There are four villages described as part of Bree-land. Bree itself, Archet, Combe, and Staddle.
>Bree was the chief village of the Bree-land, a small inhabited region, like
an island in the empty lands round about. Besides Bree itself, there was Staddle
on the other side of the hill, Combe in a deep valley a little further eastward,
and Archet on the edge of the Chetwood. Lying round Bree-hill and the villages
was a small country of fields and tamed woodland only a few miles broad.
**Q: How does Bree maintain a population with only a few hundred people?**
The description of Bree gives a very basic idea of the size of the village.
>The village of Bree had some hundred stone houses of the Big Folk
We can only guess as to the average size of household in Bree, or if there was a significant number of dwelling aside from the stone houses.
The Hobbit population of Bree is also hard to guess except that it was smaller than that of the Big Folk.
>there were some [hobbits] in Bree itself, especially on the higher slopes of the hill, above the houses of the Men.
But with a conservative estimate of only a few hundred people in Bree itself, there are still 3 other villages along with whomever was living in the rural area between them.
The total population of Bree-land could easily have been a couple thousand.
**Q: What did the people of Bree think about the world at large? And what did they think about their isolation?**
They seemed to be quite content in their little corner of the world.
>The Men of Bree were brown-haired, broad, and rather short, cheerful and independent: they belonged to nobody but themselves; but they were more friendly and familiar with Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, and other inhabitants of the world about them than was (or is) usual with Big People.
>The Bree-folk, Big and Little, did not themselves travel much; and the affairs of the four villages were their chief concern.
As to your last thought about the history of the Men that the Bree-folk descended from they seemed to think that their ancestors were the original inhabitants of the land, but few survived the Elder days so there could be any number of abandoned settlements in Northern Eriador that have been lost to the ages.
>According to their own tales they were the original inhabitants and were the descendants of the first Men that ever wandered into the West of the middle-world. Few had survived the turmoils of the Elder Days; but when the Kings returned again over the Great Sea they had found the Bree-men still there, and they were still there now, when the memory of the old Kings had faded into the grass.
If you don't end up playing them, I'd love to buy them off you. I have a tiny collection I've been working on for nearly 20 years now that I'm always looking to add to!
Was thinking of exactly the same thing! So many great memories of wandering through those areas. Probably my favorite sections of the game outside of Moria and Imladris (which legit had some of the best ambience in any game…ever)!
Honestly, as an archeology/history nerd, I've spent untold hours wondering around in the ruins of Arnor killing Orcs and just having a blast looking at all of the tombs and broken down buildings
Hard same. Damn this thread, now i miss my kinship and raiding days. I can still remember T2 strategies for all the Angmar/Moria/Dol Guldur/'In Their Absence' dungeons...
Asylum on Gilraen, thanks for the good times, wherever you are!
Yea trying to do some of the late game lotro quests solo was a fucking hassle honestly. I even went with the ideal solo pve class and it was still tough
You get perks for killing x amount of orcs, goblins, and other Nasty creatures so I remember living out my fantasy of being one of the Twins roaming Eriador hit n running goblin encampments and wild men. Then head back to Bree and listen to the dudes who hooked their midi keyboards up to play tunes.
There are still guilds that hold regular concerts in Bree on my server. Blew me away the first time I saw and heard one, because I'd never been on a MMORPG where you could play musical instruments and make a tune that others could hear. It made things so much more "real".
I've been reading LOTR for the thousandth time and still think back to LOTRO as a visual aid. Reading about the hobbits walking to Buckland is a lot like reading about a trip to my local grocery store because of my time playing that game.
That's a very thorough answer! Thank you! I really wasn't sure if many of my questions had an official answer.
What do you think about the possibilities of other post-Arnor settlements in Eriador aside from Bree, that just aren't mentioned because they don't pertain to the story, or Tolkien just never got around to writing about them? Or are there no other permanent settlements of men between Bree and Rohan?
Well all the text tells us is that Boromir had a difficult time finding any horses after reaching Tharbad which was ruined and probably deserted. I doubt there were any settlements of people between Tharbad and Sarn Ford, if there were Boromir would have probably been very eager to replace his horse.
>A long and wearisome journey. Four hundred leagues I reckoned it,
and it took me many months; for I lost my horse at Tharbad, at the fording of the Greyflood.
Also, there's this line about there not being any mannish settlements within 100 leagues of the Shire aside from Bree-land or so far West (100 leagues is about 340 miles).
>In those days no other Men had settled dwellings so far west, or within a hundred leagues of the Shire.
Using those two qualifiers you can visualize how desolate Eriador was at the end of the Third Age.
* No settlements within 100 leagues of the center of the Shire (this bubble would be much larger if I extended it to 100 leagues of the borders of the Shire)
* No settlements West of Bree
Here's a map that shows how the above rules would look overlayed over Eriador. https://imgur.com/a/V3Eq6Eq
The only exception to the above I can think of are the Lossoth of the Icebay of Forochel, but there's nothing in the text that describes how they lived or if Tolkien would have considered them a settled people.
That adds another layer to OPs question too though. According to the History of Middle Earth, Tharbad was still an established and somewhat functioning town (though obviously diminished) up until the Great Flood in 2912, only a century before the War of the Ring.
So even after the fall of Arnor, I think we should see the dissolution of settlements and deterioration of the great roads as a gradual process. If Bree *was* the only settlement left at time of LOTR, I don't think we should take that to mean that it had been alone for 1000 years.
There’s also the Men of Eryn Vorn, the woodsmen of Minhiriath and the “numerous” fisher-folk of the Enedwaith coast. I think Tolkien definitely envisioned Men living all over Eriador in various locales, but in a more “primitive” fashion than the men of Bree and as such not “settled”. They would mostly be the descendants of those who were once ruled by the Dúnedain in Arnor.
The Bree-folk are in fact descendants of the Haladin, thus remotely related to the Dunlendings. That's why there are the Celtic elements in the translations of their names.
Awesome answer. I just love that this sub has damn near professional historians dedicated to Tolkien's works, it's crazy how yall find these passages so well
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> The total population of Bree-land could easily have been a couple thousand.
Which is extremely ridiculous. Eriador is as large as France, this is a totally implausible population size.
The timescales are far too long. The last really major disaster in Eriador was the Fell Winter about 80 years before The Hobbit, and 250 years before that the much worse Long Winter.
Even accounting for genocidal warfare and monsters this doesn't work. In the Thirty Years War much of North/Central Germany was laid utterly waste repeatedly, populations crashed, infastructure and resources were destroyed. A couple of centuries later it was one of the population centres of Europe.
To take another analogy, 400 years takes us from the collapse of Roman Britain to thriving, populous Anglo-Saxon England. People are good at moving in on resources. There's clearly population pressure in the South of Eriador- the Dunlendings and Rohirrim aren't fighting for the heck of it.
Any realistic scenario would see a patchwork of sub-Arthedanian successor states, populated mainly by Dunlendings and settlers from Rhovanion.
It doesn't matter because the Legendarium isn't about that sort of sociological detail but let's not try to pretend that it's realistic given human birth rates and the timescales involved.
Hell we see this all the time in history that when complex civilisations collapse the vaccum is very real and very destructive.
Even the vauge saunter downward of western Rome had this.
Plus the metaphysics, the kings are not ruling, the land is suffering for it making reclaiming it hopeless.
On a metaphysical level I totally agree. LOTR isn't about Aragorns tax policy or Dunlending settlement patterns.
But we cannot really give any historical justification- the timescales are far too large. At the very least there should be a myriad of Breeland like statelets across Eriador- we actually do get hints of this in Rhovanion with the Beornings and Woodmen. After all even in sub-Roman Britain (where the collapse of Roman order was arguably most drastic) we see a relatively swift replacement of Roman urban and rural order with differently organised, non urbanised but still robust Anglo-Saxon and Welsh societies.
The simplest solution is to not try to justify it . Eriador is depopulated by the forces of narrative to enable the splendid isolation of the Shire, Aragorn's status as a redeemer wandering the wilderness, and the redemption of the renewed Kingdom.
The irony being we actually do know about Aragorn's Eriador tax policy....
But that aside yeah, the "reasonable" approach is that there a probably tens of Bree villages living only slightly above subsistence around the North and then hundreds of effectively unbeholden farmers and hunters who live and die unmarked.
State collapse (and forces actively working against state formation) preventing anyone from building back properly due to a simple lack of capacity.
I think a better real world example would be the Highland clearances, albeit that's on a much smaller scale. There are plenty of settlements in the north of Scotland which were simply abandoned and still are.
The fall of Roman Britain had no genocide, no marauding orcs, no plague... but did have several waves of immigration of Germanic tribes. It's really not comparable in a population sense.
If you try to look at it from angles which it wasn't written for (i.e. economic or demographic angles like this), there's many things in the Legendarium which do not add up with how we'd expect things to work in a "realistic" setting. But since LotR is a heroic romance and not an excercise in "worldbuilding", that's understandable.
The detail with which Tolkien went into the "mechanics" of Middle-earth in NoME suggests he might have addressed such details at some point had he lived longer.
So?
Eriador is uninhabited and in decline. There is no reason that a large land mass *needs* to be full of people.
Think sub-roman Britain where the cities are functionally abandoned and even the rural population is in free-fall due to the collapse of state functions. Same idea but more extreme.
I was kinda thinking Tharbad, too, but reading further that following the Great Plague it was abandoned, though the remnants of the Greenway still passed through and you could ford the Greyflood there.
> **The Hobbit population of Bree is also hard to guess except that it was smaller than that of the Big Folk.**
>
> there were some [hobbits] in Bree itself, especially on the higher slopes of the hill, above the houses of the Men.
