Not too long ago we had a good discussion about wizarding borders. But that discussion was purely theoretical, talking in terms of how, in general, the wizarding world will have interacted with the Muggle world and how their borders would relate.

Now let's get specific. Design yourself a wizarding nation, on the assumption that wizarding borders and Muggle borders have at some point diverged.

I'll start with a softball - wizarding Britain in VP.

Name: Wizarding Britain (formally: Britannia Arturi)

Borders: The island of Great Britain and surrounding smaller islands. Does not include any part of Ireland.

Wizarding Population: 20,000

Non-Wizarding Magical Population: 17,000

Date of founding: 409 AD

History:

Arthur Pendragon (Draco Artorius Pennus) was a Latin-speaking Muggle Briton born in 388 in Tintagel into a family of wealth and prestige.

Myrddin Wyllt (“Merlin”) was a wizard born in 375 in Carmarthen (what is now south Wales). He was a talented enchanter but poor, and eventually made his way south to seek his fortune.

Arthur and Merlin met in Bath and there became close friends.

In 407, the Roman army in Britain chose Constantine III to lead them. He promptly declared himself Western Roman Emperor, crossed to Gaul and was there defeated by Honorius.

In their absence, in 408, a Saxon incursion was made into Britannia. Arthur, with the assistance of Merlin, gathered an army and repelled the invaders. With an army behind him and a victory to his name, in 409 AD he stepped into the power vacuum created by the departure of the Roman army and set himself up as the successor to the Roman administration. Though his control of Britannia was limited to the southern regions, he claimed jurisdiction over all Britannia. He created a Wizard's Council, led by Merlin, to rule the magical part of his realm.

Over time, as he consolidated power with the magical assistance of Merlin, his control spread northwards, although it did not yet extend into Scotland. Saxons continued to invade and Arthur continued to repel them.

When Arthur died in 443 AD, his son succeeded him, and his son after that, both of them assisted by Merlin. Arthur's grandson Ambrosius Aurelianus fought and won a great victory over the Saxons in 490, but that was the last victory. Merlin died shortly thereafter.

The Saxons continued to invade Britain, establishing settlements and parallel states within the borders of Arthurian Britannia. The Wizard's Council, in an attempt to counteract the Saxon threat, invited Scottish wizards onto their council, so as to form a unified force against the Saxon invaders.

But this tactic only bought them a few more years. Before long, the native wizards of Britannia saw the writing on the wall and, rather than fight, invited Saxon wizards to join the Wizard's Council, which in their native language the Saxons called the Wizenagamot. The Saxons slowly came to dominate this body and soon enough Latin was replaced with Anglo-Saxon and its system of written runes.

The Muggle world did not experience so smooth a transition, and Arthur’s kingdom was splintered between Saxon warlords into the Saxon Kingdoms of history.

The result was that the Muggle and wizarding worlds diverged once more, after briefly enjoying a period of unified rule under the Arthurian dynasty. Wizarding Britain enjoys a continuous administration with Arthurian Britain, with jurisdiction over the island of Great Britain since the Saxon era. Meanwhile, the Muggle world was substantially more divided, proceeding as we know from history.

 

I see it completely differently. Wizards seem to be a tiny percentage of the total population; take that back a millennium or two and suddenly you’re looking at a wizarding population of hundreds, if that. Being so few, and probably with a rudimentary knowledge of magic and magic tools it’s likely that there wouldn’t have been even a conception of a ‘wizarding world’ or a separate wizarding identity, much less a set of independent institutions. Some wizards might have known about each other, some might have even met and taken apprentices, but demographics seem to make anything more significant than that impossible. (Particularly if we stipulate instant transportation is a modern invention, as I shall do for no particular reason.)

That’s why, in my mind at least, the funding of Hogwarts is such a pivotal moment in wizarding Britain. No only does it establish a system of universal education and a place where knowledge can be stored and diffused (a requisite for technological, or in this case, magical advancement), it also puts enough wizards in one place to begin this conception of wizards as a separate group of people, instead of Anglo-Saxons with magic.

