User blog comment:Thedoucheinthenorth/The Civil War - Why it is great/@comment-1840877-20121101092852/@comment-3492791-20121101194316

Yes, there are only two "racists" in Windhelm. The dock of a major port city also only has room for 3 tiny sail boats.

Don't take what you see directly in-game as lore. Many things are scaled down to fit better into the game world. If Skyrim was set to actual lore size, I highly doubt one would be able to walk from one end to the other in two days, but it would also be painfully annoying to be forced to travel such vast distances to get anywhere. The would also be hell on generally everyone involved in having to make a world that large.