The Biggest Problem With Tolkien's Worldbuilding

In this video, we look at how Tolkien's inconsistent use of population growth and decline created potential issues in his worldbuilding.

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[Clyde-S-Wilcox]

Belief: If Tolkien had lived ten more years all of the unfinished stories would have been wrapped up and all the characters would have been firmly established
Reality: If Tolkien had lived another ten years we'd have a whole bunch more unfinished stories and the characters would be even more complicated.

[aigodlord]

Stuff like this is why it drives me up a wall when ignorant people (usually non-authors) contend that fantasy is the easiest genre to write because "you can do anything." No. Authors like Tolkien have to build their worlds from the unformed magma, usually with "real" history, science, theology, etc. as a guide, but ultimately, the legwork they have to do is significantly greater than writing into a world that's already fully formed. Fantasy exists where the world we know collides with the world of our beliefs/imagination; thus, as I see it, the rule for good fantasy is that, in order for the profound to be believable, the mundane has to be relatable.

It's hard, as you said. But I think Tolkien did all right, all things considered.

[LeHobbitFan]

As for the strange expansion of Dale, I think it is likely that other tribes of Northmen who would be glad to join a kingdom ruled by the guy who killed Smaug.
After all, the peoples of the Éothéod (and later Rohan) kept the exploits of their lord Fram against the worm Scatha in memory for millennia. They seem like the type who would follow a dragon-slayer in a heartbeat.

[gagaplex]

I actually got that demographics problem with A Song of Ice and Fire even more. It always seemed like places and peoples get utterly devasted and yet somehow new armies keep showing up without any logistics or explanation behind them. I can see it for LOTR as well, but in ASOIAF it bothered me far more.

[rosscowlard]

I cant recall the source, but I believe Tolkien mentioned that Eriadors climate changed after the fall of Numenor. In effect, the fall of Numenor caused a change in some form of gulf stream meaning Eriador slowly become colder and wetter. So Eriador slowly lost the ability to provide sufficient agriculture for major population centres. Lots of small villages but nothing resembling a nation state.

[p.st.]

The Lord of the Rings is metafiction. Tolkien presented himself as a translator of a red book he found. This, in turn, was written from the perspective of hobbits, who had limited knowledge of many events. Or contained embellished tales of the elves. This is an aspect that many critics do not see.

[nehukybis]

If anything, this analysis understates the problem. War affects population density, but not in the way Tolkien uses it. Long conflicts create buffer zones where no useful agriculture happens. That will reduce the population density in proportion to the amount of territory that's left fallow. But human populations recover from wars ridiculously quickly, in the absence of modern birth control. Same with diseases. Your population density is going to depend on how good your farmland is, what crops you have, and what technologies you have. Full stop.

There's a strangely specific detail that breaks the worldbuilding here. And it's potatoes, of all things. In reality, Europe didn't have potatoes until they were introduced from the Americas. When they were, they caused a population explosion. Potatoes turn otherwise marginal land into calorie factories. Even without potatoes, the human population density should be orders of magnitude higher than it is. But Tolkien wants stone age population densities with 18th century crops and technologies, and no amount of war or disease can make that work.

Weirdly, Hobbits appear to have a more realistic population density, but no interest in expansion. The couple of times we saw them fight pitched battles as a community, they proved that they were capable fighters. So, the real question is why they haven't conquered middle earth with their 100 to 1 advantage in population per acre.

[anti-liberalismo]

The thing about the watchful peace is that Gondor might have recovered their economy and army, but their population would still have declined, just like it happened with the Roman Empire to lose people but recover the economy and military

[engh]

"'Strider' I am to one fat man who lives within a day's march of foes that would freeze his heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly. Yet we would not have it otherwise. If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so." I think you are underestimating the dangers present in Eriador after the fall of Angmar, the Shire AND Bree were peaceful because of the vigilante of the Rangers who being few in number wouldnt be able to protect much More.

[brucealanwilson]

There were other population centers in Eriador besides the Shire and Bree. The trolls in HOBBIT talked about "eating a village and half", which implies that there were scattered settlements. And in HOME Gandalf talked about there being fishing villages along the coasts. JRRT never talked about them in detail because they were not important to the story.

