(for previous parts in the series, see here)

Of all of the regions of Westeros we’ve planned for, the North is perhaps the most difficult case we’ve deal with, next to Dorne (which had a much better export profile). 

As the Lord of Winterfell, my main difficulties are that the North is severely underpopulated, and has extreme weather conditions that exacerbate the northerly climate’s limits on agricultural productivity. 

So how do we overcome these problems…ideally, before winter comes?

Putting the Land to Work

In pre-modern societies, population growth and agricultural productivity were mutually reinforcing – the more people you have, the more you can grow, the more you grow, the more people you can have. Unfortunately for the North, the reverse also applies – the North’s low population limits its agricultural production, which in turn limits its population growth.  

There are three main ways that the North can break this vicious cycle: first, it can increase the productivity of soil already in production; second, it can move into new industries which provide more of a return per capita than subsistence farming; third, it can bring more soil into production (if it can find the workforce to do it). 

The first will require something similar to the British Agricultural Revolution, as occurred between the 17th and 18th centuries and doubled the population, while greatly adding to life expectancy due to decreased malnutrition. This Revolution doesn’t really require much in the way of technology, which helps us stay more within the boundaries of contemporary Westeorsi knowledge. The main drivers of production in the Agricultural Revolution were:

•  a shift away from a two-field crop rotation system (in which one field is allowed to remain fallow to restore nutrients) to a four-field crop rotation system (in which you alternate between wheat, turnips (which can be grown in the winter and pull up nutrients from a lower soil level), clover (which provides fodder for livestock and pulls nitrogen from the air into the soil, acting as fertilizer), and barley (which is a hardier grain that can be used for fodder, beer, or in bread). Given that this is the North, you may need to substitute hardier grains like rye or oats for wheat. 
• improved animal husbandry. Between the turnips and clover, you can keep soil yields up while keeping your livestock alive longer, which means they give more animal byproducts (milk, cheese, wool, etc.), more meat, and more offspring. With selective breeding, you can select for hardier animals who can better survive the winter, better wool for your sheep, bigger animals for more meat, etc. And these aren’t small numbers we’re talking about – the agricultural revolution increased the average size of cattle by between 25% and 127%, which is a lot of meat.

All of this is possible with existing technology and doesn’t require modern scientific knowledge, it’s more a matter of improved organization and some capital investments in terms of seed and livestock. 

The second route to unlocking the land’s value is to trade in on the North’s pre-existing advantages in timber and sheep. With the former, we’re basically copying the plan for the Stormlands to get into lumber and then woodworking (climbing the value-added chain), but even more so – the North has much more timber by several factors than the Stormlands, and it’s got a lot more rivers to build sawmills on and ship their goods out to sea on (more on this in a bit). So even if the Stormlands tries to develop on those lines, the North can undercut their prices. With the latter, we’re copying the plan for textiles in the Reach, but with a heavy emphasis on wool cloth – turning the North of Westeros into something like the North of England in the Industrial Revolution, but with water power instead of steam. In addition, we’re also going to make a strategic investment in House Ryswell’s horse farming – for reasons that I’ll get into later. 

For the third route, we’re going to want to monetize the practically unlimited amount of unused land in the North by encouraging homesteading and immigration. Both will involve the distribution of a good bit of land – starting with the second plus sons of the North, who’ll be getting your 40 acres and a mule as their birthright (and forming part of the North’s own system of solidarity), and then moving on to second sons from the Vale and the Riverlands (families that follow the Old Gods for preference), and potentially (assuming pre-ACOK) even the Ironborn, if they’re willing to make some concessions and if you can spread them thinly enough so that they get assimilated into the Northern culture. And yes, a big part of this is going to be settling the Gift, preferably by incorporating the wildlings into the realm. House Stark can absorb the political blowback easier than Lord Snow, it ends a major security threat, and the Gift is practically made for grazing those massive reindeer herds the wildlings can live on and trade with. Also, we’re going to need the meat. 

As with other plans, financing is going to be a big deal, especially in later steps. Now, the North does have a good bit of silver that it could put into a Silver Bank at White Harbor, and once unused land starts getting cleared and plowed, the value’s going to go up, and you can then put the unsold land into the Silver Bank and turn it into a Silver/Land Bank, and you can throw House Stark’s tax revenue in their for good measure. However, given the lack of capital, the North will need to reach out to the Iron Bank and offer them a minority share in the Bank (and possibly a commission from immigration land sales) in return for outside investment and goodwill in order to get the money we need without trouble.

Building a New North

Hopefully, all of the above means a massive land and population boom, because the next step is going to need a labor force we can use to modernize the North. 

