I am confused about <тропинок> here. No subject? “Of paths through the undergrowth, there were none”?

I am confused about <тропинок> here. No subject? “Of paths through the undergrowth, there were none”?

I think you understood the russian sentence well. What kind of subject would you like to see here?

I believe that the genitive case is used here because of the negation. Is that what causes the confusion?

Тропинок в подлеске было много. There were many paths in the undergrowth (genitive because of много – много тропинок)

Тропинки были в подлеске. There were paths in the undergrowth. // Paths were in the undergrowth.

Тропинок в подлеске не было. There were no paths in the undergrowth.

That is exactly what tripped me up. I didn’t think about how “none” is also a quantity. Thank you!

Thank you. It was the use of genitive instead of nominative, but now I understand. I’m surprised at how often genitive is used - it’s very important to Russian grammar.

Yes, as explained by khardy quantities are often expressed with the genitive and that includes the “zero” quantity. Another way to think about this construction is that “не было” acts as the past of “нет”. You probably already know that when there’s something, you say:
Есть еда (nominative, “subject”): there’s food
but when there isn’t, you say:
Нет еды (genitive, “no subject”): there’s no food

The same thing happens in the past, replacing нет with не было, as in your example.
Following the same logic, you can find rather “strange” (for English speakers) sentences such as:
Тебя не было: you weren’t there

That is very clear; thank you. Спасибо большое!

We have a lot of impersonal sentences in Russian, for example:
У меня нет этой книги.
Ей плохо.
Зачем спорить?
Нам надо поговорить.
Всем стало веселою.
Дождя вчера не было etc.
You can read my lesson about the impersonal sentences in my course ПРАКТИЧЕСКАЯ ГРАММАТИКА in the Russian library hear - БЕЗЛИЧНЫЕ ПРЕДЛОЖЕНИЯ: