Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2020 2:33:16 GMT -7
So I was curious about like... wizarding school spread over the various countries and with what we know, where our characters likely would go.
We know about 3 schools in Europe, where I'll be looking since I know very little about the USA,
. Also, international politics do play a small part here.
So here goes. I looked up the current number of residents in the UK, Ilse of Man and Ireland, since those are likely to go to Hogwarts. There has never been mention of students at Hogwarts that don't have English as their main language or are from outside the English speaking lands so I PRESUME those went to others schools.
So I went with about 10 students per house per year. (Harry had 5 boys we know in his years and I just evened out numbers from there even if we are not sure they exist)
This led to a total of 1120 students spread over 7 years.
I googled to find high school students in the UK (which is like Hogwarts age) and calculated that as a percentage of total students and went to calculate total wizards from there. (It's like, 0.0118% of total population)
From there I'm looking at the other wizarding school, what we know of them and what I personally think that means for the schools in Europe.
What we know: Beauxbatons is in France. No evidence suggest that non-French-speakers go to Beauxbatons. This suggests that Beauxbatons caters to France and possibly a part of Belgium (since that country has two main languages, which becomes important later on)
Now presuming that the amount of wizards is about the same all over the world, Beauxbatons would have approximately 1092 students, presuming this included half the Belgium students (Less than a hundred in total)
Seems about right for two school with the same prestige I guess?
On to Durmstrang. We know that they have Bulgarian students and are probably close to Russia. The school was not presumed to be much bigger than Hogwarts by student count at least, which oddly enough almost rules out Russia in terms of statistics. Russia has a total population bigger than the UK and France combined. Which suggests they'd have about twice the students of Hogwarts which doesn't quite measure up to the 'all about the same size' idea we've been dealing with so far in our lore. It's more likely that Russia has 2 unnamed schools and that the Durmstrang students went to school in other countries. Now if I look at the map, Bulgaria in no way counts as "Our friends from the North"
So the real question surrounding Durmstrang would be....
Was Krum the odd one out from Bulgaria and do we look at the Nordic countries? (Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark (and Finland but more on that later)
Or same scenario but we look more east and less north? (Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, etc)
Or same scenario but it's actually IS a Russian school? (Russia)
Does the mythos surrounding Durmstrang mean they have been deceiving people and are actually not from the north at all? (Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, etc)
I'll tackle those individually and then decide which ones might make sense with what I know concerning EU politics/languages and the book lore...
Nordic school: (Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark (and Finland)
Up to 100 years ago, Finland was still sadly part of war between Sweden and Russia so they're quite new to the game and thus could go to either country. What I know through my boyfriend about Finnish people and culture... they either made their own school or they go to the Nordic one.
My guess on the language would be Swedish but with most EU schools in wizarding universe, they MIGHT have all languages and teach multilingual. However, Sweden has the largest population and Finland is a bilingual country that has both Swedish and Finnish as languages, giving it a distinct advantage for main lanuage.
This school would be tiny featuring only around 600 students. It might be a huge surface but it's not a very dense population. However, their not so positive bond with Russia makes them highly unlikely to be mistaken for a Russian school. It's likely they would object to that.
Taking a side track for the other parts. Europe has a fair share of countries speaking German or languages similar to that, such as Dutch.
Germanic school: (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and half of Belgium)
Now they generate a total of aprox 1900 students. If you were to remove the Dutch/Belgium students from this they would make a mini school with about 350 students and the German school would end up around 1500 students (crude numbers, I know)
This fits in relatively well with most of the other schools as they seem to be around the 1000 to 1500 region at most. It would be one of the bigger schools regardless of including the Dutch speaking nations.
Sportugain/Mediterranean (Spain and Portugal (Italy and Greece))
My knowledge of these is not to big but since they are neighbours I can imagine it's a lot simpler to send the students to school together to maximise education purposes (while maintaining international secrecy as a concept)
This joint school would feature about 900 students. Now I'm taking Italy in because as a separate school it'd feature around 900 students as well so it's possible the Mediterranean schools (apart from Greece) would join hands and feature around 1800 combined.
Now adding Greece to the calculation (They fight with Turkey over Cyprus so I put half the students from there in the Greek school)
I can imagine their rich culture and heritage with the Gods and all that would make their school one of the oldest in Europe. Their population would put the size of the school around 170 students for Greece and Cyprus only but with with the joint force idea they'd get around 2000 students in total. It would be more tricky to hide but I can imagine they could manage with the islands and ruins of old temples around that area.
