Posted: September 18, 1998 at 08:43:50: by Martin Read
: : As for population size, this would be even more speculative. However, if the thirty-man troop of Halbarad represents a normal Ranger unit size some extrapolation becomes possible. The minimum working number would be two such troops - one on active service the other in reserve/resting. This would still be precarious, given the likelyhood of casualties so I would expect the Rangers to consist of minimally three such troops - say around a hundred men all told. To support this number of non-productive people (ie not producing food or other necessities) I would guess that the adult male Dunedain population would have to have been at least ten times greater. Add on the women and children and old men then you come to a minimum total Dunedain population of around 3,000.
: : In times of acute danger the Dunedain from these figures would be able to field a force of at most 500-600 men - this number tallies fairly well to the numbers given by Tolkien to the reinforcements sent to Minas Tirith by the fiefs of Gondor. I would suggest that the Dunedain population was probably similar to that of a lesser Gondor fief such as Morthond Vale or Pinnath Gelin. : >> I believe in 60- 150 rangers in all, as mentioned, only a few could be brought up in a hurry, and there were other duties to attend as well as the Ring War. However, I also belive that you should at least double the number of soldiers available to the fiefs of Gondor. no matter if they knew that the main battle would be fougth at Minas Tirith, they would leave at least the equivalent of the "expeditionary force" to defend their own homes against Corsairs- remember that their wifes and children were there. In today's military practice it is VERY common to divide your force by thirds, and Tolkien gives the Gondorian army the same practice (U.T.), thus I would suspect that we have to triple the numbers of men sent to the Pellenor to gain the total force of Gondor's fiefs' armies, or possibly more: The numbers are obviously very conjectural. By comparing numbers I really only meant thet they were in the same order of magnitude. Third Age armies (excluding Sauron's) seem to have been remarkably small by modern standards (or ancient - Alexander the Great led 40,000 troops into Asia). However,they are fairly close to many mediaeval armies in size, at Agincourt Henry V had only some 6,000 troops, and the Danish/viking "Micel here" - great army - in 9th century England probably numbered less than 2,000. There is another reason for the minimum Dunedain population being at least in the thousands - a biological one. This would be the minimum necessary to stop inbreeding becoming biologically disasterous. The nadir of Dunedain numbers probably came in the generations immediately after the final war with Angmar. This would have been many (even for Numenoreans) generations before the War of the Ring. For the Dunedain to survive as a people their numbers must never have fallen below a couple of thousand in all this time. Otherwise inbreeding would have resulted in many health problems, on the contrary the Dunedain are described in LOTR as a physically strong and healthy people "A thrawn folk" as Tolkien might have said. One only has to look at the Amish community and the high levels of genetic disorder, such as six-fingered dwarfism (the"F"is correct here!), to see the detrimental effects of inbreeding.
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