Albanian history in a nutshell
Action, drama, conquests, heroes and dangerous situations
Albania’s past is so complex and eventful that it would make a great film with modern special effects. There would be no shortage of action, drama, conquests, heroes and dangerous situations. The subject has been tackled at least once, since Sergei Yutkevich directed the Cannes award-winning film Great Warrior Skanderbeg (Golden Armour) in 1953, which tells the story of an Albanian national hero. I also know of at least a couple of novels with interesting historical material in the plot. These include Maarit Verrosi’s Matka Albaniaan 1997 (Kirjayhtymä) and Lea Ypi’s Vapaa 2023 (Atena Kustannus).
The Albanians have been seen as people for whom a distinctive life in sparsely populated mountains has been important. That is why they have risen up many times over their long history to fight desperately for their freedom. The proud inhabitants of this barren land have always been known as good fighters. That’s why the ancient Romans recruited them into their legions. The Albanians themselves call their country Shqiper, or Land of the Eagles. The eagle is a symbol of freedom, although Albania has rarely been free (Pentti Suominen 9.3.1997 HS).
Albania has been inhabited by people for tens of thousands of years, which is not surprising. After all, the last Vistula Ice Age did not extend to Albania. In the Kryegjate valley in southern Albania, traces of human settlement dating back 40 000 years have been found. Stone tools dating back 24 000 years have been found in the Konispol cave. The early inhabitants were hunters, fishermen and gatherers. 7000 years ago, people living in the riverside villages raised cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. https://globalis.fi/maat/albania
The ancient Illyrians, from whom Albanians can trace their roots back thousands of years, played a major role on the stage of ancient Albanian history. The Illyrians are estimated to have arrived in the Western Balkans in the Bronze and Iron Ages, around a thousand years before the beginning of the Common Era. They were famous for their pirates and fighting skills. In 2008, Yle reported that two 2,200-year-old shipwrecks sunk to a depth of eight metres had been found in a swamp in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The wrecks are thought to be the remains of Illyrian pirate ships.(https://yle.fi/a/3-5778903)
Illyrian culture flourished throughout most of the Western Balkans until the Romans came and conquered the region. The Romans subdued the Illyrian tribes after long battles in 168. The Roman province of Illyricum extended north to the Istrian peninsula at the bottom of the Adriatic Sea and east to the Sava River, which flows through Belgrade (Pentti Suominen 9.3.1997 HS). After the Roman Empire split in two, Albania became part of Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire. In the 1100s, the Principality of Albania was created.
In the Middle Ages, Albania was like Game of Thrones, with different princes fighting for power. The most famous of these was Skanderbeg, the ‘Albanian dragon’ who became Albania’s national hero, originally born into a noble Christian Albanian family. The Turks, or Ottomans, plundered boys from the conquered territories and trained them as soldiers. Six-year-old Skanderbeg was one of them. Skanderbeg’s training took him quickly to the leadership of large platoons, but he never forgot his Albanian roots. Shortly after his father’s death, Skanderbeg decided to leave the Ottoman army and flee back to his homeland. Skanderberg marched to his old hometown of Krujën and recaptured it from the Ottomans. To mark his victory, he raised a flag with a two-headed eagle on the tower of Krujë. Krujën Castle now houses a museum bearing Skanderberg’s name.
Skanderberg fought and successfully led a rebellion against the Ottoman Turks. One could say that he resembled Lagola in Tolkien’s fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. Instead of a bow, Skanderbeg was armed with a sword which, according to legend, only he could wield. It was also said that with that sword you could split a stone with a single stroke and cleave a man’s head from head to foot. Skanderbeg’s unusual helmet was adorned with a golden goat’s head with horns. The helmet is on display in the Viennese Museum of Art History.
Skanderbeg united the Albanians and much of strife-torn Christendom in a battle against the Turks in the mid-14th century. For a quarter of a century, Skanderbeg managed to repel the Turks, who were knocking at the gates of Christian Europe (Pentti Suominen 9.3.1997 HS).
Skanderbeg managed to avoid the deadly enemy attacks, but eventually died of malaria in 1468. Ten years later, the Albanians’ defences collapsed and the country fell to the Ottoman Empire. Albania was then dominated by Islam and the Christians remained a minority.
