Hey there, I'm writing a story based in 12th century Denmark during the civil war between Svend Grathe, Knud and Valdemar (the Great). But I can't find any information about how big their armies were...
Does anyone around here have any ideaas to how big they were?
The size of armies throughout the brunt of history have been very small compared to today.
If you had an army that reached 15,000 to 20000 it was considered pretty impressive often smaller though
It wasn't until nepoleanic and then later WWI that entire nation states became activated and served in war. As a matter of fact one of the things that made Napoleon so scary to the rest of Europe is that he did amass and arm his people, it was simply unheard if and genius at that. He was once told how large an opposing army was and he responded that he had that many soldiers killed every day.
Back to the point though
Medieval armies were composed of some noblemen and some men that wanted to gain or expand land. There were also mercenaries that the nobleman hired to fight with him.
In a lot of way an army was a rich mans venture and the ability to form a army to fight for god or country became something of a status symbol to show just how wealthy you were all the while, if successful, gain better standing with the King and increase your riches and stature.
Short answer, not really that big
Just a quick comparison in size for you
Today large sporting events routinely pack in around 70000 people or more. Wrestlemania 3 broke and attendance record in North American in the 80s and that was 93000, it was broken a few years ago at something around 100000 and the biggest ever was in North Korea and I think it was 150000 people.
Basically you have about three, four to five times the amount of people at the yearly Super Bowl than you marched into battle during that time.
As a guide, the battle of Hastings in 1066 saw each commander field around 10,000 - 12,000 soldiers, and later battles in Europe would show this to be a decent ball park figure.