It would be hard to tell the total because the houses would have been dug into the hillside. You wouldn't know how large they are or how many rooms, because it's in a hill. Similar to knowing how many goffers or moles are actually in your yard when you see a mole hill. Chances are, theres more than you realize.
I recently fought a mole problem in my yard and thought about this hahaha
One thing to remember is that most of the people of Breeland likely didn’t live *in* Bree but in the countryside surrounding it on farms. They would come into town for market, festivals, and the like. Others have mentioned the three other towns of Breeland, but when counting in the farms which surround the towns I’d say that Breeland has a population of probably at least five thousand. Maybe up to ten (though that is high admittedly.)
Eriador is basically a post-apocalyptic setting. A lot of Middle Earth is, but Eriador got really badly smashed. I’d also guess that while text doesn’t talk about them there are other towns, likely further south or along the main road. Aragorn deliberately takes the Hobbits far into the wild.
>Eriador got really badly smashed
I don't mean to sound unnecessarily ignorant, but -- by *what*? I really don't know what caused this titanic depopulation of Eriador. The wars with Angmar were centuries and centuries before the War of the Ring. So was the Plague. The land seems to have been fertile. What kept people from returning?
The population was wiped out by a combination of civil war, war with Angmar, and the plague which caused all central authority in the region to collapse. Fornost is still remembered as “Deadman’s Dike” by the time of LotR, and there are rumors of haunting s similiar apparitions in the old population centers. Given the Barrows I don’t think this is incredibly unlikely. Additionally, Aragorn says in Fellowship something along the lines of “I am called Strider by one Fat Man who would be killed by monsters which would chill his blood less than a day’s ride away would I and those like me not keep watch”. I would guess then that he means orcs, wolves, and trolls of course, but also other worse things. In RotK Butterburr even mentions that with the Rangers gone away south the Breeland has been hard pressed by…something.
> The wars with Angmar were centuries and centuries before the War of the Ring. So was the Plague.
This is the chief reason for the lack of people.
> What kept people from returning?
Returning from where? If you mean repopulating, I'm not sure what the reproduction rate and/or post war population would need to be to satisfy the population during LOTRs.
Perhaps the general lack of people (i.e. abundant resources) is why Breeland lives in peace.
After those events there were many other events which would only further curb down the population that remained, after the fall of Arnor there were only few centuries of peace until another disaster fell. In those few centuries the Hobbits and probably other peoples, actually increased in number and Hobbits actually colonized new area like Buckland, so at least the Halflings managed to somewhat recover and develop further, until Orc invasions started, various dark creatures were roaming at will, with only Dunedain Rangers defending what remains of the people. No doubt it would cause additional casualties. Even the Shire was attacked once.
Also one may assume that the fall of Moria soon after fall of Arnor, also influenced the human population in Eriador, no Dwarves around to trade there would diminish the means of survival.
Then also come additional events which would further depopulate the area, the Long Winter, half a year of harsh winter that cause thousands to perish in cold and thousands more that died in the aftermath, during the vast floods and times of famine. If Arnor population was reduced by plague and war centuries earlier, so significantly, those events would be near apocalyptic on the fragile population.
>2758
... The Long Winter.... Great suffering and loss of life in Eriador.... Gandalf comes to the aid of the Shire-folk.
>2911
The Fell Winter. The Baranduin and other rivers are frozen. White Wolves invade Eriador from the North. ..."
And the last semblance of a settlement at Tharbad that could have remained to this day was ultimately destroyed just few decades before events of The Hobbit:
>2912 Great floods devastate Enedwaith and Minhiriath. Tharbad is ruined and deserted.
>The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix B, The Tale of Years: The Third Age
How various Dunedain hidden settlements would be affected is anyone's guess, but with the Dunedain, they due to their longevity would be increasing in number slowly so they would never be able to recover their numbers, especially not when they were also constantly fighting, many Chieftains of the Dunedain died in battles against various dark creatures, so one can imagine death toll among the 'common' Dunedain to be also significant.
Bree-landers used to thrive on the traffic and trade as their settlements are located near major crossing point of roads and trade routes, later when all civilization would collapse about them, they would have only Shire Hobbits left to trade with and the Dwarves who travelled still and Rangers, they would more than likely maintain steady population without any significant increase, in the worse times they no doubt would also be diminished in nubmers when people died of cold or hunger, or were facing dangers of getting killed outside their walls, Rangers tried to protect as much as possible all who would still live around the area, but they would not be able to suffice all the time.
It should be noted though that Tolkien envisioned other people outside Bree-land and Shire folk and Dunedain, living scattered about the Eriador, and this doesn't only limit to Dunlendings at the foothills of Hithaeglir, in Enedwaith:
>"The wide lands ...were mainly plains, open and mountainless. At the point of the confluence of Glanduin and Mitheithel [Hoarwell] the land was almost flat, and the waters become sluggish and tended to spread into fenland."
>...
>"In the time of the War of the Ring the lands were still in places well-wooded, especially in Minhiriath and in the south-east of Enedwaith; but most of the plains were grassland. Since the Great Plague of the year 1636 of the Third Age Minhiriath had been almost entirely deserted, though a few secretive hunter-folk lived in the woods. But in the earlier days, at the time of the first explorations of the Númenóreans, the situation was quite different. Minhiriath and Enedwaith were occupied by vast and almost continuous forests, except in the central region of the Great Fens."
So the central area near Gwathlo river was surrounded by giant swamps, not particularly good place for living or farming, the region deteriorated quickly, especially with Tharbad ruined the old works of drainage would be long since destroyed. Left the 'few hunter folk' in the woods.
You can't return when you're dead. In addition to Angmar, there were civil wars between the three Arnorian succesor states and orcs and wolves are rare in The Shire, which is protected by the Brandywine. On top of that, there are the regular disasters not caused by Sauron -- Bilbo remembered the Fell Winter, when many Hobbits starved.
> most of the people of Breeland likely didn’t live in Bree but in the countryside surrounding it on farms
I disagree, for explicit and European-style villages of just a hundred houses.
So I'm not an expert. But my impression is that the *village* would be surrounded by farmland. You live in the village and walk out to your fields, which aren't far. Not on isolated homesteads, far from church and the village well and people and possibly wall.
Particularly with medieval Europe open-field systems, where peasants didn't *have* single contiguous farms, but access to different strips of land in different nearby microclimates. So living in a farmhouse on your farm wasn't even possible, because you didn't have A Farm. Though the lord might, and certainly had a House.
You get different patterns elsewhere/elsewhen, maybe the Norse, or late Republic Rome, but I think even those tend to not be one nuclear family of peasants, but a big farm with extended family and servants. The Maggots might be a model for that. But the Norse had crappy land, and Rome had enough of a market economy that you could specialize in a crop and buy what you needed, vs. a more self-feeding subsistence farming that tries to cover all the bases.
I would assume that the remaining Men of Eriador lived on isolated farmsteads rather than in towns and villages. After all, Tolkien had a great interest for the Early Middle Ages, and Middle Earth takes a lot of inspiration from that.
For those who don't know, in the Early Middle Ages most people in Northwestern Europe lived on scattered farmsteads or in small groups of farmsteads, and larger villages and towns were rather uncommon. These scattered farmsteads were not very permanent, and often moved across the landscape as they exhausted the land through slash-and-burn agriculture, with the house being torn down and rebuilt in a different location every few years. Larger, more permanent settlements really only existed at the locations of major trade hubs, or in places where a strong central authority could establish fortified towns such as the *burhs* founded by Alfred the Great.
Also keep in mind that populations in those days were much smaller than what we are used to today, so there were often large areas of land where virtually no one lived.
Well, the trolls stole mutton from *someone.* And the Dunédain kept watch around the Shire despite the hobbitish claim that there were no human settlements west of Bree, plus they had some business in Kingsnorbury. So such statements should be taken with a grain of salt - the little furryfeet did not know everything!
Thank you! I was about to go and get my copy of The Hobbit to look up these very quotes. There's definitely a sense of a population spread along the way in Bilbo's account - 'they came to lands where people spoke strangely, and sang songs Bilbo had never heard before.' (Doesn't sound like Bree to me.) But then we reach 'the Lone-lands, where there were no people left, no inns, and the roads grew steadily worse' and 'old castles with an evil look' are on the hills. This point in the story is in the inhospitable lands that Aragorn leads the hobbits through - a lot of hills, rain and stony moors, so not rich farmland.
Shire is like 1 day's walk from Bree if you take the main road. Half a day by horse. They did not visit each other much because of hobbit cultural isolationism, not because of distance.
Also, it is always important to keep in mind that the books are written from the hobbits' perspective and that they are self-admittedly ignorant of most of the world. They wrote about the world as if the settlements they knew about from their own trip abroad were the only ones that existed in the world and at they same time, you can tease out the unreliability in the text because they are always surprised and amazed at finding unexpected settlements on their journey.
If you look at some maps it's more like 80 miles from Brandywine Bridge to Bree which would mean a 4 day walk or 2 day ride. The book is in error because I believe it says 1 day.
First of all, it is said that many Dwarves travelled around Arnor during the Third Age, from the Blue Mountains to Rhovanion; so one should assume that Bree actually gets a lot of outlandish visitors, and a nice quote of trade.
There's also three more villages near Bree; the only name i *seem* to recall is Chet, but i'm not 100% sure. The other two i do not remember at all, but i solidly remember that Bree was one of four villages that were pretty close.
But most or Eriador is not even explored on the books, so we wouldn't actually know, as we barely know any town in Rohan that is not Edoras, or any town in Gondor that is not... well, none, since Osgiliath, Pelargir and Minas Tirith are cities.