Albania was part of the Ottoman Empire for almost five centuries until 1912. Albania was declared independent in Vlorë on 28 November amid the turmoil of the First Balkan War. Dissatisfaction with Ottoman policies sparked a successful rebellion that led to the granting of independence to Albania. After independence, Albania faced fatal external and internal challenges during the First World War. During the war, Albania was the target of many invasions and was on the verge of fragmentation. US President Wilson prevented the partition of Albania at the Paris Peace Conference and the League of Nations recognised Albania as an independent nation in 1920 (p. 133 The Albanian question at the Paris Peace Conference during 1919-1920).
Albania was declared a republic in 1925 and a monarchy in 1928. During the Second World War, Albania was first conquered by the Italians under Mussolini, and then occupied by Germany. As an interesting detail, Albania was the only country in Europe that protected all Jews during the Holocaust and had more Jews at the end of the Second World War than at the beginning. The Albanians had a code of honour that you were responsible for your guests and committed to protect them at all costs. Albania had people who acted with humanity and did what few others in Europe did (Euronews 24.1.2025; “The Ring” comes to Tirana).
After the war, the challenges continued in many forms and the differences between the Albanian Communist Party and the nationalists flared into a civil war. The Communists won and Enver Hoxha took over the leadership of the Socialist People’s Republic. Hoxha ruled Albania for forty years. During that time, Albania became an isolated state, where people’s freedoms were restricted and opponents of the ruling class were executed. Hoxha allied himself closely with the Soviet Union and built Albania full of bunkers, as if any rumour of the outside world was a threat. There were so many bunkers that one bunker was built for every three Albanians.
Back in the 1980s, Albania was still characterised by the value of Western goods, and even an empty Coca-Cola can could rise in value to unpredictable levels. Lea Ypi writes in her book “Free” that her mother had bought an empty Coca-Cola can from her work colleagues.
“At that time, coke cans were extremely rare in Albania and were symbols of social status. If a family had managed to acquire a can, it was placed on display in the living room, usually on an embroidered little shelf above the television or radio, possibly next to a photograph of the country’s long-time leader Enver Hoxha.” (Jarkko Kemppi, 16.05.2023, Online News)
After Hoxha’s death, Albania’s journey towards modernity began with the collapse of communism in the 1990s and the gradual opening of Albania to the world. Albania’s infrastructure, such as health care, the school system, roads and buildings, was in total ruins at that time. ( 9.12.2020 New Way)
The EU had the idea of offering Albania loan support to lift the country out of its misery, but bad relations between Greece and Albania were reflected in Greece’s decision to block the loans.
The first experiments of a people living in isolation and in a planned economy in a market economy ended in chaos. Crime and violence were commonplace. If the earlier history of Albania was like an adventure film, the sequel could well be called a circular comedy of economic history. The dream of rapid wealth creation, attractive Rolexes and the allure of fancy cars drove people and the state into an investment frenzy. Albanians were as excited about capitalism as a child in a candy store with pocket money and no parents.
Lured by Albania’s first democratically elected president, Sali Berisha, Albanians invested their fortunes in what turned out to be pyramid schemes. The firms promised astronomical returns on investment. People wanted a slice of this and so wages, savings, even houses and land were invested. Today we know that no offer that looks too good is true. In Albania, this was seen as nothing more than the magic of capitalism.
By early 1997, the pyramid scams began to collapse like a domino effect and a large number of people lost everything and the whole country was thrown into chaos. Outraged people took to the streets, banks were looted and the government virtually lost control of the situation. There was anarchy, arms were looted, prisoners were released and up to 2 000 people lost their lives in riots and schoolchildren went on strike.
Martial law was declared and international peacekeeping forces, including Finns, were called in to restore order (The Rise and Fall of the Pyramid Schemes in Albania Jyly 1999).
At the time, it was feared that the unrest would spread and send refugee flows to the rest of Europe. Italian-led UN peacekeeping forces arrived and Operation Alba began!
Since 15 April 1997, 7,000 soldiers have been in command of the operation, which quickly restored order in Tirana. The primary objectives of the operation were to apprehend criminals and collect looted weapons, but in the later months the mission troops also helped to retrain Albanian forces to modern standards. Operation Alba finally came to an end in August, when the last troops were withdrawn from the country (https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Operation_Alba).
Under the cover of chaos, criminals gained the upper hand over society and it was from these times that the stories of Albania’s drug trade began. The press has written a lot about the Albanian drug mafia. Ville Similä wrote in Helsingin Sanomat on 29 April 2018 under the headline.
