![]() ![]() ![]() The name 'Jordan' was inspired partly by the area of Oxford known as Jericho, through which the Oxford Canal passes an area called 'Jericho' also features in Northern Lights as a mooring point for the Gyptians's boats. ![]() Tunnels, shafts, vaults, cellars, staircases had so hollowed out the earth below Jordan and for some yards around it that there was almost as much air below ground as above Jordan College stood on a sort of froth of stone. Like some enormous fungus whose root-system extended over acres, Jordan (finding itself jostling for space above ground with St Michael's College on one side, Gabriel College on the other, and Bodley's Library behind) had begun, sometime in the Middle Age, to spread below the surface. Jordan College is an exaggerated version of the real Exeter College, rambling above and below ground in a motley arrangement of buildings, cellars and tunnels constructed over several centuries: What was above ground was only a small fraction of the whole. However, unlike the fictional college, Exeter College is not the oldest (it is the fourth-oldest), nor is it the largest or richest college at Oxford. The location and layout of Jordan College is analogous to the location of Exeter College, Philip Pullman's alma mater, at the University of Oxford. It exists in Oxford in a universe parallel to our own and is the home of the trilogy's young heroine, Lyra Belacqua. Map with list of fictional colleges from Lyra's Oxford. ![]()
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