By Ervin Qafmolla, Balkan Insight
...Like her ancient, dignified dwelling, Shuke herself is a museum piece, a relic of a disappearing world. Today, even in remote parts of Albania, where customary taboos have held sway for centuries, the sexual dynamics are changing.
Histories of Albania have long dwelled on the importance of virginity in society. From the 19th century onwards, foreign writers in particular put Albanian marriage codes, blood feuds, religion, hospitality, as well as such phenomena as “sworn virgins” - women who obtained male status by pledging eternal virginity - under a spotlight.
They portrayed the “Land of Eagles” as an untamed and archaic society, cut off from the modern world.
Albania has changed a lot since then and today it aims to join the European Union. But fragments of the old cultural codes have survived.
...Like her ancient, dignified dwelling, Shuke herself is a museum piece, a relic of a disappearing world. Today, even in remote parts of Albania, where customary taboos have held sway for centuries, the sexual dynamics are changing.
Histories of Albania have long dwelled on the importance of virginity in society. From the 19th century onwards, foreign writers in particular put Albanian marriage codes, blood feuds, religion, hospitality, as well as such phenomena as “sworn virgins” - women who obtained male status by pledging eternal virginity - under a spotlight.
They portrayed the “Land of Eagles” as an untamed and archaic society, cut off from the modern world.
Albania has changed a lot since then and today it aims to join the European Union. But fragments of the old cultural codes have survived.
In mountainous rural Albania, the loss of a woman’s virginity to anyone other than her husband remains a taboo, thanks in large part to the continuing influence of the Canon of Leke Dukagjini.
Nebi Bardhoshi,an expert in Albanian customary law and professor at the European University of Tirana, explains that what is conventionally known as ‘the canon’ represents an evolved set of rules and values updated over centuries by several authors, lawmakers and local or national leaders.
“Although this set of rules, commonly referred to as the ‘canon’, exists mostly in northern Albania, identical or similar values still exist in other parts of the country, bearing the same origin and legacy,” Bardhoshi notes.
The canon comprises a complex framework of regulations, ranging from matters of communal concern to sentences for certain offences – for some of which the canon demands the death penalty.
Referring to demands for the death penalty in the event of breaches to the sexual code, Bardhoshi clarifies that such severe punishments were mostly confined to cases of sexual relations between blood relatives. The death penalty did not necessarily apply to cases of lost virginity.
“If a bride was found to have been deflowered on her marriage night, she would normally be taken back to her family and confined to the house for life, or remarried to a lower-status husband,” he says. ...
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