Problems? The pureblood/muggleborn divide. It makes no sense for it to exist with such a tiny wizarding population. Muggleborn prejudice might have emerged in the later centuries, once wizarding society was established and ‘newcomers’ were viewed with the traditional prejudice, but apparently Slytherin was a blood supremacist so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

 

I don't think this really works very well. This would only function if Muggleborns represented the vast majority of wizarding society. But the opposite is the case: the vast majority of wizards are born within wizarding society, and Muggleborns represent a small minority.

There is therefore no real link between the Muggle population and wizarding population. The ratio of wizards to Muggles is not some fixed fact of the universe. And certainly the explosion in Muggle population which has occurred since the industrial revolution does not mean that you can extrapolate that population growth rate back in time before said population explosion and apply it to wizarding society.

I think it reasonably likely that the wizarding population has more or less been the same throughout history, with the result that as the Muggle population increases, the ratio of wizards:Muggles goes down.

 

Name: R'lyeh (The Ancient City-State of R'lyeh)

Borders: Secret location in the Pacific Ocean, midway between New Zealand and Chile.

Wizarding Population: 5,000

Non-Wizarding Magical Population: 7,000

Date of founding: 735 AD

History:

Since the dawn of wizardkind, cultist worshippers of the Great Cthulhu were searching for him.

In 735 Abdullah al-Ḥaẓrad, a wizard from Sanaá, Yemen was the first one to discover R'lyeh.

Already somewhat infamous for being the author of the Necronomicon, a book banned in most magical communities, Abdullah was only able to convince a small number of wizards and witches to travel with him to R'lyeh.

Once the city was found and confirmed to exist, numbers of Abdullah's followers (or rather cultists of Cthulhu) grew significantly.

Many families from various wizarding nations migrated to R'lyeh.

Of course, it was already inhabited.

The Deep Ones, known to be the ancestors of various merfolk species, were surprisingly welcoming, on certain conditions.

1. Only those who truly worship Cthulhu and await his awakening may live in R'lyeh.

2. Wizards and witches must regularly sacrifice some of their children to be raised as breeding stock for the Deep Ones (who have the magical ability of dominant genes, basically an union of a human and a deep one will produce a deep one).

Once that was accepted, the nation was founded.

 

Name: Tir na nOg. (Wizarding Ireland generally accepted in modern times.)

Population: No way to extrapolate this aside from the sea of green tents in GoF QWC. Let's say that the numbers of Irish at the WC were exaggerated and account for non Irish Wizards supporting the team in the final. Around 1000-1500 attending the WC let's say with an overall population of 8/9k.

History:

Ireland was populated during the Stone Age but with the bronze age came the first people with civilised magical knowledge. A tribe of people from central Europe that travelled across the Alps and ended up settling in Ireland, bringing with them a group of magic users know to the tribe as the Danann. This tribe would come to be known as the Tuatha de Danann and represent the first "invasion" of Ireland.

The Danann and their leader, the great wizard Dagda would mix with the native magic users of Ireland, people whose magic was wilder and more chaotic, coming to respect the native peoples upon seeing what is known today as Newgrange.

After many centuries came the arrival of the wizard Míl and his people who travelled the Mediterranean from Eqypt* and spent some time in SPain before departing on ships to the north and eventually landing in Ireland. A brief war between the tribes of Natives/Tuatha and Milesians before eventually settling as the cultures mixed. The Wizards of Míl brought with them knowledge and the first wands seen in Ireland.

Eventually as the muggle clans became larger and the first Kings of Tara raised, the magical community of Ireland suffered a terrible civil war against the first Morrighan. Eventually, The Morrighan was defeated but such was the loss of life among the muggles the King of Tara refused to work with the magical community, branding them demons and as the first Catholic missionaries started to appear on the island, the wizards held council on an island off the north coast called Tír na nóg.