I quote a little from the Hesar article mentioned above:
The village of LAZARATI in Albania has its own calendar. The zero point is when the police arrived. On 17 June 2014, Albanian police surrounded the village and took it over after a three-day gun battle.
If you ask the villagers, it was the beginning of all evil. “Times have been bad for four years now. No one has a job anymore,” says a teacher in the village café in Gentian Pollo Lazarat. The arrival of the police ruined Lazarati’s livelihood, growing cannabis. “Everyone was doing it. It was just a normal job,” says Pollo.
As I was writing this, Yle published a news item written by Clarissa Jäärn on 16.1.2025 “Albanian-led gang trafficked drugs for a million euros – money was kept in a restaurant in Helsinki”. Unfortunately, Albania is still not free of this phenomenon, which is plaguing the whole world and bringing drugs within the reach of the ordinary street person. Perhaps it is one way in which some Albanians are still struggling to escape the misery of poverty.
Albania has a rather large informal economy, which can also be seen, for example, in the lack of receipts in small street shops. It is common to see people selling handicrafts, fruit and vegetables along the streets and roadsides. Around Christmas, turkeys are sold from the trunks of cars that have seen their best days. There is no point in asking for receipts for your purchases in these shops. Unemployment in previous decades has driven people abroad and many Albanian families still receive remittances from relatives in other countries.
Despite the above, Albania’s journey to the present day has been one of great progress. Albania is a very different country today than it was twenty years ago. Albania has been a member of NATO since 2009. In the same year Albania applied for EU membership and in 2014 it was accepted as a candidate country. Formal accession negotiations with Albania started in 2020. The first EU Intergovernmental Conference was held with Albania in July 2022 and the second Accession Conference took place in October 2024 in Luxembourg.
The tourism industry in Albania is developing by leaps and bounds. In 2023, 7 million passengers passed through Tirana airport and in 2024, 11.7 million foreign tourists visited Albania (Ministry of Tourism). The increase is so great that Albania must be recognised without doubt as a tourist country worthy of attention and serious consideration alongside the traditional destinations. Albania’s own population is just under 3 million, so the number of visiting tourists is many times greater. The Albanian currency (lek) has seen a dramatic appreciation against the euro over the last ten years. Price levels have also been on the rise, but of course remain moderate compared to many other countries.
Many people are already watching the development of tourism in Albania with some concern. Demonstrations against tourism in Malaga, Barcelona and the Canary Islands in Spain are making people wonder about the impact of business tourism. Similarly, the project to build an airport in Vlorë, next to a nature reserve, has provoked a lively debate. Albania’s road infrastructure has made tremendous strides as tourist numbers have increased. Roads are constantly being built to shorten and speed up journeys. Bridges and tunnels are constantly being built. Hotels and hotel blocks are springing up in a steady stream. The press is praising Albania as a holiday destination, so it is looking very good that Albania is rising from obscurity to the world’s limelight.
Interesting news items about Albania are published from time to time, such as the news about Tirana, the world’s smallest country.
“Prime Minister Edi Rama says he wants to give members of the Bektash, the Shia Muslim Sufi organisation, their own Vatican-style enclave to promote religious tolerance. The new state would be headed by Edmond Brahimaj, known to his followers as Baba Mondi. The new Muslim state would be liberal: alcohol could be drunk, women could dress as they wished and there would be no control over lifestyle. “God forbids nothing, and that is why he gave us reason,” Brahimaj says, justifying the liberal line.” 21.9.2024 New York Times (Andrew Higgins)
Indeed, for a Muslim country, Albania is quite tolerant compared to many others. You don’t see many women wearing veils, pork is available in all restaurants and alcohol can be bought freely in shops almost round the clock. When travelling in Albania, I have been surprised by the number of drunks – there are none, even though the shelves of the shops are full of the most tempting bottles. The moderation of alcohol consumption may also have an impact on the sense of security one feels when travelling in Albania. Even in Finland you sometimes look behind you more than in Albania. Some studies have found that Albania is now one of the safest countries in Europe in terms of robbery.
To sum up briefly, Albania is a very interesting destination for backpackers and those who want full service and full care. However, it is worth finding out beforehand which places offer what. Some towns offer an unforgettable beach holiday, others an exciting mountain hike. Renting a car is a good way to get around more freely than you would using public transport. It is worth bearing in mind that the journey time given by Google Maps is not always realistic. Bus timetables also change a lot, so travellers to Albania should not make too tight daily schedules. Take it easy and enjoy the moment, the scenery and the warmth of the people. See you in Albania!
