Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
1,900,000
people
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
Hardly anyone lives up there, and most who do are in Russia. How many? It has real cities past the line, like Murmansk, so call it a million. Northern Norway, Sweden and Finland add maybe half a million, and Greenland, Canada and Alaska only a sliver.
- Russia's Arctic
- ≈ 1,000,000
- Northern Scandinavia
- + 500,000
- Greenland, Canada, Alaska
- + 50,000
- 1,000,000 + 500,000 + 50,000
- ≈ 1,550,000
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- People in towns of 500+ north of the Arctic Circle, 2017 (Nordregio)
- ≈ 1,640,000
- Villages under 500 and the countryside (our estimate)
- + 250,000
- 1,640,000 + 250,000
- ≈ 1,900,000
Reference cited by Fermi: Nordregio (2018), Arctic settlements of 500+ people in 2017, summed for every town north of the Arctic Circle (66°34'N)
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