From there the most powerful wizard of the age, Lugh, performed one of the most complex pieces of Charmswork in history. His friend, Mannaman raised a massive stone causeway from Tír na nóg to the mainland and any wizard who crossed the causeway from Tír na nóg would find themselves in an Ireland with no muggles occupying the same space as the regular island, a parallel dimension where the Irish magical community would live in peace and be of no threat to the muggle population.

In the modern age, the Irish have their own magical academy located roughly where Newgrange is in the centre of the island with the magical government operating out of Tiír na ng in the north. Due to the small, spread out nature of the Irish magical population
, the school is much smaller than the grand institutes of Hogwarts, Durmstrang or even Beauxbatons.

The magical community of Ireland has little to no contact with the muggle community and mixing with muggles while not illegal, is a beurocratic nightmare so most wizards don't bother. An attempt to establish expanded relations in the middle ages ended in failure as the heavily catholic population of muggle Ireland kept attempting to burn the magical representatives. The wizarding governments of Britain and Tír na nóg have maintained a very cordial relationship through the centuries.

The government of Tír na nóg have one solitary representative to the Irish muggle government in the modern age. A wizard named Ruadhrí who rarely attends his post and if most often found asleep.

 

Name: The Central Kingdom

Borders: Great Wall to the North, Vietnam, Laos, and Burma to the South, Tibet to the West, the Yellow Sea to the East. Taiwan not included.

Wizarding Population: 400,000

Non-Wizarding Magical Population: 340,000

Date of founding: 1912 BC

History: During the Xia dynasty, magic was only understood by a handful of scholars and court ministers, and the breaking and reformation of China in the centuries that followed kept a magical state from developing except in the form of maintaining relations among wizards in cities and towns between the Yellow River and the Yangtze. In this sense, it is thought by contemporary historians that the magical decided to create their own subculture as an escape from the relatively frequent upheavals and divisions of the surrounding nonmagical states. Unfortunately for the concept, the wizards' loyalties continued to revolve around those closest to them, but the information network remained out of mutual interest.
Unbeknownst to the nonmagical, the five great emperors actually existed, but only because the five of them were the magical emperors, authors of the first attempt to unify magical China. At the time an actual state was nothing more than a shared dream, and because of its unreality it was all the more appealing; it came with none of the challenge of either negotiating and balancing interests or subjugating them entirely. For thousands of years, it could not be said that magical China was built, but the idea that it existed grew in both popular belief and insistence of belief. During the Ming dynasty, the network of secret police emanating from Beijing bringing with them the idea that the state existed and at least according to the scholars at Nanjing, who were at the time developing the wards for the national borders, this effort more than theirs defined the beginning of magical China. International historians agree on the foundation date above because the establishment of a remote communication network, mostly by means of charmed crickets, constituted the foundation of a magical system in other parts of the world.
European Imperialism brought with it the concept of a unified magical school, but the Chinese wizards were otherwise unconcerned with their presence and had almost entirely no response to the fall of the Qing dynasty, because at this point the magical government had entirely decoupled from the mundane. The Imperial Ministers did not view the dynasty as being worthy of sovereignty and until the cultural revolution viewed the rise of foreign ideology as another non-issue. Unfortunately for them, many of the non-elite who did not qualify for the state school, such as the urban poor and those raised in nonmagical families supported the cultural revolution and a new set of Imperial Ministers more in line with Mao's system. There was talk at the time of going against the Statute and informing the new muggle government of the existence of magic, but the existing Imperial Ministers agreed to give up everything else to maintain Secrecy, with the last holdouts of the old ways fleeing to Taiwan with whatever ancient texts they could bring with them. The cultural revolution destroyed three of the smaller schools, and during the succeeding system the remaining schools unified.

 

Going to make this up as I go and see if it doesnt end up disastrous.

