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Sievers suggests that in contemporary Albania one can discern national and local
mythohistories which are interwoven and related because they are used by the politics in both
ways. Both national and local uses of myths have the capacity to transfer the ideological
pressure for conformity from central settings to a plurality of new settings and back again
(ibid.).
In the following pages I present oral and written mythohistories that address the origin of the
people of Himarë/Himara and their past. Both oral and written mythohistories are nowadays
providing an important substance for the local people as well as by the contemporary
historiography. Debates and negotiations of Himarë/Himara people’s origin can often be
heard in kafeneia, where the elderly village men gather every day. I, as a young married
woman, a foreign resident (Slovena) and anthropologos, considered to be interested in the
local customs, habits (ta palia enthimata) and “history” (istoria), was granted only a limited
access to kafeneias (pl.), known as men’s places (cf. Campbell 1964, Herzfeld 1985, and
partly Cowan 1991), where the only woman usually present was the waitress. The village
women avoided entering kafeneia. They came in only occasionally, when they had to buy
some goods (bread, for example) or if they wanted to fetch their male relatives. After a couple
of months in the village I befriended the daughter of the coffee-shop owner and often
accompanied her on visits to her father’s kafeneio, where we discussed different matters with
her male relatives. I collected most of the stories from the past during my visits to different
households, when I also collected census data. Other stories were told to me during occasional
chats with the villagers whom I met on the streets or in the cafeteria 63 on the coast, where I
worked for of some weeks in the summer.
In the first part of the following subchapters I juxtapose the oral and written accounts in order
to show how the differences between them are vague and porous. In the second part I present
an additional perspective of the written accounts of contemporary historiographers and other
scholars, who discuss the past, customs and habits of Himarë/Himara municipality and its
villages. By presenting the accounts of local (coming from Dhërmi/Drimades or
Himarë/Himara area) and national scholars (coming from other places throughout Albania) I
illustrate how their views about particular significant events from the history of Albania and
63 In difference to kafeneia or coffeeshops that are like elsewhere in Albania, Greece and “Eastern” Europe
regarded as men’s places where the “manhood is performed” (cf. Campbell 1964, Herzfeld 1985, Cowan 1991)
cafeterias are considered a modern version of bars that appeared in Dhërmi/Drimades after 1990. While the
kafeneia are generally populated by men, cafeterias are mainly visited by youth and young couples.
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