Gollobordë

Gollobordë (Albanian definite form: Golloborda; Bulgarian: Голо Бърдо, romanized: Golo Bărdo;[1] Macedonian: Голо Брдо, romanized: Golo Brdo) refers to a geographical area of traditionally 24 villages of which 18 are situated primarily in eastern Albania, with a small portion consisting of six villages lying within North Macedonia.

[4][6] During the same period, a mass emigration process occurred, and many Muslim families settled elsewhere, including in Debar, in Struga's Drimkol region, and in Thessaloniki.

[6][4][7] The families that settled in Debar became Albanized, but retain memory of their origins which are denoted by their last names, including Klenja, Trebishta, Ostreni, Torbaçi, Serpetova, and others.

[3] During this period, the official border changed a number of times—at one point, it ran between Klenja and Steblevo, but now these two towns are both in Albania.

[16][17] Until the 1990s the local Orthodox Macedonian minority, who have since migrated, used to live in some villages alongside the Gollobordas, who today number some roughly 3,000 people.

According to the findings of Aleksander Novik and his team in 2008-10, the identity of the local Slavs is largely determined by their religious backgrounds and their native language.

Intrinsically linked to the first form of identification, many of the local Slavs (Muslim or Orthodox Christian) acknowledge a connection to the neighbouring Macedonians.

However, the Muslims clearly distinguish themselves from their Orthodox brethren through the usage of the ethnonyms Muslimane and Turci, the latter of which harks back to issues of ethnic and religious identity in the Ottoman millet system.

In their expedition of 2008, Alexander Rusakov and his team noted that the locals of Borova did not consider themselves to be a part of Golloborda as they associated the region only with the Slavic-speakers and their villages.