A bit more census details of Skyrim.
relevant to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/5ozn8z/summary_of_the_census_of_the_empire_of_tamriel_in/
Hey everyone. This post isn't in the character presented in the census series I'm doing, but is a bit more of a companion piece. I hope through it to do a bit more to explain my numbers I used, and do more than just list the big big cities population wise.
To start with, Skyrim as I imagine it for the sake of this is about 137000 square miles in area, a good 2/3rds of which is barely hospitable and rocky mountains blanketed in glaciers and snow.
There are effectively two Skyrims: The incredibly ancient and primeval frozen north, high peaks and powerful ranges divided by glaciers and forested valleys, where it is always winter and most places are covered in a year round layer of snow. The only crops that grow well here, except for in very specific and prized patches of those few warmer valleys, are hardy cold-weather plants, many of which are either entirely native to Skyrim (or at least that variety is). The settlements throughout these ranges and frigid peaks are mountain strongholds and valley villages, few breaching higher than a few hundred and most at counts of thirty to seventy. They are very very traditional nords, the sort that most fully conforms to the image of the nord barbarian, fur covered hunter gatherers and raiders living within stone longhouses in encampments of four or five of such large communal homes, alongside a small farm of those cold weather crops that serve more to supplement rather than fulfill their diets. All larger settlements and cities exist only because there is something that draws to their existence- hundreds if not in the degree of greater than a thousand highly prolific mines exist throughout the imposing peaks, mines that nords and other peoples too weather the harsh conditions to operate, living in mountain cities connected by winding and treacherous trails- which invariably find their way to one of the three great cities of the frozen northern reaches, the ports of Windhelm, Winterhold, or Dawnstar, which ensure their existence and values by being the gateway ports for the shipment of the treasures of skyrim's mountains, as well as (alongside Solitude) being the general routes by which one may set out onto the waves as a merchant, wanderlust traveler, or raider for spoils and glory.
The other Skyrim is the smaller one, the forests and plains that lie nestled between the the great massive ranges, that forms much of the inhabited portions of Whiterun, Hjaalmarch, The Reach, Falkreath, The Rift, and Eastmarch. This Skyrim, while still cool in climate, is not a frigid wasteland; the winters are snowy, but the summers are comfortable and the harvest seasons rewarding. A good three to four fifths of Skyrim's population resides throughout these areas; between the wilderness of the woodlands and along riversides and lakes, towns and villages dot and speckle the landscape with close proximity, and huge fields and farmlands cover the open territory, interspersed with large communities that hold domain and watch over these breadbaskets. Multiple cities accompany the great cities in these holds, a few even larger than some of the 'great' cities of the northern mountains, and were they not so (relatively) close to a city much larger than they, they might be holds of their own.
Regardless in both instances, a significant portion of Skyrim's food is imported from other provinces- most often Cyrodiil, which serves as the breadbasket of the empire. Without trade with warmer climes, Skyrim's habitation would be much lower than it is- and its already actually very sparse in terms of people per square mile, whether its the 5.8 million that I imagine to have been living there in the late third era, or the 2.7 million I imagine to be living there in the time of Skyrim.
Across Skyrim (in the days before the crisis), I imagine the population of settlements breaks down as follows.
1.475 million residing across 30 or so cities, the majority of which host somewhere between 10000 to 40000 people, with a small number bearing higher, the majority of this small number being the great cities that serve as capitals to the holds.
1.125 million residing across 400-500 large communities of 1000 to 8000 people, averaging out to a mean of 2500 or so per community- significant and important mining and farming and lumber and fishing and port towns, many the holdings of esteemed thanes or chartered merchant endeavors or the results of imperial initiatives, positioned 'orbiting' within the more or less immediate (read: as much of a 150 mile radius) area of one of Skyrim's cities, as many as 3 to 24 such towns clustered about any one of those 30 cities in this way.