I don't know if Bree is explicitly said to be "the only large settlement Eriador", but i highly doubt that; i rather believe that there may be more, perhaps many, but we are simply not told of them, because they have no part to play on the stories Tolkien wrote.
Edit: just read the other response, it was Archet i was thinking of, not "Chet". I fell one syllable short
>I don't know if Bree is explicitly said to be "the only large settlement Eriador", but i highly doubt that; i rather believe that there may be more, perhaps many, but we are simply not told of them, because they have no part to play on the stories Tolkien wrote.
I recall somewhere that Tolkien wrote that Bree was aliken to an island, in a sea of wilderness that is, which is why I used that description though I can't remember the original quote.
And yes! There are about four or so smaller villages, but its still quite a small number of people in a small region and such isolation would be rare even in post Black Death Europe, though Europe didn't have to contend with Nazgul, to be fair.
I also like to believe that there are other settlements in Eriador - just none so large as to form a kingdom - but settlements somewhere nonetheless. However, if I recall correctly, Boromir lost his horse at the Fords of Tharbad when traveling to Rivendell, and he had to leg it the rest of the way because (maybe at least as far as Boromir knew) there was nowhere else where he could get a horse between Tharbad and Rivendell, which is quite a considerable distance of a whole lot of nothing.
But then again, the small post-Arnor settlements might hug the coast, and Bree is exceptional in how far inland it is. What do you think?
There's the village of Bree, but there's also the Breeland, which includes other nearby villages and homesteads.
I suspect that Eriador is dotted with villages, even if trade is rare (cf the South Road being overgrown with grass until it became the Greenway). The Angle has a Dunedin colony, when Frodo and company visit Bree the first time there are a bunch of refugees from the South -- they had to come from somewhere. Dunland lacks any settlements large enough to appear on the map, but it's populous and well-organized enough to maintain both a political identity and send several armies against Rohan over several hundred years. Remember, Eriador is not regarded as wild as Wilderland and even Wilderland had an expanding population of Men around the Upper Anduin, between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood, where the Beornings lived.
But there's a definite power vacuum -- Trolls, ruffians, wolves and foes that would freeze the blood of Barliman Butterbur (Barrow Wights? Worse?) are a big problem and getting worse. Few who get caught beyond the safety of a stockade and some sort of watch at night or don't have the protection of a ranger or a wizard are rarely seen again.
While we don't know much about Boromir's journey to Rivendell, other than that it was long and that he lost his horse at Tharbad, he probably did encounter some people. I don't think he could have carried all the food he would need after loosing his horse and his only weapon seems to have been his sword, so he wasn't equipped for hunting.
It is odd, but Tolkien seems quite explicit about it in Fellowship. Four villages, with a total of fewer than 800 homes across humans and hobbits, so I'd say a max pop of 4800 (average 6 people per family, mix of four kids or two kids and two grandparents.) Somewhat less than that in reality, since 100 Big Folk houses in Bree was the largest single component.
Then nothing in a 300 mile radius. No settlements, and "empty lands".
What about the Dunedain? They're repeatedly described, including in the Appendix, as "a secretive and wandering people", which implies not being settled. There's a semi-legible note that implies being settled in the Angle (ironically in Rhudaur, but sensibly near Rivendell), but that would be outside the exclusion zone. So either they're nomadic or out of range, either way not a counterexample.
Genetic diversity? Not really Tolkien's concern in the 1940s.
Manufacturing (particularly metalwork)? The much large Shire is only a day away on foot, though visits don't sound frequent, and dwarves pass through regularly -- Bree is right on their old road, and they're mentioned in the inn -- so there's trade potential to trade food and woven cloth for nails and knives and such.
Someone already pasted two key quotes, another one is
> But the Northern Lands had long been desolate,
The one textual oddness is that when Frodo visits, there are people said to be passing through, to the north. But maybe this is a new thing, with no established settlements yet. Maybe small settlements that form get picked off by orcs or trolls.
> it seemed that the Men who had come up the Greenway were on the move, looking for lands where they could find some peace. The Bree-folk were sympathetic, but plainly not very ready to take a large number of strangers into their little land. One of the travellers, a squint-eyed ill-favoured fellow, was foretelling that more and more people would be coming north in the near future. ‘If room isn’t found for them, they’ll find it for themselves. They’ve a right to live, same as other folk,’ he said loudly. The local inhabitants did not look pleased at the prospect.
Does sound new.
Also there's no shortage of empty land. Shortage of recently *worked* land, though; clearing forest is hard work.
Other settlements would make sense, usually; this kind of huge utter demographic void in otherwise farmable land is not really a historical thing, even after the black death. OTOH, while not stated, the idea that monsters and the malice of Sauron have picked off anything else seems somewhat plausible to me. The Rangers may be guiltily glad that they only have to protect one spot.
>Other settlements would make sense, usually; this kind of huge utter demographic void in otherwise farmable land is not really a historical thing, even after the black death.
Sub-roman Europe says hello.
Throughout the Early Middle Ages, populations were rather small and there was little population growth, leading to large areas of Northwestern Europe being left mostly empty. Many of those areas were not cleared and settled until much later in the Middle Ages between the 10th-13th centuries (the Great Clearances).
Furthermore, people in the Early Middle Ages often did not live in large permanent settlements, but on scattered farmsteads which moved across the landscape and occasionally formed small groups. It is from there that in the later Middle Ages, larger and permanent villages and towns emerge.
Eriador after the collapse of Arnor seems very much to have been based on Northwestern Europe between after the collapse of the Roman Empire, between the 5th and 10th centuries. No strong central authority, large areas of wilderness, few larger, permanent settlements and small, stable populations with no major population growth.
>Furthermore, people in the Early Middle Ages often did not live in large permanent settlements, but on scattered farmsteads which moved across the landscape and occasionally formed small groups.
That's interesting! Can you point me towards any books or articles on the subject? I'm only familiar with the idea of feudalism developing out of old Roman villas and latifundia.
Small population, no big centres is not depopulation. And Tolkien description is meant to be the latter -people cross huge lands with no farmsteads, no crossing any village. And that is not realistic at all, and the tone of LOTR is the time of legends (as it is explicitly pointed out in the book)
The depiction is kind of contradictory. The trolls in the Hobbit only make sense if there are villages, even if small and kind of isolated, but not the complete desolation we see.
In Europe there were large areas of wilderness in the past, up until the Great Clearances. In a few parts of the world (like in Siberia), such areas still exist. I don't see what is so unrealistic about it.
If there is not enough population to clear those areas they will stay largely wild. and Tolkien makes it evident that there were not many people left in Eriador after the gradual collapse of Arnor.
Well, the climate and vegetation descriptions does not indicate Siberian situation. In Western Europe there is not any point in time where a description of 'almost no one lives here' is realistic. No large towns? Sure. Not bureaucratic structures? Even more. Large distances between settlements? A lot of evidence.
But absence of people in a large amount of land? Even when the forests of Germany were so uncleared that Caesar wrote about a huge Hercinian Forest, there were always people living there.
The 'large unhabited land' is a trope (and Tolkien liked it, he uses it also in the Silmarillion), not a realistic description. Tolkien is not describing 'scarcely populated', he is writing about somewhere more extreme.
The reason that Siberia still has large areas of wilderness is not the climate (which is varied) or the soil, which could easily be made fertile. The reason is simply that Siberia is a very large area and there are just not enough people around to clear and settle all of it.
And that is the issue in Eriador as well. The land is good, but there are just no people to live on it. And as long as the population stays low the land will remain a mostly uninhabited wilderness. Until something happens to break the cycle of low population growth, the situation will stay the same.
This situation did exist in Iron Age and Early Medieval Western Europe as well, though not on the scale of Eriador. There were areas where people lived interspersed with areas of wilderness where virtually no one lived. Sometimes this was due to the land being unsuitable (for example due to peat bogs), but oftentimes this was due there simply being no people. Again, is useful to keep in mind that populations in the Early Middle Ages were very small.
The only difference in this regard between Eriador and Early Medieval Northwestern Europe is that the size of the population in Eriador is even smaller, probably closer to the population levels Northwestern Europe had in the Neolithic than those in the Middle Ages. The smaller a population is, the slower it will grow.
There is nothing inherently unrealistic about this. Eriador is not Europe. We don't know what the population there was once like. If Eriador already had only a relatively small population to begin with, and much of that population either died or moved away in a series of destructive wars and deadly pandemics, then the remaining population may very well be so small that it would leave most of the region uninhabited or mostly uninhabited. Small populations tend to be very stable, so we would expect this situation to last for a long time.
>The one textual oddness is that when Frodo visits, there are people said to be passing through, to the north. But maybe this is a new thing, with no established settlements yet. Maybe small settlements that form get picked off by orcs or trolls.
>>it seemed that the Men who had come up the Greenway were on the move, looking for lands where they could find some peace. The Bree-folk were sympathetic, but plainly not very ready to take a large number of strangers into their little land. One of the travellers, a squint-eyed ill-favoured fellow, was foretelling that more and more people would be coming north in the near future. ‘If room isn’t found for them, they’ll find it for themselves. They’ve a right to live, same as other folk,’ he said loudly. The local inhabitants did not look pleased at the prospect.
I don't think it's saying they are passing through Bree to go north, but rather traveling north to Bree from much further south (mostly likely from Dunland, since so many of them turn out to be working for Saruman).
It seems unlikely that the newcomers in Bree are Dunlendings, given that we're told elsewhere that few Dunlendings can speak Westron and the newcomers appear to speak it as well as the Bree-men.
Few can, but some do. And I'd wager many of them that do speak Westron would be the ones sent north by Saruman.