[baconsinatra]

Gondors military decline could also be due to powerful land owners buying up the smaller plots that supported the gondorian soldier class, similar to the late roman republic.


The population is the same after 300 years... but the number of men who can afford arms and armor is much smaller.

[Raycheetah]

Some of this could, at least in part, be explained by metaphysical influences. Tolkien wrote often about lingering curses and other bad magic (such as the corpse candles in the Dead Marshes). It might be possible that, in spite of a period of time relatively free from negative pressures, a population might not spring back as expected, simply because of a spiritual blight left over from prior disaster. It might not be explicitly noted, but enough "bad juju" could persist after some terrible war or plague that human and also agricultural fertility might lag for generations or even centuries. ='[.]'=

[Byenie]

It's confusing that from the First Age, Men have shown to be able to drastically populate uninhabited forests, plains, desserts, and islands in just a span of a few years with a group of people, and without much aid.

This was shown by the Edain's Beor, Haladin, and Hador. They entered Beleriand and easily thrived there for 500 years before Morgoth massacred most of them.

Even the Easterlings managed to create a long lasting empire despite having their homeland turn from a vast fresh water lake into a dessert.

And yet, these same Edains managed to cross the sea, enter an island and flourish again as the Numenorians after a few hundred years.

Again, these Numenorians were cast away from their island, landed on Eriador and Gondor, and managed to build grand cities and realms in just a few hundred years before fighting the full might of Mordor

but somehow, after a few decades of invasion, these same people can't repopulate and rebuilt Arnor... while Gondor, after thousands of years of uninterrupted rule, hasn't developed the rest of their realm into powerhouses.

By the time of the Lord of the Rings, Mordor shouldn't even be a threat. Rhun and Harad should have been the main force.

[Antipius]

I like fanfiction that fills Eriador with small fiefdoms and settlements, which still makes it an impoverished waste, but one with life and intrigue!
DaC is pretty good at that, I find

[simontaylor]

For me, the biggest issue in Tolkien's histories, which also causes some of the demographic problems you mention, is just how long everything takes. Over 1800 years pass between Sauron forging the ring and his defeat by the last alliance. I get that the lifespans of elves and Sauron himself make that feasible but you would have thought the elves would act with a little urgency. Especially compared to the events of the war of the ring which only took 1 year

[fairytalejediftj]

The biggest problem with Tolkien's world-building is my favorite part: the elven languages. Languages evolve generationally, and Arwen is only six generations removed from Finwë. The language that Arwen speaks should still be almost identical to the language that the first elves spoke at Cuiviénen. It should be like the difference between my English and George Washington's English - some slight differences, but definitely mutually intelligible. But Tolkien just enjoyed experimenting with his languages, so he squeezed in an impossible amount of evolution and divergence into only a handful of generations.

[federicaesu]

Tolkien was a philologist and a scholar who had a deep knowledge of ancient and medieval sources, particularly historical ones. Medieval historians were very inaccurate when numbers and quantities were taken into account. Often they used ten or twenty thousand just to mean a great quantity. My idea is that Tolkien followed the example of ancient sources when he mentioned demographics

[Sionnach]

One population explosion which always baffled me was that of the orcs. All of the possible answers as to WHY and HOW they reproduced so quickly, just never stood up to scrutiny in my humble opinion.

[skatemetrix]

Here's a major plot hole: Angband, the great underground fortress of Morgoth, is a great rocky mass yet it must have contained hundreds of thousands of orcs and other creatures. So there is no farmland nor any pasture lands. So how did Morgoth feed them all if they were besieged on most sides and facing a vast mountainous icy waste in the north? How did Morgoth import food to Angband and, if so, how did he manage to keep his supply lines of food hidden from the Elves and from the watchful presence of the siege?

[TyrionLannister]

There was very little population growth in pre-industrial times. 50% of babys died - in a good year. Often there were plagues, famines, climate disasters and wars. In the early mediaval period population was lower than during the height of the roman empire. In Spain and Portugal the population droped from 9 million in the year 1000 to 5 million in 1350.