The first step is, as comes as no surprise to people who’ve been following this series, canals:

• The main canal is not, as some people have speculated, at Moat Cailin. Yes, that’s the cheapest and shortest route, but there’s some potential drawbacks – one, it potentially allows the Ironborn to hit Moat Cailin and White Harbor in rapid succession, and two, it makes the Manderlys very powerful without directly enhancing House Stark’s power, which is dangerous for long-term feudal politics. 
• Instead, the main canal is going to be Torrhen’s Square to White Knife. It’s a bit longer and more expensive to build, but it means that the canal passes through lands more directly under my control, which both benefits House Stark and allows for better security, and means that there’s a handy link from the canal to the Kingsroad. It also means that House Manderly’s prosperity will be increased (and I’ll need it to be increased, because I’ll want their (at this point) 100-odd ships available on the west coast), but only by grace of House Stark, which should keep them currying favor. 
• Less dramatically, we’re also going to want to build some smaller canals to benefit the timber/lumber/woodworking and wool/thread/cloth/weaving industries we want to start. Here, we want to extend the White Knife further into the Wolfswood so we can float logs, lumber, and woodcraft straight to market (and so that I can move my forces to Deepwood Motte or Bear Island faster if necessary), although we may want to link Long Lake to the Last River as well (especially as it would allow me to sail from Winterfell directly to the Dreadfort…). Likewise, connecting Torrhen’s Square to the Stony Shore river could potentially do the same for the wool industry that would do well in that region (although it could be centered almost anywhere in the North not under forest). 
• In addition to the usual commercial fleet, we’ll also want to invest in a fleet of sledges so that when the canals freeze over in winter, we can continue to use them for commerce. 

The second step is roads, which the North is practically without. Here, we do want to look to Moat Cailin, which will be the center of two broadly coastal roads. The first will go Moat Cailin to Barrowton to the Rills to the mouth of the Stony Shore River, which (along with the rivers and canals linking to Torrhen’s Square) should boost trade and speed up travel times to the North’s lone town, the center of its horse-breeding region, and its woolen industry region. The second will go Moat Cailin to White Harbor to Ramsgate to the mouth of the Last River, doing the same for the east coast.  

The third step is to issue city and town charters. Chief among these will be the new port city of Salt Harbor, which I will locate on the Saltspear at the mouth of the Torrhen’s Square River (on the western bank, where a boom chain will be stretched across the Saltspear to prevent a naval attack on Moat Cailin or Torrhen’s Square). In addition, and to keep the Dustins in the fold, we’ll build a western shipyards at a city-chartered Barrowton, so that the North will once again have a fleet on the west coast (again, aiming for 50-100 ships to ensure that the North can hold off the Iron Fleet). However, I’ll keep the navy’s HQ at Salt Harbor to make sure that Western fleet is under closer control, although we’ll probably have to give Salt Harbor to a cadet branch of the Manderlys to get their commercial and naval expertise. Due to canal traffic and the need for warehousing, customs, and servicing the carrying trade, we’ll probably also need a charter for Torrhen’s Square and the new Cerwyntown (located at the intersection of the Northern canal and the Kingsroad). Town charters will be needed for Moat Cailin, the new Rillstown horse-trading center, and our centers of timber and wool production in places yet unnamed on the Stony Shore, Wolfswood, Long Lake, and at the mouth of the Last Harbor. 

Finally, with all of this in hand, we can look to military readiness. First, and it’ll be easier with more traffic moving through it, we’ll need to rebuild Moat Cailin –  at least repairing the curtain wall and the three existing towers. The navy by this point should be in decent shape, although much will depend on our ability to move our strength from one coast to the next as needed. However, for the army, I think the key is cavalry – even a growing North doesn’t have the population to field mass infantry at the scale of the Reach, but with strategic investments in the Rills (both in horse breeding and a military college), the North should be able to field disproportionate numbers of cavalry. Both in the War of the Five Kings and in the Dance of the Dragons, the Northern heavy cavalry have tended to punch above their weight through aggression. If I can increase the North’s cavalry from ~25% of its army to more like 50%, the North’s ability to project military power and win battles through shock tactics and maneuverability (since superior numbers are out of the question) will be greatly enhanced. 

Surviving the Winter

However, all of this will be for naught if the next winter puts paid to our painfully-acquired growth. So the final and must crucial task will be to enhance the North’s ability to survive the winter without resorting to traditional customs of suicide.

So, as with the Reach, we’ll need a sub-treasury system, but one geared less to stabilizing prices and more to preserving surpluses. This will require a network of storehouses for crops, well-insulated barns for livestock, and greenhouses for fresh vegetables (it is a miracle the North doesn’t die of scurvy in a long winter), which I will decree be established in every city, town, and holdfast in the North, building on Northern traditions of Stark control over the harvest. At the same time, I will also build on the North’s traditions of guest right by establishing in law an absolute right to sustenance and shelter in times of winter (again, the North’s version of solidarity).

Finally, to improve on survivability during the winter, I will also order the construction of undertowns on the Mole’s Town model in all of the towns and cities of the North, so that as much as possible of the North’s population can safely wait out the winter. And while they’re waiting, I will also order the construction of winter schools to provide intensive education – the North’s going to need higher quality human capital too.