3.2 million residing across a little over 18000 small communities scattered all over Skyrim, with populations ranging from as small as 20 to as large as 1000, but most lying between 50 and 300, the nordic (and to a lesser degree, orcish) strongholds that litter the mountains, more isolated forts and fiefdoms both imperial and belonging to the authority of the holds, and the small often closely clustered villages dedicated to textiles, to lumber, to housing the workers of a small mine, to tending to a field or orchard or livestock, to a charter village centric about some merchant endeavor, be it a brewery or set of craftsman's workshops or a smithytown.
Now, onto the impact of the oblivion crisis.
As I wrote in my census post (https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/5ozn8z/summary_of_the_census_of_the_empire_of_tamriel_in/ linked again here), the crisis, for the assumption of what I'm writing, killed 3.9 million of the people across the province, and has left three quarters of the settlements utterly wiped from the map. Of those cities and towns and villages that completely managed to weather the storm, few were completely unscathed; most of the surviving villages survived simply because they just weren't ever attacked, but of the larger towns and cities, nearly every one came under at least one assault, and lost a portion of its people. Even those ones that didn't get assaulted a large number of times in more than a few instances lost plenty, for reasons to be listed, and because the nords aren't a people to sit back and huddle and hide- many nords took to actively fighting the daedra as they ravaged the province, raiding their war-parties and doing what they could to assist other communities under siege.
The war fought by the daedra was one committed in totality. It was not a war intended to conquer or subdue a populace, and did not contain mercy. It was wanton total slaughter, more or less genocide. The daedra did not fight with fear of their own death- the vanquishing of their physical form would just send them back to the void, where they would return to continue upon nirn in good time. When they came upon a settlement, they did so to the last man. The assault would not stop until every man and woman and child was dead, or they had been sent to the void. Be it a starving attrition filled whittling siege against an enemy that required no food, water, or sleep, or overwhelming wall toppling assaults that left the entire place ablaze, their intention was total death.
On top of this was starvation, and supply routes. The daedra did not need supply routes, and their 'landing points' were so numerous that they were practically everywhere. Their victims were not so lucky- they, in fact, did need food, and water, and lumber to burn in fires to stave off the cold- even nords need warmth some time or another, and not everyone in Skyrim, even in those frigid mountains, was a nord. Many places were stocked on food for winter; much of the harvest season had already been completed across the province. But as mentioned earlier, the food produced in Skyrim wasn't enough to support 6 million people- many places supplemented their farming with imports or supplemented their imports with farming, and in many places (especially the cities and large towns of the mountains) reliance was almost entirely on what could be imported. Fairly quickly into the crisis shipments became sparse light loaded, and many of the places that needed it most could not be reached- warbands patrolled both the mountain roads and plains, gutting any they found traversing them and setting cargoes ablaze. And so starvation began to set in across Skyrim long before the full 5-7 months of the crisis had reached their conclusion- especially in the frigid north, where the mine cities and generally any community that had not extensively stockpiled and were too large to subsist on hunting and gathering were lost in totality. Outside of the north starvation was still present as well; the daedra commonly targeted warehouses and silos and granaries as part of their sieges, and so many places that had been prepared to eat well through winter still succumbed to starvation. It is a shame held by many communities across the entirety of the province, that resorting to cannibalism to survive was all too common.
For many places water was less of a problem- the majority of the communities are built upon water sources that can be tapped with wells. But in more than a few instances, as part of sieging, the daedra dumped more intact corpses, poisons, and tainted meat where it would enter into water supplies, causing sickness to befall many places. Even without their poisoning, sickness was rather common; In many places, the bodies of the dead from previous attacks, starvation, and exposure were unable to be properly disposed of; halls of the dead filled faster than could be handled, and often times the plot of land a town used for their dead was too far outside the walls to risk the journey. Many places resorted to mass funeral pyres, but in the high mountains and those communities in the middle of tundra, the lumber purchased from out of province and from other holds had ran out a few months in, and with trade routes wholly disrupted amidst the crisis, none would come to them soon. And so in many places bodies simply piled up; stacked in some corner of town atop each other, mounds of dessicating or charred sons of skyrim rotting in the air with nothing that could be done for them. Among the bodies disease would fester and eventually spread in many of these cities and towns; and that would just bring more bodies down with it.
