Peaks of Shala

Chapter 3: INTRODUCTION

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About This Book

The author journeys into remote northern highlands, traveling with mountaineers and gendarmes to visit hidden tribes and prehistoric sites. Through on-the-spot reportage and photographs she records mountain trails, household life, marriage customs, blood feuds, guardian spirits, songs, and local legends that link ancient origins to contemporary loyalties. Encounters include hospitable villagers, chiefs, bandits, village councils, and church services, while political tensions and volunteer fighters surface in town life. The narrative blends travel anecdote, ethnographic observation, and historical tale to convey daily routines, ritual law, landscape, and the uneasy interaction of long-standing tradition with emergent national order.

INTRODUCTION

I would not have this book considered too seriously. It is not an attempt to untangle one thread in the Balkan snarl; it is not a study of primitive peoples; it is not a contribution to the world’s knowledge, and I hope no one will read it to improve the mind. It should be read as the adventures in it were lived, with a gayly inquiring mind, a taste for strange peoples and unknown trails, and a delight in the unexpected.

Here I give you only what I saw, felt, and most casually learned while adventuring among the tribes in the interior northern Albanian mountains. It is not even all of Albania, that little country too small to be found on every map. It is simply a fragment of this large, various, and romantic world, sent back by a traveler to those who stay at home.

R. W. L.