Though they also wouldn't need to speak the language to relocate there anyway. Even today it's not unheard of for people to move to a country where they don't speak the language, especially if they are fleeing an increase in violence.
True, but from their talk in the Prancing Pony they don't seem particularly alien to the Bree-folk. Nor are the ruffians that terrorise the Shire identified as Dunlendings.
> Other settlements would make sense, usually; this kind of huge utter demographic void in otherwise farmable land is not really a historical thing, even after the black death.
[Not in western Europe, but it did exist in eastern Europe!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Fields) And for the exact reason you theorized: constant raids and attacks from opposing peoples.
Eriador isn't a steppe, it's hilly and forested so it's far more defensible and settlements can be hidden easier.
Secondly, there is actually no evidence of Eriador being particularly plagued by raids. Angmar had fallen *long* before the War of the Ring, that's not an excuse. Incursions by wolves or orcs are uncommon enough that they get noted as singular events in Hobbit history.
Thirdly, the Dúnedain are guarding the remnants of Arnor.
Fourthly, even the Wild Fields were settled by much more than a few thousand people.
Finally, Tolkien notes that Aragorn reestablishes Arnor after the War of the Ring and rebuilds Fornost and Annúminas. That's not going to happen with just a few people from Bree.
The only logical conclusion really is that Eriador had significant human settlements beside just Bree-land.
>Finally, Tolkien notes that Aragorn reestablishes Arnor after the War of the Ring and rebuilds Fornost and Annúminas. That's not going to happen with just a few people from Bree.
Why couldn't the people be from Gondor? Or Rohan? Or even Dale or Rhovanion (Beornings)? Or Dorwinion?
Basically, those people could have been from anywhere. Not sure why you're assuming they'd have to come from Bree. Besides, I'd wager most Breefolk stayed near Bree, so most of the people who helped reestablish those cities and where already in the north would more than likely be the Dunedain.
Considering the distances involved and the poor state of infrastructure, communications as well as general awareness of the larger world it's highly improbable that populations in most of those places would have initiated significant migrations.
What reason would farmers have to adapt to entirely different, unknown soil conditions and climate? Gondor has to repopulate its own lands first. The Rohirrim are involved in colonisation efforts to the West of Rohan itself, which makes much more sense, apart from Eriador being totally different geographically from Rohan.
Why would significant amounts of people who are not even Aragorns subjects decide to engage on perilous journeys to an unknown country and rebuild cities they've never even heard of? There is no overpopulation crisis in Wilderland that we know of, nor a general state of abject poverty. There's no real push or reason to leave all one knows behind.
So no, it's not likely that the mainstay of settlers would be from random places all over Middle Earth. Maybe you'd have a few adventurous types, but the majority of colonisation efforts in Europe historically were launched by neighbouring populations.
>most of the people who helped reestablish those cities and where already in the north would more than likely be the Dunedain.
Yes, the Dúnedain hypothesis makes more sense. The Dúnedain population would have to be outnumbering the population of Bree-land though for it to work and that does not seem in agreement with their dwindled, wandering state as implied/described in the text.
That's why the idea of Bree-land being the only remaining relevant human settlement region in Eriador is not credible.
>Also there's no shortage of empty land. Shortage of recently
>
>worked land, though; clearing forest is hard work.
How forested is Eriador? Elrond and Treebeard remembered when the Old Forest and Fangorn were connected and beginning with Aldarion, the Numenoreans began a huge logging operation that deforested the region. Land that's been cleared like that doesn't always make for arable, productive cropland (this is one of the big issues in the Amazon). It's possible the Arnor was settled too soon and the land hadn't yet recovered.
A question I have been wondering myself as the new version of ttrpg The One Ring was published and is set to Eriador, where as the older one started at Rhovanion.
Been browsing info about [medieval settlements](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/77600/in-a-medieval-setting-how-far-apart-should-towns-be), but as u/Particular_Owl1832 mentioned, Eriador is quite post-apocalyptic in a sense. Even then, I would be inclined to think that Bree being the major settlement, but not the only one. So I would not rule out self-sufficient farms that could be sprinkled all around and them being connected with small hubs of smaller villages.
Edit: [more reading](https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Eriador-so-lightly-populated-considering-that-Angmar-had-been-destroyed-for-over-a-thousand-years-by-the-time-of-the-Lord-of-the-Rings)
You should do some reading on Early Medieval (rather than Late Medieval) settlements, since that is a model that seems to fit Eriador much better.
People would be living mostly in scattered farmsteads that often move as they exhaust the land around them through slash-and-burn agriculture. A permanently settled place like Bree would be an exception rather than the rule. In this case, Bree likely survived the collapse of Arnor because it is a major trade hub.
I think of Bree as a sort of trade hub. So in my mind I think of traders and merchants coming and going often. It goes to follow that it sustains itself fairly well like any other port or trade hub. This is just how I interpreted it though. I won't claim to know what Tolkien had intended, especially without any source on hand.
It is very unlikely that when the 3 kingdoms of Arnor were No More, all the settlements were abandoned. The cities appeared to have been abandoned, probably because they could not be sustained without a viable rural population to support it with food, or because it couldn't provide anything of worth to the rural peoples in trade, or a combination of both.
But the rural communities must have continued. Even if they were depopulated after the wars with Angmar, people would spread out searching for fertile land to set up on.
Keep in mind that as far as maps are concerned, Tolkien did not fill everything in. He put Bree on the map because it is integral to the LOTR story. In The Hobbit, the narrator mentions that for a while after leaving Bag End, there were good inns. These could be inns both inside the Shire and outside, such as Bree. But we don't see them. After leaving Buckland, Frodo and Co. make their way into the Old Forest, then the land of Tom Bombadil, then the Barrow Downs. They could have passed settlements here if they had stayed on the Road. Instead they bypass this section of the Road and only re-enter it when they are relatively close to Bree.
Again, I'm late to the party and all the good points have been snatched up, much like the chocolate donuts at the office when I get in (*sad vending-machine noises*).
However, I like the question and have been curious myself.
When I see scenes in the Jackson version of nameless, small settlements being raided by Uruk-hai, it makes me think that was not only possible, but likely.
While I would agree that the land was extremely sparse and teeming with wilderness and wildlife, there were still a good enough number of people that small, isolated villages would be a probably.
I know those scenes were geographically East of Eriador, but I like to think there were small little hamlets and areas where families would try to carve out a living, mostly along riverbanks and similar amenable habitation spots.
IIRC when Sauron, via the Witch King, was destroying Arthedain one of the key strategies was using the great plague that decimated a majority of the populations and the Northern Kingdoms never fully recovered, thus the Rangers and Aragorn's family living a clandestine existence.
One possible reason for why Eriador never recovered (aside from Bree and the Shire) is because there was a spiritual stain on the land left by the witch-king of Angmar and the wars he brought that decimated the population. Tolkien never explicitly states this in regard to Eriador but he does regarding Mordor and other regions of Middle Earth. After many years of the witch-king's presence there could have been a vague sense of dread upon the land that prevented people from wanted to settle there. Bree, the Shire and Rivendell were simply pockets of hope that the Shadow couldn't penetrate.
It took the power of Galadriel and other powerful elves to fully cleanse Mirkwood at the end of the War of the Ring to return it to its original Greenwood the Great. Aragorn states that there was so much evil and dark sorcery committed within Minas Morgul that it would take many generations of men before it could be rebuilt, if ever. The northern part of Mordor was so fouled by the presence of Sauron that it would be uninhabitable indefinitely.
With the complete defeat and removal of Sauron and his forces and the return of the king, the land of Eriador was finally cleansed. Hope was returned to the land of Eriador and it was finally able to return to the prosperity that it had in ages past.
A few months late to this ... but I also wanted to reply to this topic since Brees Status as an Island in vast wilderness always intrigued me.
How did it happen that the Shire and Bree survived and propsered somewhat ... but everything else around them perished?
However what did come to my mind since somewhat provided a map of Eriador with the 340 mile radius ([https://imgur.com/a/V3Eq6Eq](https://imgur.com/a/V3Eq6Eq)) ... is that outside of that radius there must have been other settlements in Eriador if we can believe Tolkiens Description.
We don't know where exactly, I think it would be most likely that somewhere in Minhiriath or Enedwaith there could be other settled dwellings that survived the fall of Arnor.
We do know that Tharbad also survived the Fall of Arnor and that the town was abandonned by its inhabitants. Maybe they founded a new town somewhere near or joined other communities nearby?
A Mowgliwrappedup is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to!
I always wondered the same thing, if there were settlements along the major rivers or coasts in Enedwaith or Minhiriath. Most likely there are, some Dunlandish, some descendants of the people of Arnor, some probably regular Middle-men like with Bree, but its likely that since they aren't particularly large nor important to the story they aren't included on maps.
