Albanian folklore

Albanian traditions have been orally transmitted – through memory systems that have survived intact into modern times – down the generations and are still very much alive in the mountainous regions of Albania, Kosovo and western North Macedonia, as well as among the Arbëreshë in Italy and the Arvanites in Greece, and the Arbanasi in Croatia.

This distinguished them from civilizations such as Ancient Egypt, Minoans and Mycenaeans, who underwent state formation and disrupted their traditional memory practices.

From 1848 he served as interpreter to French consul in Shkodra, Louis Hyacinthe Hécquard, who was very interested in, and decided to prepare a book on, northern Albanian folklore.

Jubani's own first collection of folklore—the original Albanian texts of the folk songs published by Hécquard—was lost in the flood that devastated the city of Shkodra on 13 January 1866.

He began to take an interest in 1859 and started recording Albanian folklore material from the year 1866, providing also folk songs, riddles and tales for Demetrio Camarda's collection.

Mitko's own collection—including 505 folk songs, and 39 tales and popular sayings, mainly from southern Albania—was finished in 1874 and published in the 1878 Greek-Albanian journal Alvaniki melissa / Belietta Sskiypetare (The Albanian Bee).

Dino himself published Valët e Detit (The Waves of the Sea), which, at the time of its publication in 1908, was the longest printed book in the Albanian language.

Danish Indo-Europeanist and professor at the University of Copenhagen, Holger Pedersen, visited Albania in 1893 to learn the language and to gather linguistic material.

[16][10] In the first half of the 20th century, British anthropologist Edith Durham visited northern Albania and collected folklore material on the Albanian tribal society.