islands as part of norway. Do we really know if the population estimates for Norway pre-black death include Iceland, Greenland and the Isles?

I've read that Iceland should have about 40-50.000 people in the 12th century, down from a bit higher earlier due to a severe smallpox epidemic. Greenland could be 4.000 + inuits, Faroe Islands 2.700, Orkney 2-4.000?, Shetland about the same as the Orkneys? If included as Norway then one needs to porportionally reduce all norwegian regions.

 

[Fjellfyr]

And the record of Magnus Lagabøte should be closer to a correct estimate than the older Gulatingslov one, right?

It would, but in places it is unclear in landslov but clear in gulatingslov its useful to refer to it, as gulatingsloven was the primary basis for the landslov, and also the most preserved IIRC of the 4 tinglov. That is what is done in the works i've read at least.

For the ships I used the numbers from the map around 1300. Magnus Lagabøte didn't radically alter the amount of skipreide.

The numbers you've presented seem good.

EDIT:

Since I didn't have numbers on leidang for non-skipreide areas, I'd note that the skipreide section seem to be about 413k inProject Caesar I think when I calculated, and what I used for percentage (which is why it says "skipreide pop")

Eidsivating seem about 30k-ish, and I assume the remaining numbers needed for the 469k number is spread across other places thats in the kingdom that aren't dominions, so probably northern norway and jemtland?

 

[ivj9]

I'll grab some screens of region names from Magnus Lagabøte's landslov if you'd like a look at some names, as they were 48 years prior to game start.

I think it shows that by this point the old r-endings had started falling out favour.

I see the -r ending several times. First of all, "nefndarmaðr" is there. You can't see the -r ending in the placenames because it's hidden behind the case system in this particular text.

In "Norðfjǫrðum" for example, "fjǫrðum" is the dative case form of "firðir", which is the plural form of "fjǫrðr".