Name: The Allthing

Borders: From Namsos (Central Norway) to Kramfors (Central Sweden), and the Baltic and North Seas.

Wizarding Population: 5000

Non-Wizarding Magical Population: 4000

Date of Founding: Around 300 A.D

History:
Prior to the founding of the Allthing, the Norse simply had simple Healers and Seers, venerating their ancestors.
Odin founded the Allthing after discovering how to bind magic to Norse Runes around 300 A.D.
The other founders of the Allthing were together with Odin called the Aesir. The Allthing was founded by neccessity, to combat a rising Troll population in Norway.
The Aesir pushed the Trolls to Jotunheim, where they erected a great Runic Ward around the plateu. The ward was primarily designed by the Aesir Loki. Loki was a Parselmouth, and had a Basilisk protect Jotunheim as well. Loki remained with some of his followers to maintain the ward to contain the trolls. This group is still around today, known as the Order of Loki.

The Allthing at this point encompassed all wizards in the norse tribes, unifying them with a shared occult culture.
The norse and sami people came at adds somewhere around 450 A.D. Around the same time, the wards around Jotunheim failed and a second troll invasion started, which was blamed on the Sami. War was fought between the Norse and the Sami who allied with the trolls, and resulted in a stalemate. A border was drawn, allowing norse and sami muggles to cross it as they wished, but forbidding most wizards from either side to interact with eachother.

As the Aesir died in the war and of old age, over time tales of their feats resulted in the Norse faith. Their descendants retained the Allthing, but kept to themselves mostly.
Wizards knew of the truth, but it was convenient to parade themselves as Shamans and Seers, so they perpetuated the belief.
To keep the status quo, the Allthing limited muggle interaction purely to said Shamans and Seers, strengthening their control of Muggle society.

As the Viking age came and went, the writing was on the wall. Christian ideology was on the rise, and they werent fans of Seers and Shamans representing heretic gods. The Allthing, through a complicated set of runic rituals, lifted a piece of land from the earth far into the sky, hiding it from all who might harm them.
Those who participated in the creation of Asgard were called the Vanir.
The island in the sky was called Asgard, and a giant tower erected in the center of it was called Valhall, which became the governing body of Asgard, with the population living in a city that surrounds the tower, which shares name with the Island itself.
To access Valhall, you need to be granted entry by the Magical Travel department (called Heimdall), or be a natural citizen of the Allthing, and then cast the "Bifrost" spell, which will create a Rainbow which will function similarly to a portkey and transport you to Asgard. The Bifrost spell only works within the borders of the Allthing. There are also several permanent Bifrosts within the borders of the Allthing for Squibs and others who cant directly cast magic.


The wizards of the Allthing still kept tabs on their lands in Mainland Scandinavia, but nearly all of them still live in Asgard. At some point, a Wizarding school was established in Asgard.

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I thought I had a cool idea but the execution fell flat. I did zero research other than what I already knew of Norse mythology, though I think with more time and better preparation this could pan out to be a really cool thing.
Maybe ill flesh out how the Allthing actually WORKS in another post, also who has influence and who doesnt.
I was thinking of something like being descended from the Aesir/Vanir would be the focus of elitism in this society, as opposed to Pureblood/Muggleborn divide, with the most powerful houses being directly descended from both Aesir and Vanir lines.

 

That's cool but we have to keep it somewhat in line with the standards of canon. For example, we know Durmstrang is somewhere in Scandinavia so that implies a more... Earthly wizarding nation.

 

I'd have thought "Allthing" would be more appropriate as the name of their version of the Wizengamot, since the Althing is the Icelandic parliament and historically Thing was the word for a governing assembly in norse tribes.

The basic concept of a pan-Scandinavian wizarding nation is cool though - it makes perfect sense that they may have united at some point in the past and not have followed the same course of history as the muggle nations. And it would be quite reasonable (and pretty cool) if they had an origin story/myth that they were descended from the Norse Gods. Probably laughed at as provincial nonsense by other nations, but also potentially true if the Gods were just very skilled wizards.