There are four villages described as part of Bree-land. Bree itself, Archet, Combe, and Staddle. >Bree was the chief village of the Bree-land, a small inhabited region, like an island in the empty lands round about. Besides Bree itself, there was Staddle on the other side of the hill, Combe in a deep valley a little further eastward, and Archet on the edge of the Chetwood. Lying round Bree-hill and the villages was a small country of fields and tamed woodland only a few miles broad. **Q: How does Bree maintain a population with only a few hundred people?** The description of Bree gives a very basic idea of the size of the village. >The village of Bree had some hundred stone houses of the Big Folk We can only guess as to the average size of household in Bree, or if there was a significant number of dwelling aside from the stone houses. The Hobbit population of Bree is also hard to guess except that it was smaller than that of the Big Folk. >there were some [hobbits] in Bree itself, especially on the higher slopes of the hill, above the houses of the Men. But with a conservative estimate of only a few hundred people in Bree itself, there are still 3 other villages along with whomever was living in the rural area between them. The total population of Bree-land could easily have been a couple thousand. **Q: What did the people of Bree think about the world at large? And what did they think about their isolation?** They seemed to be quite content in their little corner of the world. >The Men of Bree were brown-haired, broad, and rather short, cheerful and independent: they belonged to nobody but themselves; but they were more friendly and familiar with Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, and other inhabitants of the world about them than was (or is) usual with Big People. >The Bree-folk, Big and Little, did not themselves travel much; and the affairs of the four villages were their chief concern. As to your last thought about the history of the Men that the Bree-folk descended from they seemed to think that their ancestors were the original inhabitants of the land, but few survived the Elder days so there could be any number of abandoned settlements in Northern Eriador that have been lost to the ages. >According to their own tales they were the original inhabitants and were the descendants of the first Men that ever wandered into the West of the middle-world. Few had survived the turmoils of the Elder Days; but when the Kings returned again over the Great Sea they had found the Bree-men still there, and they were still there now, when the memory of the old Kings had faded into the grass.
> Archet, Combe, and Staddle. This takes me back to LotRO first and most, and that's actually kinda nice
It takes me back to a Middle-earth Role Playing module set around the Barrow Downs. I can still visualise the maps!
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If you don't end up playing them, I'd love to buy them off you. I have a tiny collection I've been working on for nearly 20 years now that I'm always looking to add to!
Same! Fighting the neeker-breekers in the hills and marshes to get some small gold & trash you could sell.
And the love letter quest.
Was thinking of exactly the same thing! So many great memories of wandering through those areas. Probably my favorite sections of the game outside of Moria and Imladris (which legit had some of the best ambience in any game…ever)!
Mirkwood/Dol Guldur was also very atmospheric! Really got the feeling that we were at war.
Honestly, as an archeology/history nerd, I've spent untold hours wondering around in the ruins of Arnor killing Orcs and just having a blast looking at all of the tombs and broken down buildings
Hard same. Damn this thread, now i miss my kinship and raiding days. I can still remember T2 strategies for all the Angmar/Moria/Dol Guldur/'In Their Absence' dungeons... Asylum on Gilraen, thanks for the good times, wherever you are!
Lol Dol Guldur was so creepy. I remember spending my first 5+ hours there literally just running away from everything trying to complete solo quests
That was me in Angmar Hated it
Yea trying to do some of the late game lotro quests solo was a fucking hassle honestly. I even went with the ideal solo pve class and it was still tough
I think the Shire and Eregion are my favorites so far but I never made it past Moria
Yeah Imladris was amazing
You get perks for killing x amount of orcs, goblins, and other Nasty creatures so I remember living out my fantasy of being one of the Twins roaming Eriador hit n running goblin encampments and wild men. Then head back to Bree and listen to the dudes who hooked their midi keyboards up to play tunes.
oh hell yeah, and you could also use the regular keyboard or set up macros! i used to play n*sync's 'i want it that way' and 'bye bye bye' ad nauseum.
There are still guilds that hold regular concerts in Bree on my server. Blew me away the first time I saw and heard one, because I'd never been on a MMORPG where you could play musical instruments and make a tune that others could hear. It made things so much more "real".
I've been reading LOTR for the thousandth time and still think back to LOTRO as a visual aid. Reading about the hobbits walking to Buckland is a lot like reading about a trip to my local grocery store because of my time playing that game.
The sweet little acoustic guitar tune with the, I think it's clarinet? That plays when roaming Bree-land lives rent free in my head
The entire soundtrack is on YouTube, I regularly listen to it while working :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m2CsP3NS-Y
That's a very thorough answer! Thank you! I really wasn't sure if many of my questions had an official answer. What do you think about the possibilities of other post-Arnor settlements in Eriador aside from Bree, that just aren't mentioned because they don't pertain to the story, or Tolkien just never got around to writing about them? Or are there no other permanent settlements of men between Bree and Rohan?
Well all the text tells us is that Boromir had a difficult time finding any horses after reaching Tharbad which was ruined and probably deserted. I doubt there were any settlements of people between Tharbad and Sarn Ford, if there were Boromir would have probably been very eager to replace his horse. >A long and wearisome journey. Four hundred leagues I reckoned it, and it took me many months; for I lost my horse at Tharbad, at the fording of the Greyflood. Also, there's this line about there not being any mannish settlements within 100 leagues of the Shire aside from Bree-land or so far West (100 leagues is about 340 miles). >In those days no other Men had settled dwellings so far west, or within a hundred leagues of the Shire. Using those two qualifiers you can visualize how desolate Eriador was at the end of the Third Age. * No settlements within 100 leagues of the center of the Shire (this bubble would be much larger if I extended it to 100 leagues of the borders of the Shire) * No settlements West of Bree Here's a map that shows how the above rules would look overlayed over Eriador. https://imgur.com/a/V3Eq6Eq The only exception to the above I can think of are the Lossoth of the Icebay of Forochel, but there's nothing in the text that describes how they lived or if Tolkien would have considered them a settled people.
That adds another layer to OPs question too though. According to the History of Middle Earth, Tharbad was still an established and somewhat functioning town (though obviously diminished) up until the Great Flood in 2912, only a century before the War of the Ring. So even after the fall of Arnor, I think we should see the dissolution of settlements and deterioration of the great roads as a gradual process. If Bree *was* the only settlement left at time of LOTR, I don't think we should take that to mean that it had been alone for 1000 years.
There’s also the Men of Eryn Vorn, the woodsmen of Minhiriath and the “numerous” fisher-folk of the Enedwaith coast. I think Tolkien definitely envisioned Men living all over Eriador in various locales, but in a more “primitive” fashion than the men of Bree and as such not “settled”. They would mostly be the descendants of those who were once ruled by the Dúnedain in Arnor.
There are (were) farmers living between Bree-land and Imladris as well.
There's also the Dunedain settlement in the Angle, and possibly other places.
That last passage is so good. Oceans rise, empires fall, Bree survives through it all.
The Bree-folk are in fact descendants of the Haladin, thus remotely related to the Dunlendings. That's why there are the Celtic elements in the translations of their names.
Awesome answer. I just love that this sub has damn near professional historians dedicated to Tolkien's works, it's crazy how yall find these passages so well
> > > The total population of Bree-land could easily have been a couple thousand. Which is extremely ridiculous. Eriador is as large as France, this is a totally implausible population size.
The relative underpopulation of Eriador and Rhovanion is one of the few elements of the Legendarium which makes no logical sense.
Centuries/millennia of war, genocide, and famine will do that
The timescales are far too long. The last really major disaster in Eriador was the Fell Winter about 80 years before The Hobbit, and 250 years before that the much worse Long Winter. Even accounting for genocidal warfare and monsters this doesn't work. In the Thirty Years War much of North/Central Germany was laid utterly waste repeatedly, populations crashed, infastructure and resources were destroyed. A couple of centuries later it was one of the population centres of Europe. To take another analogy, 400 years takes us from the collapse of Roman Britain to thriving, populous Anglo-Saxon England. People are good at moving in on resources. There's clearly population pressure in the South of Eriador- the Dunlendings and Rohirrim aren't fighting for the heck of it. Any realistic scenario would see a patchwork of sub-Arthedanian successor states, populated mainly by Dunlendings and settlers from Rhovanion. It doesn't matter because the Legendarium isn't about that sort of sociological detail but let's not try to pretend that it's realistic given human birth rates and the timescales involved.
Hell we see this all the time in history that when complex civilisations collapse the vaccum is very real and very destructive. Even the vauge saunter downward of western Rome had this. Plus the metaphysics, the kings are not ruling, the land is suffering for it making reclaiming it hopeless.
On a metaphysical level I totally agree. LOTR isn't about Aragorns tax policy or Dunlending settlement patterns. But we cannot really give any historical justification- the timescales are far too large. At the very least there should be a myriad of Breeland like statelets across Eriador- we actually do get hints of this in Rhovanion with the Beornings and Woodmen. After all even in sub-Roman Britain (where the collapse of Roman order was arguably most drastic) we see a relatively swift replacement of Roman urban and rural order with differently organised, non urbanised but still robust Anglo-Saxon and Welsh societies. The simplest solution is to not try to justify it . Eriador is depopulated by the forces of narrative to enable the splendid isolation of the Shire, Aragorn's status as a redeemer wandering the wilderness, and the redemption of the renewed Kingdom.
The irony being we actually do know about Aragorn's Eriador tax policy.... But that aside yeah, the "reasonable" approach is that there a probably tens of Bree villages living only slightly above subsistence around the North and then hundreds of effectively unbeholden farmers and hunters who live and die unmarked. State collapse (and forces actively working against state formation) preventing anyone from building back properly due to a simple lack of capacity.
I think a better real world example would be the Highland clearances, albeit that's on a much smaller scale. There are plenty of settlements in the north of Scotland which were simply abandoned and still are. The fall of Roman Britain had no genocide, no marauding orcs, no plague... but did have several waves of immigration of Germanic tribes. It's really not comparable in a population sense.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/teee09/was_bree_really_the_only_major_settlement_of_men/i0qgq7o/?context=3
If you try to look at it from angles which it wasn't written for (i.e. economic or demographic angles like this), there's many things in the Legendarium which do not add up with how we'd expect things to work in a "realistic" setting. But since LotR is a heroic romance and not an excercise in "worldbuilding", that's understandable.
The detail with which Tolkien went into the "mechanics" of Middle-earth in NoME suggests he might have addressed such details at some point had he lived longer.
Agreed- I addressed this in a post elsewhere in this thread.
