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of the people living in Himarë/Himara area, who are all of “Albanian nationality”. Based on
the analysis of the archival sources Prifti argues that Himarë/Himara people belong to the
Albanian nation-state, their “first” language being Albanian. In their writings scholars
constitute a direct link between Illyrians and Albanians and perceive the notions of nationality
and ethnicity as having existed “since ever”.
Similar to story-tellers, historiographers also describe a linear passage from unity and
homogeneity of the local population to heterogeneity and dispersal into separate villages of
Himarë/Himara area. While the oral stories describe this passage as a consequence of
invasions of the pirates to Meghalihora, which triggered the resettlement of the local
population on the hills, the historiographers see this linear passage as being caused by an
expansion of trading relations with Greek Islands in the second half of the 18 th century.
Let me now turn the attention to Sinani, who defines the trading contacts or “marine time
activities” between Himarë/Himara and Greek Islands as the main reason for reorientation of
Himarë/Himara population “toward the kings of the West”. “The local population turned its
eyes to the Holy See and to the kings of the West, put its hopes to these powers, reoriented its
life towards the see and connected it with the sea, with the commerce, fishing, and with the
other communities ethnically different from itself” (ibid.). In the paragraph quoted earlier
Sinani positionally describes the mountains and the sea and defines the latter as a “frontier”
between the coastal area or Himarë/Himara and Laberia or Albania. In the first part of the
quoted paragraph Sinani notes that trading of Himarë/Himara people and their autonomy
resulted in the “ethno-regional contraction” and formation of the boundaries. On the one hand
Sinani defines the Thunderbolt Mountains (Mali i Vetetimes) as the ones that impose a
division between Himarë/Himara and Albania, while on the other hand he describes the sea as
a bridge that connects the local population with the Christian authority, wealth and prosperity.
An acknowledged Albanian historiographer of Skanderbeg, Kristo Frashëri, talks about the
Albanian nationality of Himarë/Himara people in a similar way. In his book Himara and
Ethnic Belonging of Himariotes, a Dialogue with the Greek Historians (Himara dhe
perkatesia etnike e himarijoteve, bisede me historijanet Greke) which was published in 2005,
Frashëri wrote the following:
It has been a long time since the daily press in Greece or in Albania wrote on the issue
of the inhabitants of Himarë area. According to Hellenic writers these inhabitants
belong to the Greek nationality while according to the other group they belong to
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