Theth

Theth's people hold that they descend from a single ancestor, Ded Nika, and that the community moved up from the lower Shala valley some 300 to 350 years ago to keep its Catholic faith rather than convert to Islam. The village grew as a scatter of stone houses and fields on the valley floor, governed, like the rest of the northern highlands, by the Kanun, the customary law of honour, hospitality and revenge. Its lock-in tower, one of very few that survive, was built as a refuge for men of a family caught in a blood feud.

The English traveller Edith Durham described Theth as a bariak, a highland unit, of about 180 houses, and noted that it was almost free of the blood feud that blighted other parts of the Albanian highlands; it was also spared the feuds that returned to the north after communism. Theth National Park was created around the Shala valley in 1966. The population has been greatly reduced over recent decades, and most of those who remain live here only in summer.

Tourism has given the valley a new purpose. Families began offering board and lodging to walkers, a cross-border peace park project helped mark the footpaths, and a new bridge was built to the Grunas waterfall. Theth was declared a Protected Historic Centre in 2017, the last stretch of the road from the Thore pass was paved in 2021, and in 2022 the Theth and Valbona parks were joined to form the Alps of Albania National Park, the largest in the country.

Theth is a Catholic highland community, and its church stands on the open valley floor. The founding story of migration to keep the faith is still told, and the idea of descent from one ancestor gives the village a strong sense of kinship.

The Kanun remains influential in the valley, above all in its rules of hospitality: the guest is honoured and protected, and visitors arriving at a family guesthouse are welcomed with coffee or raki. The harsher side of the code, the blood feud, has not troubled Theth in the post-communist years, and the lock-in tower is now visited as a monument to a past way of life rather than a working refuge. The north of Albania has a tradition of sung epic poetry accompanied by the one-stringed lahuta, and the village has a modest ethnographic museum.

Manners are those of a small farming village. People greet each other on the lanes, fields and haystacks are private property even where paths cross them, and the working watermill, still used to grind corn, is a reminder that this is a place where people live as well as a hiking destination. The village has kept a nine-grade school, a sign of a community determined to continue.

Theth is small, and its population has fallen sharply over recent decades; most of those who remain occupy the village only in the summer months, when the road is open. Since the 2015 local government reform the village has been part of the municipality of Shkodër.

The economy is guesthouses, guiding and transport. Families let rooms, cook for walkers, prepare packed lunches, hire out horses for luggage and arrange rides back to Shkodër or onward to Valbona, while still keeping fields, animals and kitchen gardens. A small tourist information point at the village entrance helps visitors find guides and rentals, and the protected areas agency has an official information centre beside the Theth bridge.

The rhythm of the day follows the season. In summer, walkers leave early for the pass or the waterfalls and return in the afternoon, and dinner is taken at the guesthouse table. From November to April snow closes the road, and the valley falls quiet. Depopulation remains the community's most serious long-term challenge.

Theth eats what its families grow and raise. Guesthouse meals are built around the produce of the household and the valley — vegetables from the garden, cheese and yoghurt, and meat from the family's animals — and the dinner served to walkers is usually generous. Packed lunches are prepared for those heading over the pass.

Albanian mountain food draws on cornbread, pies such as lakror, meat and trout, and the Shala and Kapresa rivers around Theth are rich in speckled trout. Homemade cheese, yoghurt, dhallë, a yoghurt drink, and pickles start a meal, as across Albania. Byrek, flaky filo layered with cheese, spinach or minced meat, is the familiar quick food of the whole country.

Families also preserve the summer for the winter months, making jams, pickles and dried fruit from seasonal mountain produce, which are sold to visitors as well. Strong Turkish-style coffee begins the day, and raki, the clear spirit most often made from grapes or plums, is offered to guests as a sign of welcome.