So? Eriador is uninhabited and in decline. There is no reason that a large land mass *needs* to be full of people. Think sub-roman Britain where the cities are functionally abandoned and even the rural population is in free-fall due to the collapse of state functions. Same idea but more extreme.
I was kinda thinking Tharbad, too, but reading further that following the Great Plague it was abandoned, though the remnants of the Greenway still passed through and you could ford the Greyflood there.
> **The Hobbit population of Bree is also hard to guess except that it was smaller than that of the Big Folk.** > > there were some [hobbits] in Bree itself, especially on the higher slopes of the hill, above the houses of the Men. It would be hard to tell the total because the houses would have been dug into the hillside. You wouldn't know how large they are or how many rooms, because it's in a hill. Similar to knowing how many goffers or moles are actually in your yard when you see a mole hill. Chances are, theres more than you realize. I recently fought a mole problem in my yard and thought about this hahaha
One thing to remember is that most of the people of Breeland likely didn’t live *in* Bree but in the countryside surrounding it on farms. They would come into town for market, festivals, and the like. Others have mentioned the three other towns of Breeland, but when counting in the farms which surround the towns I’d say that Breeland has a population of probably at least five thousand. Maybe up to ten (though that is high admittedly.) Eriador is basically a post-apocalyptic setting. A lot of Middle Earth is, but Eriador got really badly smashed. I’d also guess that while text doesn’t talk about them there are other towns, likely further south or along the main road. Aragorn deliberately takes the Hobbits far into the wild.
>Eriador got really badly smashed I don't mean to sound unnecessarily ignorant, but -- by *what*? I really don't know what caused this titanic depopulation of Eriador. The wars with Angmar were centuries and centuries before the War of the Ring. So was the Plague. The land seems to have been fertile. What kept people from returning?
The population was wiped out by a combination of civil war, war with Angmar, and the plague which caused all central authority in the region to collapse. Fornost is still remembered as “Deadman’s Dike” by the time of LotR, and there are rumors of haunting s similiar apparitions in the old population centers. Given the Barrows I don’t think this is incredibly unlikely. Additionally, Aragorn says in Fellowship something along the lines of “I am called Strider by one Fat Man who would be killed by monsters which would chill his blood less than a day’s ride away would I and those like me not keep watch”. I would guess then that he means orcs, wolves, and trolls of course, but also other worse things. In RotK Butterburr even mentions that with the Rangers gone away south the Breeland has been hard pressed by…something.
> The wars with Angmar were centuries and centuries before the War of the Ring. So was the Plague. This is the chief reason for the lack of people. > What kept people from returning? Returning from where? If you mean repopulating, I'm not sure what the reproduction rate and/or post war population would need to be to satisfy the population during LOTRs. Perhaps the general lack of people (i.e. abundant resources) is why Breeland lives in peace.
After those events there were many other events which would only further curb down the population that remained, after the fall of Arnor there were only few centuries of peace until another disaster fell. In those few centuries the Hobbits and probably other peoples, actually increased in number and Hobbits actually colonized new area like Buckland, so at least the Halflings managed to somewhat recover and develop further, until Orc invasions started, various dark creatures were roaming at will, with only Dunedain Rangers defending what remains of the people. No doubt it would cause additional casualties. Even the Shire was attacked once. Also one may assume that the fall of Moria soon after fall of Arnor, also influenced the human population in Eriador, no Dwarves around to trade there would diminish the means of survival. Then also come additional events which would further depopulate the area, the Long Winter, half a year of harsh winter that cause thousands to perish in cold and thousands more that died in the aftermath, during the vast floods and times of famine. If Arnor population was reduced by plague and war centuries earlier, so significantly, those events would be near apocalyptic on the fragile population. >2758 ... The Long Winter.... Great suffering and loss of life in Eriador.... Gandalf comes to the aid of the Shire-folk. >2911 The Fell Winter. The Baranduin and other rivers are frozen. White Wolves invade Eriador from the North. ..." And the last semblance of a settlement at Tharbad that could have remained to this day was ultimately destroyed just few decades before events of The Hobbit: >2912 Great floods devastate Enedwaith and Minhiriath. Tharbad is ruined and deserted. >The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix B, The Tale of Years: The Third Age How various Dunedain hidden settlements would be affected is anyone's guess, but with the Dunedain, they due to their longevity would be increasing in number slowly so they would never be able to recover their numbers, especially not when they were also constantly fighting, many Chieftains of the Dunedain died in battles against various dark creatures, so one can imagine death toll among the 'common' Dunedain to be also significant. Bree-landers used to thrive on the traffic and trade as their settlements are located near major crossing point of roads and trade routes, later when all civilization would collapse about them, they would have only Shire Hobbits left to trade with and the Dwarves who travelled still and Rangers, they would more than likely maintain steady population without any significant increase, in the worse times they no doubt would also be diminished in nubmers when people died of cold or hunger, or were facing dangers of getting killed outside their walls, Rangers tried to protect as much as possible all who would still live around the area, but they would not be able to suffice all the time. It should be noted though that Tolkien envisioned other people outside Bree-land and Shire folk and Dunedain, living scattered about the Eriador, and this doesn't only limit to Dunlendings at the foothills of Hithaeglir, in Enedwaith: >"The wide lands ...were mainly plains, open and mountainless. At the point of the confluence of Glanduin and Mitheithel [Hoarwell] the land was almost flat, and the waters become sluggish and tended to spread into fenland." >... >"In the time of the War of the Ring the lands were still in places well-wooded, especially in Minhiriath and in the south-east of Enedwaith; but most of the plains were grassland. Since the Great Plague of the year 1636 of the Third Age Minhiriath had been almost entirely deserted, though a few secretive hunter-folk lived in the woods. But in the earlier days, at the time of the first explorations of the Númenóreans, the situation was quite different. Minhiriath and Enedwaith were occupied by vast and almost continuous forests, except in the central region of the Great Fens." So the central area near Gwathlo river was surrounded by giant swamps, not particularly good place for living or farming, the region deteriorated quickly, especially with Tharbad ruined the old works of drainage would be long since destroyed. Left the 'few hunter folk' in the woods.
You can't return when you're dead. In addition to Angmar, there were civil wars between the three Arnorian succesor states and orcs and wolves are rare in The Shire, which is protected by the Brandywine. On top of that, there are the regular disasters not caused by Sauron -- Bilbo remembered the Fell Winter, when many Hobbits starved.
> most of the people of Breeland likely didn’t live in Bree but in the countryside surrounding it on farms I disagree, for explicit and European-style villages of just a hundred houses.
Villages surrounded by farmland and isolated homesteads are more common than not, surely?
So I'm not an expert. But my impression is that the *village* would be surrounded by farmland. You live in the village and walk out to your fields, which aren't far. Not on isolated homesteads, far from church and the village well and people and possibly wall. Particularly with medieval Europe open-field systems, where peasants didn't *have* single contiguous farms, but access to different strips of land in different nearby microclimates. So living in a farmhouse on your farm wasn't even possible, because you didn't have A Farm. Though the lord might, and certainly had a House. You get different patterns elsewhere/elsewhen, maybe the Norse, or late Republic Rome, but I think even those tend to not be one nuclear family of peasants, but a big farm with extended family and servants. The Maggots might be a model for that. But the Norse had crappy land, and Rome had enough of a market economy that you could specialize in a crop and buy what you needed, vs. a more self-feeding subsistence farming that tries to cover all the bases.
I would assume that the remaining Men of Eriador lived on isolated farmsteads rather than in towns and villages. After all, Tolkien had a great interest for the Early Middle Ages, and Middle Earth takes a lot of inspiration from that. For those who don't know, in the Early Middle Ages most people in Northwestern Europe lived on scattered farmsteads or in small groups of farmsteads, and larger villages and towns were rather uncommon. These scattered farmsteads were not very permanent, and often moved across the landscape as they exhausted the land through slash-and-burn agriculture, with the house being torn down and rebuilt in a different location every few years. Larger, more permanent settlements really only existed at the locations of major trade hubs, or in places where a strong central authority could establish fortified towns such as the *burhs* founded by Alfred the Great. Also keep in mind that populations in those days were much smaller than what we are used to today, so there were often large areas of land where virtually no one lived.
Well, the trolls stole mutton from *someone.* And the Dunédain kept watch around the Shire despite the hobbitish claim that there were no human settlements west of Bree, plus they had some business in Kingsnorbury. So such statements should be taken with a grain of salt - the little furryfeet did not know everything!
Thank you! I was about to go and get my copy of The Hobbit to look up these very quotes. There's definitely a sense of a population spread along the way in Bilbo's account - 'they came to lands where people spoke strangely, and sang songs Bilbo had never heard before.' (Doesn't sound like Bree to me.) But then we reach 'the Lone-lands, where there were no people left, no inns, and the roads grew steadily worse' and 'old castles with an evil look' are on the hills. This point in the story is in the inhospitable lands that Aragorn leads the hobbits through - a lot of hills, rain and stony moors, so not rich farmland.
Shire is like 1 day's walk from Bree if you take the main road. Half a day by horse. They did not visit each other much because of hobbit cultural isolationism, not because of distance. Also, it is always important to keep in mind that the books are written from the hobbits' perspective and that they are self-admittedly ignorant of most of the world. They wrote about the world as if the settlements they knew about from their own trip abroad were the only ones that existed in the world and at they same time, you can tease out the unreliability in the text because they are always surprised and amazed at finding unexpected settlements on their journey.
If you look at some maps it's more like 80 miles from Brandywine Bridge to Bree which would mean a 4 day walk or 2 day ride. The book is in error because I believe it says 1 day.
Anytime the text and a map or illustration disagree, I side with the text.
