Winter Travel

[Rosemary Tea]

And you think Stockholm or Umeå don't have a climate like that?

I'm not personally familiar with those cities (I know of Stockholm, of course, but have never been there), but I'd heard that Stockholm doesn't get much snow?

The point I'm trying to make is that a hard winter climate limits how big a city can be in the sort of setting you're talking about. These days it's fairly easy to keep cities supplied in winter, especially when trucks and trains can carry tens or even thousands of tons of grain. But back in the days of horse drawn carts it didn't work, because you couldn't physically bring that much food to the city even if you could produce it.

We've been talking about real life cities in hard winter climates that have existed, as cities, since medieval times or even earlier. They weren't as big then as they are now, of course, but for most of history a city's population would've been closer to a small town by our standards. That didn't stop those cities from being the seat of government, location of the university, and seat of however many other things.

 

[Mad Swede]

I'm not personally familiar with those cities (I know of Stockholm, of course, but have never been there), but I'd heard that Stockholm doesn't get much snow

Stockholm is as far north as St Petersburg and quite a lot further north than Moscow. And yes, it can get a lot of snow, especially at the start of the winter before the sea freezes (as a result of what in the US would be called the Lakes effect).

We've been talking about real life cities in hard winter climates that have existed, as cities, since medieval times or even earlier. They weren't as big then as they are now, of course, but for most of history a city's population would've been closer to a small town by our standards. That didn't stop those cities from being the seat of government, location of the university, and seat of however many other things.

That would be a very small town then, At the start of the 1600s Stockholm had a population of about 9000 people, and it was another 200 years before the population reached 20000. Yes, Stockholm was the capital and it was where the King had his treasury. But the only university and the archbishop were based in Uppsala.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

That would be a very small town then, At the start of the 1600s Stockholm had a population of about 9000 people, and it was another 200 years before the population reached 20000. Yes, Stockholm was the capital and it was where the King had his treasury. But the only university and the archbishop were based in Uppsala.

So, in other words, Stockholm had a population of 20,000 by around 1800, which was still a bit before there were trains and trucks to bring in food. And according to Wikipedia, Moscow's population hit 200,000 by 1700. Not clear if that's in the city proper, though, or if that's the figure for the city plus surrounding region. And, of course, the accuracy of Wikipedia is always a question.

In any case, I don't envision my fictional city being anywhere near as big as 100,000 people. Somewhere in the 10,000 - 20,000 range would surely be enough to support all the institutions based there, if the population consists mainly of people employed by those institutions plus their relatives. (The relatives could include craftsmen and merchants and innkeepers and all those other professions essential to a city.)

 

[Mad Swede]

In any case, I don't envision my fictional city being anywhere near as big as 100,000 people. Somewhere in the 10,000 - 20,000 range would surely be enough to support all the institutions based there, if the population consists mainly of people employed by those institutions plus their relatives. (The relatives could include craftsmen and merchants and innkeepers and all those other professions essential to a city.)

Yes, that would be about right, and if you were to include religious institutions similar to an archbishopric (which Stockholm didn't and doesn't have) you'd be heading towards the top end of that range. Quite a lot of those people might be servants rather than major figures in society. You'd also get quite a large itinerant population which varied with season - the various farmers and merchants selling goods etc would have to stay somewhere when they were in town, but they'd only be there when they had things to sell or buy.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

Yes, that would be about right, and if you were to include religious institutions similar to an archbishopric (which Stockholm didn't and doesn't have) you'd be heading towards the top end of that range. Quite a lot of those people might be servants rather than major figures in society. You'd also get quite a large itinerant population which varied with season - the various farmers and merchants selling goods etc would have to stay somewhere when they were in town, but they'd only be there when they had things to sell or buy.

That's exactly what I'm envisioning.

 

[Aldarion]

In my wip, the setting is a mountainous but pretty well populated land. There are several towns and one sizable hub city all within easy (for the time and place) traveling distance of each other. The main roads connecting them are well traveled, fairly well maintained, and have plenty of roadside inns at decent intervals.

Modern transportation doesn't exist. No motor vehicles. Travel over land is by foot or beast. They have the wheel, so horse drawn carriages, donkey carts, and the like could be used.

Because this is a mountainous region, with some drastic changes in elevation between some of these towns and cities, winter conditions vary greatly from place to place. The highest elevations get a serious snowpack - if ski resorts existed in this world, they could keep them open probably five months of the year, on average - while the lowest only see occasional dustings that don't stick for more than a day or two.

Sledges could be used for winter transportation at the high elevations, but in the lowlands, there wouldn't be enough snow for them. Wheeled transport would be used instead, I would think, throughout the year. But wheels would be useless up in the snow.

So here's my question: if people are traveling from the lowlands, where there's little or no snow, up to where there's lots of snow, how would they do it? There's a pressing reason for this trip; it can't just be delayed until the snow is gone. A sledge would be very useful, perhaps completely indispensible, when they get into the snowpack, but it couldn't be used before then.

Would they change conveyances along the way? What might the setup be?

I think most typical approach might be to hire somebody to convey them to their destination. Maybe there could even be people selling such a service specifically?

 

[Rosemary Tea]

I think most typical approach might be to hire somebody to convey them to their destination. Maybe there could even be people selling such a service specifically?

Of course. My question was really about what kind of conveyance would be feasible. Obviously, they're not riding a bus that's going to stop when it gets into the snow to get tire chains installed.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Old time buggies could transition into sleighs, it would be an annoyance, but attaching runners woudn’t be a huge hassle. My kin folk had the runners for one still in a barn back when I was a kid, though the buggy/wagon or whatever it was, had long disappeared.

 

[Puck]

Travelling, in general during the middle ages, was primarily by foot. Horses were for rich people by and large. Wagons were slow, so unless you were travelling with a wagon laden with trade goods, you'd actually be more likely to opt for walking. People happily walked very long distances in the middle ages both to find work and to go on pilgrimages. One historian (Marjorie Nice Boyer) combed through records from fourteenth-century France and found that medieval travellers on foot could expect to walk around 30 miles per day - that's more than a marathon!

Mounted travel was faster (50-60 miles per day) but mounted travellers were usually the wealthy and their servants or messengers working for such people etc.

Obviously snow and wintery conditions brought their own problems. That did not mean that people did not travel in snow /winter but it did mean that people tended to avoid doing so unless it was necessary. Armies would usually avoid winter campaigning partly because of the poor weather but also because of the difficulty in getting supplies at this time of year. Individual travellers may nevertheless have needed to travel in snow, they couldn't afford to sit out and wait for the campaigning season like an army.

Winter did not only bring issues with snow. Travel could become very difficult because of slushy mud, which presented its own challenges. There was no easy answer to getting through difficult terrain other than to try various different routes until you found a way that was easier to pass over (even if that meant leaving the road and tramping through someone's field).

Travelling in snow on foot was not necessarily a huge problem (certainly easier than by wagon). But you needed warm clothing and the right footwear. Here is an article by re-enactors about the necessities of travelling in snow in the middle ages and its practical challenges.