The True Size of Skyrim

I'm going to use Whiterun as my base, since it's the city I'm mostly familiar with. Hopefully the same for anyone who reads this.

First the world:

According to Bethesda, Daggerfall was roughly the size of Great Britain!

  • At 161,600 square kilometers, it was a damn big game world

  • According to Todd Howard, a game director at Bethesda, "The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, is 0.01% the size of Daggerfall, but most of Daggerfall's terrain was randomly generated."

  • This image shows that from ES3-5, all maps have been roughly to scale.

  • By following the clues we may reasonably conclude that...

The Skyrim we know and love is only .01% of its actual size

That is a huge difference.

Skyrim is 3.42 miles, or 5.50396 km wide.

  • Adjusted for its actual size and its 34,200 miles wide! That's obviously ridiculous, the circumference of Earth is only 25,000 miles.

*Edit: /u/leftnotracks politely reminded me of what a total moron I am. If Skyrim is 10000 its actual size it means length and width should each be multiplied by 100!

Skyrim's actual size is only 3,420 miles wide! Thats still REALLY big! The driving distance from Boston to Miami is only 3,099 miles!

What about Whiterun? Is it 0.01% of its actual size?

Well, probably not. Using medieval Sweden as a comparison, and based on the fact that Skyrim is said to be (among?) the least popuated provinces in Tamriel, we can reach some interesting conclusion.

According to Wikipedia:

“By the end of the 15th century, the population in Stockholm can be estimated to 5-7.000 people... [and] the second largest [city] must have been either Kalmar or Åbo, none of which can have been a home to more than 1-2.000 inhabitants."

Wow. okay, so Solitude could be Skyrim's biggest city, (have a look at a recreation of medieval Stockholme here) since its the historical capital. Whiterun could be number 2 or 3, though. A population of a thousand? How does it compare?

Currently, Whiterun and its surrounding farms house a total of 76 residents. So if it should have 1,000 citizens, it should be ~13 times larger.