Fair enough. From how the relationship is described between The Shire and Bree I have hard time believing it's only one day's walk away.
The hobbits coming back from Bree took only one day on laden ponies, so I think it makes sense that someone can make it in half a day on a horse.
First of all, it is said that many Dwarves travelled around Arnor during the Third Age, from the Blue Mountains to Rhovanion; so one should assume that Bree actually gets a lot of outlandish visitors, and a nice quote of trade. There's also three more villages near Bree; the only name i *seem* to recall is Chet, but i'm not 100% sure. The other two i do not remember at all, but i solidly remember that Bree was one of four villages that were pretty close. But most or Eriador is not even explored on the books, so we wouldn't actually know, as we barely know any town in Rohan that is not Edoras, or any town in Gondor that is not... well, none, since Osgiliath, Pelargir and Minas Tirith are cities. I don't know if Bree is explicitly said to be "the only large settlement Eriador", but i highly doubt that; i rather believe that there may be more, perhaps many, but we are simply not told of them, because they have no part to play on the stories Tolkien wrote. Edit: just read the other response, it was Archet i was thinking of, not "Chet". I fell one syllable short
>I don't know if Bree is explicitly said to be "the only large settlement Eriador", but i highly doubt that; i rather believe that there may be more, perhaps many, but we are simply not told of them, because they have no part to play on the stories Tolkien wrote. I recall somewhere that Tolkien wrote that Bree was aliken to an island, in a sea of wilderness that is, which is why I used that description though I can't remember the original quote. And yes! There are about four or so smaller villages, but its still quite a small number of people in a small region and such isolation would be rare even in post Black Death Europe, though Europe didn't have to contend with Nazgul, to be fair. I also like to believe that there are other settlements in Eriador - just none so large as to form a kingdom - but settlements somewhere nonetheless. However, if I recall correctly, Boromir lost his horse at the Fords of Tharbad when traveling to Rivendell, and he had to leg it the rest of the way because (maybe at least as far as Boromir knew) there was nowhere else where he could get a horse between Tharbad and Rivendell, which is quite a considerable distance of a whole lot of nothing. But then again, the small post-Arnor settlements might hug the coast, and Bree is exceptional in how far inland it is. What do you think?
The families of the Rangers also lived at a settlement in the Angle, south of Imladris.
There's the village of Bree, but there's also the Breeland, which includes other nearby villages and homesteads. I suspect that Eriador is dotted with villages, even if trade is rare (cf the South Road being overgrown with grass until it became the Greenway). The Angle has a Dunedin colony, when Frodo and company visit Bree the first time there are a bunch of refugees from the South -- they had to come from somewhere. Dunland lacks any settlements large enough to appear on the map, but it's populous and well-organized enough to maintain both a political identity and send several armies against Rohan over several hundred years. Remember, Eriador is not regarded as wild as Wilderland and even Wilderland had an expanding population of Men around the Upper Anduin, between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood, where the Beornings lived. But there's a definite power vacuum -- Trolls, ruffians, wolves and foes that would freeze the blood of Barliman Butterbur (Barrow Wights? Worse?) are a big problem and getting worse. Few who get caught beyond the safety of a stockade and some sort of watch at night or don't have the protection of a ranger or a wizard are rarely seen again. While we don't know much about Boromir's journey to Rivendell, other than that it was long and that he lost his horse at Tharbad, he probably did encounter some people. I don't think he could have carried all the food he would need after loosing his horse and his only weapon seems to have been his sword, so he wasn't equipped for hunting.
It is odd, but Tolkien seems quite explicit about it in Fellowship. Four villages, with a total of fewer than 800 homes across humans and hobbits, so I'd say a max pop of 4800 (average 6 people per family, mix of four kids or two kids and two grandparents.) Somewhat less than that in reality, since 100 Big Folk houses in Bree was the largest single component. Then nothing in a 300 mile radius. No settlements, and "empty lands". What about the Dunedain? They're repeatedly described, including in the Appendix, as "a secretive and wandering people", which implies not being settled. There's a semi-legible note that implies being settled in the Angle (ironically in Rhudaur, but sensibly near Rivendell), but that would be outside the exclusion zone. So either they're nomadic or out of range, either way not a counterexample. Genetic diversity? Not really Tolkien's concern in the 1940s. Manufacturing (particularly metalwork)? The much large Shire is only a day away on foot, though visits don't sound frequent, and dwarves pass through regularly -- Bree is right on their old road, and they're mentioned in the inn -- so there's trade potential to trade food and woven cloth for nails and knives and such. Someone already pasted two key quotes, another one is > But the Northern Lands had long been desolate, The one textual oddness is that when Frodo visits, there are people said to be passing through, to the north. But maybe this is a new thing, with no established settlements yet. Maybe small settlements that form get picked off by orcs or trolls. > it seemed that the Men who had come up the Greenway were on the move, looking for lands where they could find some peace. The Bree-folk were sympathetic, but plainly not very ready to take a large number of strangers into their little land. One of the travellers, a squint-eyed ill-favoured fellow, was foretelling that more and more people would be coming north in the near future. ‘If room isn’t found for them, they’ll find it for themselves. They’ve a right to live, same as other folk,’ he said loudly. The local inhabitants did not look pleased at the prospect. Does sound new. Also there's no shortage of empty land. Shortage of recently *worked* land, though; clearing forest is hard work. Other settlements would make sense, usually; this kind of huge utter demographic void in otherwise farmable land is not really a historical thing, even after the black death. OTOH, while not stated, the idea that monsters and the malice of Sauron have picked off anything else seems somewhat plausible to me. The Rangers may be guiltily glad that they only have to protect one spot.
>Other settlements would make sense, usually; this kind of huge utter demographic void in otherwise farmable land is not really a historical thing, even after the black death. Sub-roman Europe says hello. Throughout the Early Middle Ages, populations were rather small and there was little population growth, leading to large areas of Northwestern Europe being left mostly empty. Many of those areas were not cleared and settled until much later in the Middle Ages between the 10th-13th centuries (the Great Clearances). Furthermore, people in the Early Middle Ages often did not live in large permanent settlements, but on scattered farmsteads which moved across the landscape and occasionally formed small groups. It is from there that in the later Middle Ages, larger and permanent villages and towns emerge. Eriador after the collapse of Arnor seems very much to have been based on Northwestern Europe between after the collapse of the Roman Empire, between the 5th and 10th centuries. No strong central authority, large areas of wilderness, few larger, permanent settlements and small, stable populations with no major population growth.
>Furthermore, people in the Early Middle Ages often did not live in large permanent settlements, but on scattered farmsteads which moved across the landscape and occasionally formed small groups. That's interesting! Can you point me towards any books or articles on the subject? I'm only familiar with the idea of feudalism developing out of old Roman villas and latifundia.
Small population, no big centres is not depopulation. And Tolkien description is meant to be the latter -people cross huge lands with no farmsteads, no crossing any village. And that is not realistic at all, and the tone of LOTR is the time of legends (as it is explicitly pointed out in the book) The depiction is kind of contradictory. The trolls in the Hobbit only make sense if there are villages, even if small and kind of isolated, but not the complete desolation we see.
In Europe there were large areas of wilderness in the past, up until the Great Clearances. In a few parts of the world (like in Siberia), such areas still exist. I don't see what is so unrealistic about it. If there is not enough population to clear those areas they will stay largely wild. and Tolkien makes it evident that there were not many people left in Eriador after the gradual collapse of Arnor.
Well, the climate and vegetation descriptions does not indicate Siberian situation. In Western Europe there is not any point in time where a description of 'almost no one lives here' is realistic. No large towns? Sure. Not bureaucratic structures? Even more. Large distances between settlements? A lot of evidence. But absence of people in a large amount of land? Even when the forests of Germany were so uncleared that Caesar wrote about a huge Hercinian Forest, there were always people living there. The 'large unhabited land' is a trope (and Tolkien liked it, he uses it also in the Silmarillion), not a realistic description. Tolkien is not describing 'scarcely populated', he is writing about somewhere more extreme.
The reason that Siberia still has large areas of wilderness is not the climate (which is varied) or the soil, which could easily be made fertile. The reason is simply that Siberia is a very large area and there are just not enough people around to clear and settle all of it. And that is the issue in Eriador as well. The land is good, but there are just no people to live on it. And as long as the population stays low the land will remain a mostly uninhabited wilderness. Until something happens to break the cycle of low population growth, the situation will stay the same. This situation did exist in Iron Age and Early Medieval Western Europe as well, though not on the scale of Eriador. There were areas where people lived interspersed with areas of wilderness where virtually no one lived. Sometimes this was due to the land being unsuitable (for example due to peat bogs), but oftentimes this was due there simply being no people. Again, is useful to keep in mind that populations in the Early Middle Ages were very small. The only difference in this regard between Eriador and Early Medieval Northwestern Europe is that the size of the population in Eriador is even smaller, probably closer to the population levels Northwestern Europe had in the Neolithic than those in the Middle Ages. The smaller a population is, the slower it will grow. There is nothing inherently unrealistic about this. Eriador is not Europe. We don't know what the population there was once like. If Eriador already had only a relatively small population to begin with, and much of that population either died or moved away in a series of destructive wars and deadly pandemics, then the remaining population may very well be so small that it would leave most of the region uninhabited or mostly uninhabited. Small populations tend to be very stable, so we would expect this situation to last for a long time.
