A town in the barrens, on the coast
With what grows here (barley and dredge), this land can feed a town of about 2,000 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls.
Build a town in the barrens, on the coast
A town of 10,000 here
Its grain comes from 56 km around, 2.5 days by cart (fragile). About 1,400 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. On the water, ships can bring part of the grain: for a city of 40,000, 95% of it keeps the haul within a day.
In history
In 1619 Dutch and Danish whalers built Smeerenburg, "blubber town", on Amsterdam Island off northwest Spitsbergen, one of Europe's northernmost outposts. They hunted bowhead whales close to shore and rendered the blubber on land in copper kettles 2 to 3 m wide, burning the leftover blubber as fuel. A 500-ton ship brought the timber for the huts. In the 1630s the station had 16 or 17 buildings and a small fort, with up to 200 men ashore cutting up whales, boiling oil and making casks. Seven men wintered there in 1633 and all lived; seven more tried the next winter and all died. Whales grew scarce in the 1640s, and around 1660 the station was abandoned.
Russian Pomors, the "seasiders" of the White Sea coast, hunted on Svalbard too; when they first came is not known. Merchants and monasteries such as Solovetsky sent them out to small stations along the shore, where they took reindeer, Arctic fox, seals, walrus and polar bears. Unlike the whalers, they moved between stations from season to season and did not strip the land. By the end of the 18th century an estimated 100 to 150 of them spent the winter there.
How large a city?
| People | Grain from | By cart | Villages | Scholars | By ship to fit in a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | 31 km around | 1.5 days (strained) | 420 | 12 | 35% |
| 10,000 | 56 km around | 2.5 days (fragile) | 1,400 | 40 | 80% |
| 40,000 | 110 km around | 4.5 days (not by land alone) | 5,500 | 160 | 95% |
| 150,000 | 220 km around | 9 days (not by land alone) | 21,000 | 600 | more than ships can bring |
| 1,000,000 | 560 km around | 22.5 days (not by land alone) | 140,000 | 4,000 | more than ships can bring |
Living there
There are no woods to spare here. The town needs about 18,000 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops: it burns straw (about 11,000 tonnes a year), dung and brush, and buys the rest. Provisional figure.
Its market sells grain, herbs, maize, wool and cheese, and buys timber and iron. About 830 market towns stand in its countryside.
About 40% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 45%, fish 50%, gardens 5%. That is some 4,000 livestock units on 60 km² of pasture, and about 970 fishers in 240 boats. Hearth estimate.
What makes it hard
- Only summer is safe: a station can be worked in the light months, and staying through the polar night is a gamble the crew may lose.
- The prey runs out: whales near Smeerenburg grew scarce within a generation, and the walrus of Bear Island were hunted out within a few years of 1604.
- Rivals wreck stations: Dutch and English crews damaged the Danish huts at Smeerenburg in 1624, and in 1632 Basque ships in Danish pay destroyed a Dutch station on Jan Mayen.
- Being left behind means years of waiting: four Russian sailors marooned on Svalbard in 1743 were not taken off until 1749, and only three were still alive.
Hard years
About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 560 of the 1,900 tonnes of grain its land gives it, and the water lets it bring the gap in. A plague that kills 39% of the town, as the Black Death did in Europe's towns, would leave about 24,000 km² of its fields idle.
What it can make
Grain (at a cost), Flax (at a cost), Dye plants (at a cost), Orchards (at a cost), Herbs, Maize, Wool, Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides (at a cost), Cheese, Pigs and bacon (at a cost), Goats, Honey and wax, Fish, Salt fish (at a cost), Whale oil, Shipyards (at a cost)
What its land cannot give, a town here must buy: timber.
What it lives on
Underground
What a city digs depends on the rock under it: Granite, Volcanic rock, Ultramafic rock (peridotite, serpentinite), Schist and gneiss, Marble, Limestone and chalk, Sandstone, shale and clay, Salt beds, River gravels and sands
Found here
Gathered (Rerum): Arctic Hare Fur, Arctic Hare Meat, Beetle Wing, Chamois Meat, Iceland Moss, Moss Campion Root, Mountain Sorrel Leaves, Mycelium
Hear it
- The town: Fantasy Medieval City (album RPG Ambiences Vol. 6)
- The market: Medieval Village Marketplace (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
- The quays: Medieval Harbor District (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
- The countryside: Farmyard with People and Animals (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
Barrens in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds
The same climate
A town in the barrens, A town in the barrens, on a river
By city size
1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000
Sources
- Wikipedia contributors, Smeerenburg, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, History of Svalbard, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Pomors, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Halvmåneøya, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
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