The Travellers of Highland Scotland (who do sometimes call themselves Gypsies) are not Roma and have no link to Northern Ireland either. They're a branch of an ethnic group that seems to have started around the Baltic and have been in Scotland since about 800AD, centuries before the Roma and even before the Vikings. The English "Travellers" mentioned here have no link to them. There are a few Roma institutions in Eastern Europe who might have useful contacts. I've been to the Museum of Gypsy Culture in Brno and they seem like a helpful bunch, though underfunded, understaffed and short of time.
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