Durmstrang + its location

[pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no]

No: HPFGUIDX 28822

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Ev vy" <bricken at t...> wrote:
[snip]
> It depends on location. The further east, the more it could
> have been dominated by Slavic speakers. OTOH, there were much
> more Slavic speakers anyway in the Central and Eastern Europe,
> so the language might have changed at any time in the past.
> And it could have been entirely independent of politics. If
> Durmstrang is located somewhere in the Alps, it's rather
> certain that the language is more likely to be German than any
> other. But if it's located in the Carpathian, then it would
> depend on more precise location. However, German would be
> likely as for a long time the whole area was under Austrian
> reign. But from what I gathered from GoF, it's extremely cold
> there where the school is located. Then, neither the Alps nor
> the Carpathian are likely as they aren't that cold, even in
> winter. So the most probable would be Ural Mounatins.
> Consequently the language would be Russian.
> 
> I opt for Russian anyway. But for the majority of Durmstrang
> students it wouldn't make really much difference which language
> it really is, they would have to learn it. And from my
> experience, it's as hard to learn an enirely different
< langauge (for me German) than a similar (In my case Russian)
> to one's native language. The latter requires a lot of effort
> to avoid confusion, many false friends.
> 
> Respectfully,
> Ev vy

With regards to the Durmstrang-location, i have posted extensively on 
this a long time back.  Instead of regurgitating all those masses of 
text here, I'll give my main conclusions, and the background for 
them.  

Basically, it is my opinion that Durmstrang must be located in 
Northern Continental Europe.  This is based on what is said by Ron 
and Viktor Krum regarding the location (it has mountains, lakes, 
glaciers (Ron mentions it, suggestiing proximity to glaciers is 
common lore in Britain about Durmstrang), cold, dark winters, and its 
mode of transportation is a ship (not a boat), suggesting proximity 
to the ocean).  

When I first posted on this subject, I did some research on it, and 
based on this, I recommended the the area around Kandalaksha 
city/town (at the inner end of the Kandalaksha Bay, and offshoot of 
the White Sea near the Kola peninsula - and I may have mangled the 
spelling of Kandalaksha just now) as a likely location - containing 
all the mentioned elements.  

I also mentioned Northern Scandinavia as a possibility, but brought 
forward Kandalaksha to get it elsewhere, as i myself am from Northern 
Norway.  Also, what the names of the school and the students tells 
me, is that the school culturally would be *very* unlikely to be 
found in Scandinavia.

Then JKR at a bookreading in Glasgow (IIRC) stated that she believed 
that Beauxbatons was located in Southern France, while Durmstrang she 
believed was located in Northern Sweden or Northern Norway.

Some relevant posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/24956
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/20286

The above posts contain information and links to other posts on this 
subject - you need to be signed in to Yahoo!Groups to access the 
messages, and if the links wrap, they will need to be reconstructed.  

The messages also contain fragments of my own postulate about 
Durmstrangs origins - a school established in the Baltic region to 
bring orderly magical education to the people there (actually not 
dissimilar to missioning), before aggressive expansion by the 
Teutonic Order (a religious order of knights originally formed for 
the crusades in the Middle East, similar to the Knights Templar and 
the Knights Hospitaller) drove the school on a search for a new safer 
place, eventually ending up in the far North.

Best regards
Christian Stubø