A town in the taiga
With what grows here (barley and dredge, rye and maslin), this land can feed a town of about 1,100 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls.
A town of 10,000 here
Its grain comes from 76 km around, 3.5 days by cart (not by land alone). About 1,400 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. A city of 10,000 cannot live off this land alone.
In history
In Savonia, in eastern Finland, farmers lived by burning the forest: they cleared patches with fire and grew rye, their main crop. The method needs few people and always new land. Swedish kings of the 16th and 17th centuries urged them to settle the empty woods, and from the 1580s Finnish families crossed into the forests of Sweden and, from the 1620s, eastern Norway, where they were known as “Rye Finns” or “Slash-and-burn Finns”. Settlers were offered seven years free of all taxes. Then the ironworks wanted charcoal: burning the forest was forbidden in 1647, and the Finns had to supply charcoal at a low fixed price.
The northern forest gives a short and uncertain season. In 1695 the summer was so cold that rye was still growing in August, and an early frost killed what there was; in March 1696 frost ruined the next crop. Finland lost about a third of its people in two years, roughly 150,000 out of 500,000. People stretched their bread with ground bark, begged in the streets, and died of dysentery and typhus in the spring and summer of 1697. In Sweden the harvest of 1696 was said to have given each farm a single loaf of rye bread.
How large a city?
| People | Grain from | By cart | Villages | Scholars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | 42 km around | 2 days (strained) | 420 | 12 |
| 10,000 | 76 km around | 3.5 days (not by land alone) | 1,400 | 40 |
| 40,000 | 150 km around | 6.5 days (not by land alone) | 5,500 | 160 |
| 150,000 | 300 km around | 12 days (not by land alone) | 21,000 | 600 |
| 1,000,000 | 760 km around | 31 days (not by land alone) | 140,000 | 4,000 |
Living there
Its woods spare enough to burn: about 18,000 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops. Provisional figure.
Its market sells grain, flax, herbs, potato and wool, and buys iron and salt. About 250 market towns stand in its countryside.
About 45% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 50%, gardens 50%. That is some 5,000 livestock units on 75 km² of pasture. Hearth estimate.
What makes it hard
- The season is short and frost can come early or late: one cold summer takes the harvest, and two in a row bring famine.
- Burned-forest farming always needs new land. A growing village must split and send families deeper into the woods.
- The forest has other masters. An ironworks or a lord who needs charcoal can forbid burning and demand fuel at a fixed low price.
- In a hungry spring, bread is stretched with ground bark: it fills the stomach without feeding the body, and sickness follows.
- Newcomers may be pressed to give up their tongue. Finnish was banned among the Forest Finns, and in 1646 a local assembly called for burning the houses of those who would not learn Swedish.
Hard years
About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 480 of the 1,600 tonnes of grain its land gives it, with no water to bring the gap in. A plague that kills 39% of the town, as the Black Death did in Europe's towns, would leave about 7,100 km² of its fields idle.
What it can make
Grain (at a cost), Flax, Orchards (at a cost), Herbs, Potato, Wool, Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides, Cheese, Pigs and bacon, Goats, Honey and wax (at a cost), Furs, Timber, Charcoal, Pitch and tar
What it lives on
Barley and dredge, Rye and maslin
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): Activated Charcoal, American Bison Meat, Black Bear Fat, Black Bear Hide, Black Bear Meat, Beetle Wing, Bilberry, Juniper Wood
Hear it
- The town: Fantasy Medieval City (album RPG Ambiences Vol. 6)
- The market: Medieval Village Marketplace (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
- The countryside: Walking in a Lively Tundra (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
Taiga in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds
The same climate
A town in the taiga, on a river, A town in the taiga, on the coast
By city size
1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000
Sources
- Wikipedia contributors, Forest Finns, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Great Famine of 1695–1697, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia contributors, Bark bread, Wikipedia, accessed 2026. en.wikipedia.org
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