Finally the cold itself killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. Nords can handle intense cold for long period, but still require heat sources to survive for extended lengths in the most frigid parts of Skyrim. Non-nord citizens especially require the heat of a fire outside of the warmer plains and forests. As mentioned earlier, the greater part of lumber in those regions comes from further south, or out of province. As the shipments ceased, the full cold of the north set in in full. Many places resorted to burning anything they could for warmth- the homes of dead citizens were dismantled and sometimes even at that moment lived in homes too, furniture of all kinds, books, etc, all were thrown upon fires and lit while freezing and hungry nords huddled around for warmth.
Genocidal slaughter, disease, famine, the ceasing of shipments and trade throughout the province, and Skyrim's cold all together made the Crisis a true hell in Skyrim, a horrible wasting experience that piled millions of bodies up and up and up.
END RESULT:
As mentioned earlier, 3/4s of the settlements of skyrim are gone, ruins, or abandoned, and 3.9 million are dead all across the province. What cities and towns remain have lost many from attrition and numerous assaults. On any one day somewhere between another 2000 and 50000 people would die across the province, for every day of the crisis until its cease.
Skyrim was left feeling very empty, both emotionally, spiritually, and literally as well. Thousands of settlements would never be rebuilt or resettled, and would decay and fade into ruins or simply disappear as time went on. Faith in the old nordic gods had been shattered and dragged through the mud, all but the most favored like Shor or Ysmir being turned cold shoulder to. In the spiritual vacuum, and with the weight of bearing the god that saved the world, the imperial cult finally found firm purchase in Skyrim beyond being a minority religion and spread like wildfire among the survivors, thought they would often be recombined with their own nordic versions and have nordic deity deeds attributed to them. The most important part was the nordic people finally embracing Akatosh, a god they had long refused and dismissed regardless of the greatest efforts of the Imperial cult, even in the places where the other Imperial forms had found worship.
The larger cities would fill back up to their former size relatively quickly, within decades; survivors from shattered and ransacked communities across Skyrim moving to them both to get away from their specific experiences and to find new opportunities, as well as immigrants from provinces that fared better like Cyrodiil, looking for work in the rebuilding or to cash in on the markets opened up in a province brought to the brink. While Snowhawk was never resettled, the ruin of Falkreath would eventually be cleared and new settlement would be made atop its site, responsible for the hold as the old Falkreath was. However, it would never reach the size or power of old Falkreath. Smaller cities varied; a few survived well enough that though diminished they continued on, and some complete losses would have a new settlement restored upon their site. In a few instances, over the next two centuries, a few new cities were founded; but anywhere from a little under half to a majority would remain ruins and never be rebuilt, though some have almost dissapeared as stone of their ruins was recovered and salvaged to be used elsewhere.
Of the towns and villages, many were purely just utter losses. Over 14000 smaller settlements would be purely wiped from the map, often times so thoroughly that all that remained were scorch marks and foundations. New villages have sprang up since, and as the population recovers at the glacial rate of pre-industrial society new villages are founded to make use of resources and settle excess people.
By the time of Skyrim the total number of people within the province had climbed back up to 2.7 million, possibly in the neighborhood of 2.8 million before the occurrence of the Great War, a combination of nordic repopulation, numerous migrants to the emptied province, and a few hundred thousand Dunmeri refugees. Population is steadily expanding, and barring further catastrophe it should continue to very slowly climb until it reaches its limits.
Hope that helps get an understanding for all of it, outside of what little bits the summary gleamed.