Where's Durmstrang? (Was: What was V-mort's goal?)

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 48410

Janet Anderson wrote:

>1) We know that Albania is a place where Voldemort and his minions have
>hidden at least twice.
>
>2) We have reason to believe that Durmstrang is somewhere cold, mountainous,
>and secluded (Hermione's deduction from the fur cloaks and Krum's
>description of the landscape there).
>
>Could Durmstrang be in Albania or someplace near it? This would explain the
>emphasis on the Dark Arts, Voldemort's influence on Karkaroff, and possibly
>another reason why Lucius Malfoy wanted to send Draco there.

Many people place Albania somewhere near the Arctic. (This is a popular 
misconception, not just in HP circles; whether or not this misconception is 
excusable is not for me to say.) On the contrary, Albania is on the 
Adriatic coast at a similar latitude to Italy and shares a border with 
Greece. It is therefore quite a warm country...

Krum describes the lakes, mountains and glaciers which surround Durmstrang, 
and whilst Albania has lots of "mountains", they're better described as 
tall hills, although Albania's basic ground level is quite high; there are 
three sizeable lakes, which are far apart and each of which is a major 
tourist attraction, and thus unlikely to be a centre of wizarding life. 
There are absolutely, definitely, no glaciers. Winters are wet rather than 
cold. In late October (when the ship sets off for Hogwarts), it would still 
be warm and dry and furs wouldn't be part of the Durmstrang contingent's 
attire (although this could be countered by *Scotland* being cold at that 
time of year).

Furthermore, the long summer days and endless winter nights puts the 
location very high north, and so the only options for Durmstrang's location 
are the Scandinavian peninsula or northern Russia.

As I said above, this is where a lot of people seem to place Albania; it's 
just possible that JKR's knowledge of Central European geography is lacking 
and she suffers from the same misconception. However, given the amount of 
research she seems to have put into the books' background, I find it 
unlikely that if she didn't know her European geography, she didn't look at 
an atlas before putting such an emphasis on that part of the world: Krum is 
Bulgarian (just the other side of Macedonia from Albania), Voldemort spends 
time in Albania and there are sizable dragon colonies in Romania.

This therefore begs a completely different question: why does Krum, from 
southern Europe, attend a school in northern Europe? The Muggle cultures 
involved have very little in common, and it's likely that the wizarding 
cultures would be equally incompatible. It seems likely that there is a 
sizable wizarding community in southern Europe: enough to warrant 
maintaining a school. So I repeat: why does Krum attend a school such a 
distance from his home turf?

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, who's been wondering about that for a LONG time but 
this is the first time he's put it into words...