Sites of fantasy
EDINBURGH, Scotland – The back room of the Elephant House coffee shop – where J.K. Rowling worked on the first two of her seven “Harry Potter” novels – overlooks Greyfriars cemetery as well as the cobblestone streets of Cowgate and Grassmarket, and offers a majestic view of Edinburgh Castle.
That’s for sure. But it pretty much remains a mystery whether those and other landmarks served as a direct inspiration for Rowling’s fantastical saga.
What can be said with greater certainty is that, with the last of the seven books, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” due on Saturday, mythical Edinburgh will be a must-visit destination for die-hard Potter fans this summer.
“J.K. wrote much of it when she lived in the city,” Susan Russell of VisitScotland, the country’s tourism agency, says of the “Potter” series. “There are many focal points Potter fans will recognize.”
Consider the castle above the city’s old town: It houses the Stone of Scone (pronounced skoon), the throne on which ancient Scottish kings were crowned. A phoenix adorns the face of the Scottish National War Memorial there.
Were these Rowling’s inspiration for her first book, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” and her fifth, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”?
Was the castle’s Great Hall, with hammer-beam ceiling and stained-glass windows, the model for Hogwarts’ great dining hall? Or did that come from the long sanctuary of the nearby rib-domed St. Giles’ Cathedral?
Or was Fettes College, with its Gothic gargoyles in the Stockbridge area, the prototype for Hogwarts castle?
Rowling gave only an oblique answer when, in a 2005 interview with the Glasgow Herald, she said: “If I stayed at home, I wouldn’t be in a place where ideas come from.”
What Rowling has said more definitively is that Edinburgh, where she has had a home since 1994, gave birth to Potter’s world.
And Potter aficionados need only pack their imagination if they come here.
Take, for example, the 66 “closes” (or alleyways) off the Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle. The narrow, medieval passages lead to gardens, ornate houses, old tenements, shops and pubs.
It’s easy to imagine them as the fictional Diagon Alley, where Harry and his friends would get candy, books, owls or wands.
Speaking of wands, the city is riddled with mountain ash trees (or rowans), a branch of which purportedly wards off witches.
Did Rowling’s inspiration sometimes wander more afield? Did, for example, the onetime fishing village of Newhaven on Edinburgh’s north coast spark the literary creation of Harry’s nemesis, the evil Lord Voldemort?
In the novels, his name was never to be spoken – just as, among superstitious Newhaven fishwives in the 19th century, the names of people or animals considered bad luck could never be uttered.
Similarly, did Deacon Brodie, an 18th-century town councilor and namesake for the current Deacon Brodie Cafe and Deacon Brodie Tavern, serve as the model for some notorious Rowling characters who turn out much different from what they first appear?
The real-life Brodie, upstanding cabinetmaker by day, was a burglar by night – until he was caught and hanged on a gallows he invented. But did he really die? Legend has it that he made a harness to escape the noose and was later seen in Paris.
For Potter fans who want to eliminate all uncertainties, there’s still the Elephant House, where, indeed, Rowling worked on the first two novels.
Or the Balmoral Hotel, where she finished the final Potter book this year. She marked the occasion on Jan. 11 by inscribing a bust there.