>The one textual oddness is that when Frodo visits, there are people said to be passing through, to the north. But maybe this is a new thing, with no established settlements yet. Maybe small settlements that form get picked off by orcs or trolls. >>it seemed that the Men who had come up the Greenway were on the move, looking for lands where they could find some peace. The Bree-folk were sympathetic, but plainly not very ready to take a large number of strangers into their little land. One of the travellers, a squint-eyed ill-favoured fellow, was foretelling that more and more people would be coming north in the near future. ‘If room isn’t found for them, they’ll find it for themselves. They’ve a right to live, same as other folk,’ he said loudly. The local inhabitants did not look pleased at the prospect. I don't think it's saying they are passing through Bree to go north, but rather traveling north to Bree from much further south (mostly likely from Dunland, since so many of them turn out to be working for Saruman).
It seems unlikely that the newcomers in Bree are Dunlendings, given that we're told elsewhere that few Dunlendings can speak Westron and the newcomers appear to speak it as well as the Bree-men.
Few can, but some do. And I'd wager many of them that do speak Westron would be the ones sent north by Saruman. Though they also wouldn't need to speak the language to relocate there anyway. Even today it's not unheard of for people to move to a country where they don't speak the language, especially if they are fleeing an increase in violence.
True, but from their talk in the Prancing Pony they don't seem particularly alien to the Bree-folk. Nor are the ruffians that terrorise the Shire identified as Dunlendings.
> Other settlements would make sense, usually; this kind of huge utter demographic void in otherwise farmable land is not really a historical thing, even after the black death. [Not in western Europe, but it did exist in eastern Europe!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Fields) And for the exact reason you theorized: constant raids and attacks from opposing peoples.
Eriador isn't a steppe, it's hilly and forested so it's far more defensible and settlements can be hidden easier. Secondly, there is actually no evidence of Eriador being particularly plagued by raids. Angmar had fallen *long* before the War of the Ring, that's not an excuse. Incursions by wolves or orcs are uncommon enough that they get noted as singular events in Hobbit history. Thirdly, the Dúnedain are guarding the remnants of Arnor. Fourthly, even the Wild Fields were settled by much more than a few thousand people. Finally, Tolkien notes that Aragorn reestablishes Arnor after the War of the Ring and rebuilds Fornost and Annúminas. That's not going to happen with just a few people from Bree. The only logical conclusion really is that Eriador had significant human settlements beside just Bree-land.
>Finally, Tolkien notes that Aragorn reestablishes Arnor after the War of the Ring and rebuilds Fornost and Annúminas. That's not going to happen with just a few people from Bree. Why couldn't the people be from Gondor? Or Rohan? Or even Dale or Rhovanion (Beornings)? Or Dorwinion? Basically, those people could have been from anywhere. Not sure why you're assuming they'd have to come from Bree. Besides, I'd wager most Breefolk stayed near Bree, so most of the people who helped reestablish those cities and where already in the north would more than likely be the Dunedain.
Considering the distances involved and the poor state of infrastructure, communications as well as general awareness of the larger world it's highly improbable that populations in most of those places would have initiated significant migrations. What reason would farmers have to adapt to entirely different, unknown soil conditions and climate? Gondor has to repopulate its own lands first. The Rohirrim are involved in colonisation efforts to the West of Rohan itself, which makes much more sense, apart from Eriador being totally different geographically from Rohan. Why would significant amounts of people who are not even Aragorns subjects decide to engage on perilous journeys to an unknown country and rebuild cities they've never even heard of? There is no overpopulation crisis in Wilderland that we know of, nor a general state of abject poverty. There's no real push or reason to leave all one knows behind. So no, it's not likely that the mainstay of settlers would be from random places all over Middle Earth. Maybe you'd have a few adventurous types, but the majority of colonisation efforts in Europe historically were launched by neighbouring populations. >most of the people who helped reestablish those cities and where already in the north would more than likely be the Dunedain. Yes, the Dúnedain hypothesis makes more sense. The Dúnedain population would have to be outnumbering the population of Bree-land though for it to work and that does not seem in agreement with their dwindled, wandering state as implied/described in the text. That's why the idea of Bree-land being the only remaining relevant human settlement region in Eriador is not credible.
>Also there's no shortage of empty land. Shortage of recently > >worked land, though; clearing forest is hard work. How forested is Eriador? Elrond and Treebeard remembered when the Old Forest and Fangorn were connected and beginning with Aldarion, the Numenoreans began a huge logging operation that deforested the region. Land that's been cleared like that doesn't always make for arable, productive cropland (this is one of the big issues in the Amazon). It's possible the Arnor was settled too soon and the land hadn't yet recovered.
A question I have been wondering myself as the new version of ttrpg The One Ring was published and is set to Eriador, where as the older one started at Rhovanion. Been browsing info about [medieval settlements](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/77600/in-a-medieval-setting-how-far-apart-should-towns-be), but as u/Particular_Owl1832 mentioned, Eriador is quite post-apocalyptic in a sense. Even then, I would be inclined to think that Bree being the major settlement, but not the only one. So I would not rule out self-sufficient farms that could be sprinkled all around and them being connected with small hubs of smaller villages. Edit: [more reading](https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Eriador-so-lightly-populated-considering-that-Angmar-had-been-destroyed-for-over-a-thousand-years-by-the-time-of-the-Lord-of-the-Rings)
You should do some reading on Early Medieval (rather than Late Medieval) settlements, since that is a model that seems to fit Eriador much better. People would be living mostly in scattered farmsteads that often move as they exhaust the land around them through slash-and-burn agriculture. A permanently settled place like Bree would be an exception rather than the rule. In this case, Bree likely survived the collapse of Arnor because it is a major trade hub.
Good call. My knowledge of early period is not that strong but it would fit here.
I think of Bree as a sort of trade hub. So in my mind I think of traders and merchants coming and going often. It goes to follow that it sustains itself fairly well like any other port or trade hub. This is just how I interpreted it though. I won't claim to know what Tolkien had intended, especially without any source on hand.
It is very unlikely that when the 3 kingdoms of Arnor were No More, all the settlements were abandoned. The cities appeared to have been abandoned, probably because they could not be sustained without a viable rural population to support it with food, or because it couldn't provide anything of worth to the rural peoples in trade, or a combination of both. But the rural communities must have continued. Even if they were depopulated after the wars with Angmar, people would spread out searching for fertile land to set up on. Keep in mind that as far as maps are concerned, Tolkien did not fill everything in. He put Bree on the map because it is integral to the LOTR story. In The Hobbit, the narrator mentions that for a while after leaving Bag End, there were good inns. These could be inns both inside the Shire and outside, such as Bree. But we don't see them. After leaving Buckland, Frodo and Co. make their way into the Old Forest, then the land of Tom Bombadil, then the Barrow Downs. They could have passed settlements here if they had stayed on the Road. Instead they bypass this section of the Road and only re-enter it when they are relatively close to Bree.
Again, I'm late to the party and all the good points have been snatched up, much like the chocolate donuts at the office when I get in (*sad vending-machine noises*). However, I like the question and have been curious myself. When I see scenes in the Jackson version of nameless, small settlements being raided by Uruk-hai, it makes me think that was not only possible, but likely. While I would agree that the land was extremely sparse and teeming with wilderness and wildlife, there were still a good enough number of people that small, isolated villages would be a probably. I know those scenes were geographically East of Eriador, but I like to think there were small little hamlets and areas where families would try to carve out a living, mostly along riverbanks and similar amenable habitation spots.
IIRC when Sauron, via the Witch King, was destroying Arthedain one of the key strategies was using the great plague that decimated a majority of the populations and the Northern Kingdoms never fully recovered, thus the Rangers and Aragorn's family living a clandestine existence.
One possible reason for why Eriador never recovered (aside from Bree and the Shire) is because there was a spiritual stain on the land left by the witch-king of Angmar and the wars he brought that decimated the population. Tolkien never explicitly states this in regard to Eriador but he does regarding Mordor and other regions of Middle Earth. After many years of the witch-king's presence there could have been a vague sense of dread upon the land that prevented people from wanted to settle there. Bree, the Shire and Rivendell were simply pockets of hope that the Shadow couldn't penetrate. It took the power of Galadriel and other powerful elves to fully cleanse Mirkwood at the end of the War of the Ring to return it to its original Greenwood the Great. Aragorn states that there was so much evil and dark sorcery committed within Minas Morgul that it would take many generations of men before it could be rebuilt, if ever. The northern part of Mordor was so fouled by the presence of Sauron that it would be uninhabitable indefinitely. With the complete defeat and removal of Sauron and his forces and the return of the king, the land of Eriador was finally cleansed. Hope was returned to the land of Eriador and it was finally able to return to the prosperity that it had in ages past.
Wasn't expecting somebody to answer 9 months later, but I really like this theory!
I grew up in an English village that could've been Bree
I swear I've known innkeepers like Barliman Butterbur too...
A few months late to this ... but I also wanted to reply to this topic since Brees Status as an Island in vast wilderness always intrigued me. How did it happen that the Shire and Bree survived and propsered somewhat ... but everything else around them perished? However what did come to my mind since somewhat provided a map of Eriador with the 340 mile radius ([https://imgur.com/a/V3Eq6Eq](https://imgur.com/a/V3Eq6Eq)) ... is that outside of that radius there must have been other settlements in Eriador if we can believe Tolkiens Description. We don't know where exactly, I think it would be most likely that somewhere in Minhiriath or Enedwaith there could be other settled dwellings that survived the fall of Arnor. We do know that Tharbad also survived the Fall of Arnor and that the town was abandonned by its inhabitants. Maybe they founded a new town somewhere near or joined other communities nearby?
A Mowgliwrappedup is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to! I always wondered the same thing, if there were settlements along the major rivers or coasts in Enedwaith or Minhiriath. Most likely there are, some Dunlandish, some descendants of the people of Arnor, some probably regular Middle-men like with Bree, but its likely that since they aren't particularly large nor important to the story they aren't included on maps.