 

I quite like your idea of using norse mythology as the basis of nordic wizarding culture. I can also get behind a unified nordic wizarding culture, considering even among the real life Scandinavian countries, the cultures are very similar, we have similar beliefs, we essentially follow the same religions and these days have the same 'meh' attitude towards religion, our political beliefs are also pretty similar, the languages are mutually intelligible with some practice etc. All in all our cultures are pretty similar, even today.

My suggestion to improve the idea and make it in line with the HP world would be to have Asgard be either an island, potentially in the kattegat, or a valley somewhere in the norwegian or swedish mountains. I would go with an island concealed by runic magic in kattegat, and I would also slightly rework the bifrost, maybe have the bifrost linked to set items and locations, and only work in Scandinavia, for example you could have a medal or ring the people of asgard can acquire from heimdall that works as a kind of permanent port key rather than have it be a bifrost spell. You could also integrate durmstrang into this, by making the bifrost the only connection to Durmstrang, the nordic wizarding school, and have durmstrang connected to the aesir/vanir issue rather than purebloods vs muggleborns.

 

You could take the idea of the bifrost and have it be an actual bridge. Perhaps the main wizarding only settlement is on an island off the coast, and their version of tapping the bricks out the back of the leaky cauldron is tapping some runes on a standing stone causing a rainbow crystal bridge to form over the water?

 

Some Allthing "patch notes".

The Allthing: Now the name of the governing body for the nation of "Midgard".

Asgard: To bring Asgard more in line with the rest of the Wizarding World, it is now an island in the middle of the lake Vänern in Sweden.
The Bifrost is a bridge activated by tapping the runes that spell out "Bifrost" on a runestone that is only visible to those granted a black feather by the Heimdall. All citizens are given these black feathers, which are the feathers of ravens.
The Heimdall can at any point shut down the Bifrost, completely isolating Asgard in times of crisis.

Schooling: Due to most wizards in Scandinavia living in Asgard, an official "school" was never established. Some elders and scholars take it upon themselves to tutor their young, but the quality of teaching varies by generation.
This changed when Nerida Vulchanovas plans to found a school of Wizardry were revealed to the Allthing. Negotiations resulted in the school being built in a confidential location in Scandinavia, hidden by the most advanced Runic Magic available to them, making the school unplottable. Durmstrang was swiftly constructed after the agreement was made, and in return, all direct magical descendants of the Aesir and Vanir are guaranteed entry to the school if they apply.
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I completely agree with you Seratin, things got out of hand and the concept diverged too far from the "feel" of the wizarding world.
Good feedback all around, I do think the concept of a unique apparition spell is a bit too fancy. I like to think that the Norse would be a bit backward with a few glimpses of brilliant magic. Their speciality would be Warding, as seen with their containment of the Trolls and them hiding Durmstrang and Asgard near perfectly, even from other wizards.

 

I still think the houses should have been Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Angerskunk.

 

See how this goes for NZ, Tried to keep it matching true history and Maori myths.

Name: Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Borders: Main Islands of New Zealand.

Wizarding Population: >250

Non-Wizarding Magical Population: >100

Date of founding: 1198AD

History: On every ocean bound Waka sailed into the unknown in search of new lands, a Ruānuku, a magic man, went. Although non but themselves and their closest kin knew it. With magic's centered around the ocean, winds and fertility, these Ruānuku passed on their knowledge father to son and mother to daughter, the few times they had come forward with their talents to the tribes it had almost universally ended in their deaths from a fearful tribe. With populations rarely reaching a few thousand per tribe, the magical population struggled to maintain stability, with even a few Squibs wiping out generations of accumulated knowledge. It wasn't until the discovery of a large, uninhabited land, bountiful enough to support a large and stable population did the true establishment of a magical society start.

