LONG: School-locations, mostly Durmstrang

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 6004

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, Christian Stubø <rhodhry at y...> 
wrote:

> This rules out all of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, as these,
> between them, do not contain a single peak higher than 318 metres
> (1043ft) - sorry, Rita.

It doesn't hurt my feelings to admit that I know from nothing about 
geography.

> both Karkaroff and Viktor Krum are Slavic. 

Are you sure that Krum is Slavic? He is a Bulgarian national with a 
German surname, so perhaps he is an ethnic German. I remember hearing 
on the news early after German reunification that there were many 
communities of ethnic Germans in the former Soviet Union, and 
reunified Germany invited them to move to German and be German 
citizens at the same time that it was refusing to allow German-born 
children of ethnic Turks to apply for German citizenship. Maybe there 
were clusters of ethnic Germans in Bulgaria as well as USSR.

Karkaroff and one other named student, Poliakoff, have Slavic names, 
which I *think* could be Polish or Ukrainean rather than Russian, and 
I gather that the geography of Central Europe was so changed by each 
war that Germans and Poles and Ukraineans live all mixed up together. 
(I went to a museum exhibition of 18th century ladies' gowns, where I 
learned that the source of the name "a la polonaise" for the style of 
overskirt that USAmericans associate with Martha Washington, is that 
it was named after the Tripartite Division of Poland, after which 
there was no more Poland, only land which had been taken over 
one-third by Germany, one-third by Austria, one-third by Russia, 
becaue the skirt appeared to be divided into three parts.) 

> If Scandinavian students are split between the large academies, 
> then it is more plausible  to me that the Norwegians end up at 
> Hogwarts, 

JKR said that only students from "UK and Ireland" can go to Hogwarts. 
I quibble with her that I suspect the wizarding folk use physical 
geography rather than political geography and would speak of the 
Island of Britain, the Island of Ireland, and the groups of lesser 
islands rather than of UK and Republic. But I don't quibble with her 
that European kids are allowed to attend Hogwarts.

> I have presumed that Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland have a
> joint school somewhere (In Norway, 

That makes sense.

> This leaves for me only the option of putting Durmstrang in 
> Murmansk Oblatsk, probably somewhere near the city of Kandalakša,
> at the White Sea.

That makes sense, too. I am not married to Latvia!

> I am wondering whether to include Finns and Estonians in this, only
> Swedish-speaking Finns or no Finns or Estonians at all (with,
> perhaps, a joint Finnish-Estonian-Hungarian Institute (due to the
> languages being related),

I suspect that Hungarian isn't as related at all THAT to Finnish / 
Estonian. I mean, English and French and German and Greek and 
Russian are all related by being Indo-European languages.

> of course founded by Ilmarinen and Vainamöinen), as Finland was 
> very strongly tied to Sweden for centuries.

My word, that is a GOOD question you raise: are the wizarding Finns 
and Estonians more attached to the Swedish-related culture of 
their Muggle neighbors, or to the EXTENSIVE Finnish magic traditions? 
Altho' one would think that a wizarding school founded by Ilmarinen 
would be one of the three best wizarding schools in Europe!
> 
> I hope I did not get too boring

NOT BORING AT ALL!!!