Now to go back to the Durmstrang conundrum I split the remaining countries that I am far less familiar with into two groups.
This is all basic guess work and has very little in terms of politics because I'm west EU with a partner up North and I don't know many people in Eastern Europe so... bear with me and if you know a better way to split it, PLEASE do so xD This is mostly based in geography.
Durmy school options
Durmy 1 (Czech Rep, Solvakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia)
This particular collection of countries gives a total of around 1100 students which is the right range for the sizes of school to compete in the Triwizard Tournament. It's not in the High North but it does include Krum's Bulgaria. I have no clue which language would make sense since most of these countries all have their own language so one can only presume they have a really good translation program or get classes in every language required. Or they get classes based on language more than based on year. I personally would like to imagine they all have some very good translation charms on the school to ensure everybody can follow classes in their own native language and communicate freely.
Durmy 2 (Moldova, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia)
This particular version does go more towards the North and the clothes would make most sense if they would be housed in Estonia (unless it's all a front of course) but they are also very close to the sea and would make most sense in sailing towards the tournament in the books. It, however, does not include Bulgaria so Krum would be a bit misplaced but it does border on Russia with most countries so it would give some meaning to the more Russian names (such as Karkarov). The schools population would feature around 1500 students, which would be somewhat more than the other schools in the tournament.
Russia (ONLY Russia)
Naturally they'd speak Russian. Considering the sheer amount of people in Russia the school would be the biggest by far with over 2000 students (around 2200) so it would make total sense if Russia opted to have two smaller schools in stead, possibly even splitting them into a boys and girls school like we saw in the movies. (WHICH MADE NO SENSE AND STILL ANGERS ME)
Now PLEASE note after reading this that this was done for fun mostly (though I kinda lost it near the end with all the tiny countries) and is based off largely made up numbers due to the fact we don't have exact numbers in the books.
Also, I now must conclude that Durmstrang makes very little sense and I suspect Rowling didn't spend too much time on logistics for that >.< Because considering how close Bulgaria is to Turkey it makes no sense to wear thick winter clothes at all >.>
We know about 3 schools in Europe, where I'll be looking since I know very little about the USA,
. Also, international politics do play a small part here.So here goes. I looked up the current number of residents in the UK, Ilse of Man and Ireland, since those are likely to go to Hogwarts. There has never been mention of students at Hogwarts that don't have English as their main language or are from outside the English speaking lands so I PRESUME those went to others schools.
So I went with about 10 students per house per year. (Harry had 5 boys we know in his years and I just evened out numbers from there even if we are not sure they exist)
This led to a total of 1120 students spread over 7 years.
I googled to find high school students in the UK (which is like Hogwarts age) and calculated that as a percentage of total students and went to calculate total wizards from there. (It's like, 0.0118% of total population)
From there I'm looking at the other wizarding school, what we know of them and what I personally think that means for the schools in Europe.
What we know: Beauxbatons is in France. No evidence suggest that non-French-speakers go to Beauxbatons. This suggests that Beauxbatons caters to France and possibly a part of Belgium (since that country has two main languages, which becomes important later on)
Now presuming that the amount of wizards is about the same all over the world, Beauxbatons would have approximately 1092 students, presuming this included half the Belgium students (Less than a hundred in total)
Seems about right for two school with the same prestige I guess?
On to Durmstrang. We know that they have Bulgarian students and are probably close to Russia. The school was not presumed to be much bigger than Hogwarts by student count at least, which oddly enough almost rules out Russia in terms of statistics. Russia has a total population bigger than the UK and France combined. Which suggests they'd have about twice the students of Hogwarts which doesn't quite measure up to the 'all about the same size' idea we've been dealing with so far in our lore. It's more likely that Russia has 2 unnamed schools and that the Durmstrang students went to school in other countries. Now if I look at the map, Bulgaria in no way counts as "Our friends from the North"
So the real question surrounding Durmstrang would be....
Was Krum the odd one out from Bulgaria and do we look at the Nordic countries? (Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark (and Finland but more on that later)
Or same scenario but we look more east and less north? (Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, etc)
Or same scenario but it's actually IS a Russian school? (Russia)
Does the mythos surrounding Durmstrang mean they have been deceiving people and are actually not from the north at all? (Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, etc)
I'll tackle those individually and then decide which ones might make sense with what I know concerning EU politics/languages and the book lore...