In the late 1100's a legendary Ruānuku called Maui lead three Ocean bound Wakas on one of the longest journeys yet. Sailing south Maui called up winds to aid them, quieted sea that would over turn them, and when food ran low, called upon a mighty whale to sustain them. Maui's father had deposed the previous tribal leader, having been taught the ways by his father before him, a self taught Ruānuku. When Maui came of age his talents with the ways far exceeded his father, worried about being deposed himself, he sent Maui on a journey of discovery, a great honor, and a great danger.

Under Maui's leadership, the new settlement was bountiful beyond anything they had previously experienced. Their first experience in Agriculture, planting sweet potato and medicinal plants boosted their food stores and medical knowledge, hunted game was bountiful and the weather agreeable. Maui was last seen heading to the great white mountains in the south to win immortality for his tribe from the Gods.

As the non magical settlement grew under the secret care of their Ruānuku, the Ruānukus knowledge grew as well, finally of a size that guaranteed a lasting population of Ruānuku their knowledge of the ways grew ever deeper.

After almost 500 years the greatest of the Ruānuku had formulated their own version of the Animagus transformation, a long process in which the Ruānuku entered the wilds to live as their choosen wild kin. After seasons of living as them, when the moon was knew and they slept a deep sleep, they would awaken with a new skin and be one with their wild kin, some choosing never to return to their tribes.

The arrival of Europeans shattered them, disease and warfare shook their culture, many of the Ruānuku died in the first years, their skills as healers dooming them from the virulent and new diseases. While immune to most themselves with the first settles came missionaries, wizards under the command of the Church. Sickness befell them like non they had known, they died at the hands of those who clamed to save them.

Although by treaty and tradition, the Ruānuku and their culture never ended. Much of their knowledge and ways were lost in those first brutal years. The Ruānuku today, with a help from scholars and visits to their ancestral lands, are recovering some of what they have lost.

With a permanent seat at the Table of Heemskerck, the new generations of Ruānuku live in peace with European wizardry and their aborigal neighbours of the great southern ocean once more protecting their peoples and guiding them forward.

 

I don't know if this necessarily fits the thread exactly, but it's part of a wider plot bunny I've been throwing around.

Name: Sanctum

Borders: Island approx. 600,000 square miles within the Pacific Ocean.

Wizarding Population: 20,000

Non-Wizarding Magical Population: 30,000

Date of founding: 2065 (landmass created in 2042)

History:

Following the first magi-muggle war, much of the world was rendered uninhabitable or extremely dangerous to both Muggles and wizards. The island of Sanctum was raised by a group of wizards that realised only time could heal the wounds done to earth, and time could only be created if magical and muggle populations separated permanently.

With this in mind, the first Council of Twelve, strung a web of magic, powerful beyond comprehension and mysterious even to those who participated in it's creation. The vast island that rose out of the Pacific Ocean was little more than dirt and rock at it's inception, and it would take a decade for it to become habitable. The council worked tirelessly to turn the barren land into a green and bountiful country, shrouding their work in an impenetrable mist.

Finally, when the land, christened Sanctum, was ready it was revealed. A great unveiling was too risky, and the mist that surrounded the island remained to protect it from the few Muggle kingdoms that might still pose a threat, but word was spread nonetheless, and before long thousands of wizards, goblins, centaurs and a myriad of other magical races poured into this new sanctuary.

In particular, the displaced peoples of the burning South America and sunken Australia came in droves, caught as they were between Muggles and hostile magical populations that had no desire to accept anyone from the cursed continents. After the Second Moon was banished, Werewolves experiencing their human form for the first time in decades also found their way there, facing similar prosecution. No such prejudice was tolerated by the council, who settled matters with a firm and unquestioned hand.

Even two decades later, the population of Sanctum slowly grows as the last few anti-muggle terrorist groups are brought into the fold. The council still dreams of a day where the entire magical population is contained within the island- they even created a series of underwater cities to try and lure Mermaid populations to the island, though the move was understandably protested by those who had fled from Australia and, later, China.

