The Historical Geography of the Wizarding World

[Andrew Greaves]

No: HPFGUIDX 90037

Okay, this is my first post here, and it turned out to be something 
of an essay. That will likely be usual for me.

I tend to be rather logical, and prefer to avoid 'shipping in public, 
although my perspective can seem to be coming wildly out of left 
field on occasion.


The Historical Geography of the Wizarding World

This is an attempt to define the generalized location of the 
Wizarding World based on the following facts and inferences.

There are only five known Wizarding Schools, canonically located in 
Brazil, France, New England, Scandinavia, and Scotland respectively. 
Note that this does not account for correspondence courses and 
traditional apprenticeships. 

The Wizarding World itself would seem to be based upon the legends of 
the noble faerie common across Northwestern Europe. These included 
the Alfar and Svartalfar of Scandinavia, the Seelie and Unseelie 
Courts of England, the Gwragedd Annwn of Wales, the Fey of France, 
and the Sidhe and Sith (both pronounced 'she') of Ireland and 
Scotland respectively. In all cases, these Faerie were linked with 
the megalithic monuments and barrows that marked an earlier culture.

The WW can be seperated into three seperate nationalities, each 
associated with a particular European school and language. Beauxbaton 
with the Brythonic Celts, Durmstrang with the Old Norse, and Hogwarts 
with the Goedelic Celts. This becomes relevent later.

Canonically, the WW didn't fully embrace apartheid until 1692. A date 
which seems likely to be linked with the Salem Witch Trials in the 
same year. While they kept themselves seperate, they still associated 
with the corresponding muggle cultures and experienced the same 
territorial and technological advancements up until 1692.

The existence, or not, of other magical cultures elsewhere in the 
world has little or no relevance to the state of the WW and is mostly 
ignored for the sake of clarity. While their were definitely magic-
users in Egypt, their existence, and the existence of others 
elsewhere lies beyond the scope of this essay.

The origin of the WW, at least in Europe, lies with the megalithic 
monument builders of Neolithic Europe from 4300 to 2000 BC. Roughly 
the same period, and pre-dating, the Old Kingdom in Egypt. From 
Brittany this culture spread over an area from southern Sweden and 
the lower Oder valley to the Pillars of Hercules and the Horn of 
Africa and most points west, excluding the Iberian Plateau, the Low 
Countries, Eastern England, and the rest of the African Coast. Note 
that the Tuatha de Danaan, ancestors of the Sidhe and Sith, ruled 
Ireland from 2400 to 1000 BC. A bit late, but well within acceptable 
tolerances.

Encroaching muggle cultures eventually forced the WW to withdraw, 
becoming associated with their barrows and monuments. In this time, 
the WW became the Noble Faerie of legend. The greatest of them were 
even deified. The Celtic gods are the best known, but the Vanir might 
also qualify. Frey certainly does.

It was alongside the Celts, from 1200 BC, that the WW experienced its 
first major territorial expansion, and the point at which the Old 
Norse nationality differentiated itself. In this period, it expanded 
to cover the remainder of Great Britain, the Low Countries, central 
Iberia, northeastern Italy, isolated central Anatolia, and down the 
Danube Valley to the Black Sea, including Thrace and western 
Transylvania.

The Roman conquest forced the second differentiation in the WW, with 
the Romanized nation becoming the Brythonic Celts, and the non-
Romanized nation becoming the Goedelic Celts. Having been too closely 
associated with the (suppressed) Druids, the WW seems to have mostly 
withdrawn during this period. Other magical cultures, from the East, 
may have had greater dominance over the Empire during this period.

The second major territorial expansion came with the Vikings and 
their descendents. In this time, the WW expanded through Russia and 
across the North Atlantic, as well as southern Italy. Viking 
settlement in Western Europe likely also had its parallels. It 
wouldn't surprise me in the least to find out that the Malfoys were 
linked with the Normans.

Christianity posed the first major threat to the existence of the WW. 
Monotheistic religions tend to be quite unable to tolerate the 
existence of disenting viewpoints, not being able to simply 
assimilate them like polytheisms are able to. This became a problem 
at the close of the middle ages when the Church was able to begin 
fully suppressing divergent viewpoints more thoroughly. This was the 
time when the concept of completely seperating themselves from the 
muggles began to gather momentum.

A third, albeit truncated, period of expansion came with the European 
explorers and colonists of the Renaissance. Colonizing alongside the 
British, the Dutch, and the Portugese, mostly because the Spanish 
Inquisition had rousted them from Spain and France placed severe 
controls on potential colonists, the WW expanded into Brazil and what 
would eventually become the Thirteen Colonies. The former being 
associated with the Brythonic nationality and Beauxbatons, and the 
latter with the Goedelic nationality and Hogwarts.

These WW colonies were apparently large enough and distant enough to 
warrant the establishment of their own major Wizarding Schools.

The apartheid of the WW has had its own effects. Sociocultural and 
technological developments in the muggle world since 1692 haven't 
been matched, and the WW never experienced the population explosion 
that the muggles did.

Andrew Greaves
angreave at yahoo.com