![]() By the LotR its population had diminished to the point where this was no longer possible anymore. But according to the Tale of Years still well into the 3rd Age Lindon sent armies to fight. Lindon waned, after the death of Gil-galad there was no King anymore, and Cirdan was merely Lord of the Havens. But with the passing of millenia many died in the wars or left Middle Earth to sail into the far West. In the 2nd age it was a powerful Kingdom under Gil-Galad and led the opposition to Sauron, with a mixed population of Noldor, Sindar and Nandor elves, mostly refugees from Beleriand. It had stood through the 2nd and 3rd age but slowly and continually diminishing. Lindon was the last remnant of Beleriand and most of the Eldar from Beleriand dwelt there. To the far west of the Shire stood Lindon, an ancient Elf country on the western edge of Middle Earth. This is a very rough figures, between the tens of thousands suggested by some information and the hundreds of thousands suggested by other information, but it's probably the best we can ever hope to do, with a likely range of perhaps 60,000-140,000 Hobbits. If we assume that the Shire population was spread across about half of the actual shire area, with large areas of the North-farthing, west-farthing, marish, hills, and other areas almost uninhabited, and divide the Shire up into approximately a hundred settlements (and their hinterland) with on average 1000 population each, then we start to very roughly converge on a median figure of about 100,000 Hobbits. Most villages would have numbered no more than hundreds. The largest towns of Buckland and Michel Delving would not have numbered more than a few thousand, or they would have required larger scale infrastructure than the Hobbits seemed to have anywhere. These would have been small by any modern standard. Even assuming as many more un-named ones we have at most 50-100 settlements with some population scattered in between. Also we are given the names of at most a few dozen settlements. From Tolkien's maps and description it does appear that population was concentrated in a central and eastern belt. One partial solution may come from assuming that although overall the Shire was a big place, that large parts of that area were not heavily populated. To be honest their population should have grown massively in that time, which any figure below the hundreds of thousands just does not seem to match up with. And although there have been wars and plagues in that time, compared to Europe in the last thousand years they have led a sheltered and peaceful existence in a temperate and fertile land. They have been in the Shire for 1400 years by LotR. The other fact that points to a larger population is the sheer history of the Hobbits. This seems to conflict with the small numbers of Hobbits described elsewhere, and also the level of political and legal organisation of the Hobbits, who seem to exist with almost zero government of any kind at all, most unlike the larger populations of Rohan and Gondor who have recognisable government structures. Even taking the English population as far back as Saxon times as a model, that would indicate a population of hundreds of thousands of Hobbits. ![]() Firstly there is the size of the Shire, a country of 20,000 square miles, about 35% of the size of England. There are other clues that point to much larger number of Hobbits. If 'thousands of willing hands' constituted 10% of the population, as we can perhaps imagine such a popular effort doing, then that would mean a population of 10,000's, perhaps anywhere from 30,000 - 100,000. All these point to a relatively low figure for the population of the Shire. Now there were thousands of willing hands of all ages." We also have the seeming description of the Shire as a place nowhere densely packed with Hobbits and the seeming lack of any major towns or centres of population. We even have a few references to thousands of Hobbits, as in the following passage about Sam's work to repair the Shire - "Hobbits can work like bees when in the mood and the need comes on them. We have numerous references to groups of "hundreds" of Hobbits: at Bilbo's party, with the implication this was a sizeable part of the local population and the hundreds of hobbits who quickly rallied to fight the Ruffians in the 'Scouring of the Shire'. What we do have is the size of the Shire, some idea about roughly how densely it was settled, and various contextual references to the numbers of Hobbits. The Hobbits not having an army we have no military figures that we could use as a basis to estimate the total population, as I did for Gondor and Rohan. Friendly, idyllic home of the friendly Hobbits. Probably the largest of the communities in Eriador is also the most familiar to any fan of Middle Earth: the Shire. ![]()
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