Nordic school: (Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark (and Finland)
Up to 100 years ago, Finland was still sadly part of war between Sweden and Russia so they're quite new to the game and thus could go to either country. What I know through my boyfriend about Finnish people and culture... they either made their own school or they go to the Nordic one.
My guess on the language would be Swedish but with most EU schools in wizarding universe, they MIGHT have all languages and teach multilingual. However, Sweden has the largest population and Finland is a bilingual country that has both Swedish and Finnish as languages, giving it a distinct advantage for main lanuage.
This school would be tiny featuring only around 600 students. It might be a huge surface but it's not a very dense population. However, their not so positive bond with Russia makes them highly unlikely to be mistaken for a Russian school. It's likely they would object to that.
Taking a side track for the other parts. Europe has a fair share of countries speaking German or languages similar to that, such as Dutch.
Germanic school: (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and half of Belgium)
Now they generate a total of aprox 1900 students. If you were to remove the Dutch/Belgium students from this they would make a mini school with about 350 students and the German school would end up around 1500 students (crude numbers, I know)
This fits in relatively well with most of the other schools as they seem to be around the 1000 to 1500 region at most. It would be one of the bigger schools regardless of including the Dutch speaking nations.
Sportugain/Mediterranean (Spain and Portugal (Italy and Greece))
My knowledge of these is not to big but since they are neighbours I can imagine it's a lot simpler to send the students to school together to maximise education purposes (while maintaining international secrecy as a concept)
This joint school would feature about 900 students. Now I'm taking Italy in because as a separate school it'd feature around 900 students as well so it's possible the Mediterranean schools (apart from Greece) would join hands and feature around 1800 combined.
Now adding Greece to the calculation (They fight with Turkey over Cyprus so I put half the students from there in the Greek school)
I can imagine their rich culture and heritage with the Gods and all that would make their school one of the oldest in Europe. Their population would put the size of the school around 170 students for Greece and Cyprus only but with with the joint force idea they'd get around 2000 students in total. It would be more tricky to hide but I can imagine they could manage with the islands and ruins of old temples around that area.
Now to go back to the Durmstrang conundrum I split the remaining countries that I am far less familiar with into two groups.
This is all basic guess work and has very little in terms of politics because I'm west EU with a partner up North and I don't know many people in Eastern Europe so... bear with me and if you know a better way to split it, PLEASE do so xD This is mostly based in geography.
Durmy school options
Durmy 1 (Czech Rep, Solvakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia)
This particular collection of countries gives a total of around 1100 students which is the right range for the sizes of school to compete in the Triwizard Tournament. It's not in the High North but it does include Krum's Bulgaria. I have no clue which language would make sense since most of these countries all have their own language so one can only presume they have a really good translation program or get classes in every language required. Or they get classes based on language more than based on year. I personally would like to imagine they all have some very good translation charms on the school to ensure everybody can follow classes in their own native language and communicate freely.
Durmy 2 (Moldova, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia)
This particular version does go more towards the North and the clothes would make most sense if they would be housed in Estonia (unless it's all a front of course) but they are also very close to the sea and would make most sense in sailing towards the tournament in the books. It, however, does not include Bulgaria so Krum would be a bit misplaced but it does border on Russia with most countries so it would give some meaning to the more Russian names (such as Karkarov). The schools population would feature around 1500 students, which would be somewhat more than the other schools in the tournament.
Russia (ONLY Russia)
Naturally they'd speak Russian. Considering the sheer amount of people in Russia the school would be the biggest by far with over 2000 students (around 2200) so it would make total sense if Russia opted to have two smaller schools in stead, possibly even splitting them into a boys and girls school like we saw in the movies. (WHICH MADE NO SENSE AND STILL ANGERS ME)
Now PLEASE note after reading this that this was done for fun mostly (though I kinda lost it near the end with all the tiny countries) and is based off largely made up numbers due to the fact we don't have exact numbers in the books.
Also, I now must conclude that Durmstrang makes very little sense and I suspect Rowling didn't spend too much time on logistics for that >.< Because considering how close Bulgaria is to Turkey it makes no sense to wear thick winter clothes at all >.>