 

If it's alright I'll take a stab at an alternative version of what could be in Northern Europe, but without using Norse mythology.


Name: Unknown to the outide world, but rumoured to cognate with the muggle area word Sápmi.

Borders: Contained within Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

Wizarding Population: Unknown, but unlikely to be more than a few thousand.

Non-Wizarding Magical Population: ca 1 million, stubborn and somewhat expansive in nature

Date of founding: ca 1600 BC

History:

Little is known today of the magical people who were the first to reach and populate Northern Europe, although they have certainly left their mark on the history of both that area and the rest of the world. They likely travelled together with their muggle counterparts from the Volga Region only to settle in an even more unforgiving climate. Legend has it that these wizards, witches and muggles alike were led to their destination not by a human but by the magical creatures that have come to be so closely associated with them.

Reindeer are, to the average muggle, just a funny-looking deer with a great PR department, however there is more truth to their fabled mythology than most of them will ever know. Reindeer is agreed by most magizoologists today to be the original source for flight in magical creatures, and every flying magical beast can indeed trace its lineage to the herds that today lead a free and borderless existance in the tundra up north, visited by adoring scores of muggle and magical tourists every year and lovingly cared for by the descendants of the people they, for purposes that remain obscure to magical historians, led to this remote area.

The oldest results of reindeer mating with muggle animals are thought to be dragons, and it is widely agreed that a grave miscalculation was involved. It seems unlikely that anyone would think to introduce a European green lizard to a reindeer in the hope of offspring, but as we do have the resulting lineage of the Common Welsh Green we know this must have happened. The infamous threeway between a White-tailed eagle, a Shetland pony and a reindeer is still the punchline to many a wizarding joke, although everyone who's tried to recount this joke to a hippogriff has been mauled to death and the Ministry strongly recommends not trying this ice-breaker should you ever find yourself attempting small-talk with a hippogriff. The secretive wizards and witches of the area are rumoured to still be crossbreeding reindeer with other animals, although the last successful mating seems to have been with an animal already descended from a reindeer, i.e. an Opaleye (see Thestral for further information and theories).

Other than reindeer expertise, the wizards and witches of this northern outpost appear to live in peace as well as in secret amongt the muggles of the area, although they have been the cause for several long-lived myths that have even penetrated muggle culture (see noaidi). The nature of their magic produces light phenomena that can be clearly seen across the Northern Hemisphere in winter, but fortunately the muggles have taken it upon themselves to give this a scientific explanation and the International Confederation of Wizards have concluded that no mass-obliviation is necessary at this date.

The most astonishing of the magical myths surrounding this people is the legend of Santa Claus, a wizard who goes by many names in muggle cultures but who many now believe originates from this area. Rumour has it that this wizard is the actual inventor of a dark ritual that results in immortality, although this is disputed (see Herpo the Foul). This once dark wizard of Northern Europe spends his immortal days in penitence for his past misdeeds and has seemingly taken to bringing joy to muggle and wizarding children alike on the anniversary of his day of darkness. It is surmised that he might be the leader of the wizards and witches up north, but since they refuse to respond to owls and do not partake in any international magical business, our magical historians admit that this is all guesswork. The only direct response we have from these people is the result of a communal howler that was sent on a december night to protest the vast number of dragon breeds, generally felt to be an unnecessary amount by the international community. Records from several countries show that not an hour later, a great airborne vehicle complete with flying reindeer appeared in the night sky and a resounding laughter, usually recorded as "ho ho ho!" was heard breaking the nightly silence.

No further communication has been attempted, and as the creation of dangerous beasts has seemingly subsided, few wizards and witches today see reason to try and impose international rules over the land up north. They remain a largely unknown entity but spokeswizards from Durmstrang have confirmed that they do send school invitations by rock ptarmigan to this area every year, although they decline to comment if any of the children have ever accepted.