In Albanian culture, superstition is not fringe thinking. It is woven into the fabric of daily life, embedded in how families greet newborns, how brides enter their new homes, how neighbors protect themselves from envy, and how the elderly interpret signs in nature. These beliefs are ancient, practical, and very much alive.
Albanian superstitions are a blend of pre-Christian folk beliefs, Ottoman-era practices, and Orthodox and Islamic traditions, shaped over centuries of cultural layering. The most widespread include beliefs about the evil eye (syri keq), protective amulets, omens in animals and nature, and rituals surrounding birth, marriage, and death. These are not relics of the past but living practices observed in both Albania and the Albanian diaspora today.
TLDR
- The evil eye (syri keq) is the most pervasive Albanian superstitious belief
- Blue beads, eye images, garlic and written amulets are the classic protections; since the 1990s, teddy bears and dolls hung on new or unfinished houses do the same job
- Many Albanian superstitions relate to birth, marriage, and death rituals
- Ethnographers recorded omens read in nature, from the markings of a fowl’s breastbone to the house snake that guards the home
- The same beliefs are found among Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox Albanians
- Many diaspora Albanians maintain these practices even after leaving Albania
On This Page
- The Evil Eye: Syri Keq
- Birth, Babies, and Protective Rituals
- Teddy Bears and Dolls on Houses
- Garlic and Newborns
- Animal Omens
- Magic, Witches and Curses
- Wedding Superstitions
- Mythical Beings in Albanian Folk Belief
- Everyday Superstitions
- FAQs
The Evil Eye: Syri Keq
No Albanian superstition is more central or more practiced than the evil eye, known in Albanian as syri keq (literally “bad eye”). The belief is that envy or admiration, even unintentional, can transmit harm to the object of that gaze, whether a person, a child, an animal, or even a new business. The evil eye is not uniquely Albanian; it appears across Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Balkan cultures. But in Albania, it is particularly deeply embedded.
Belief in syri keq crosses religious lines. The ethnographer Alexander Novik, drawing on fieldwork from 1990 to 2024 among Sunni Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox Albanians in Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia, describes it as a belief that has held on despite globalization (Novik, 2024). He notes that harm is attributed both to people who mean it and to people who do not, especially those thought to have certain physical traits, secret knowledge or abilities.
The traditional protections Novik lists include ram horns, the fangs and claws of bears and wolves, mercury, garlic, precious metals, images of eyes and sacred texts; from the late 20th century, toys and children’s artwork joined them. In 1908 Edith Durham saw blue glass beads on the halters of most horses and coins tied on children’s foreheads (see the Durham section below). Many Albanian parents still use some of these protections for a newborn without thinking of them as superstition.
Birth, Babies, and Protective Rituals
The period surrounding birth is one of the most ritually dense in Albanian folk tradition. Newborns were considered particularly vulnerable, especially in the first days of life. Practices recorded by ethnographers include amulets hung around a baby’s head and neck against the shtriga and the evil eye, garlic tied around children’s necks, an egg broken over a newborn’s face, and a table set for the three Fates on the third night. Each is described, with its source, further down this page; for the care of the mother herself, see our guide to Albanian postpartum traditions.
The details vary by region and religion, as the accounts below show. What the sources share is the idea that a newborn enters the world needing protection, and that the family can provide it through the right actions.
Why Albanians Hang Teddy Bears and Dolls on Houses
The stuffed toy tied to the top floor or balcony of a house under construction is a guard against the evil eye. The idea is that an envious look lands on the toy instead of on the house, the family or its new wealth. The older form is the dordolec, a scarecrow-like figure, and the folklorist Kristin Peterson-Bidoshi, working from forty recorded interviews in Albania, describes it as a protection for the home and the people in it against syri i keq (Peterson-Bidoshi, Journal of American Folklore, 2006).
Her study, “The Dordolec: Albanian House Dolls and the Evil Eye,” argues that the practice grew after communism, when private property and a new gap between rich and poor gave people new wealth to protect. It also describes the kukull (doll), the store-bought stuffed animal that has largely replaced the homemade figure. Novik likewise dates the spread of toys as protective objects to the late 20th and early 21st centuries (Novik, 2024). That is why the teddy bears are most often seen on new or unfinished buildings: a house in progress is visible, valuable and, in this view, exposed.
Garlic and Newborns
Garlic is one of the oldest Albanian protections, and it is closely tied to children. Edith Durham recorded in 1928 that in Albania evil spirits were thought to be most active in spring, and that garlic was tied around children’s necks on or about Shrove Tuesday as a precaution (Durham, Some Tribal Origins). Novik lists garlic among the traditional protections against the evil eye still known among Albanians in Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia (Novik, 2024).
How families use garlic today, if at all, varies from household to household. Safe-sleep advice applies here as anywhere: keep anything small enough to swallow or choke on out of an infant’s crib.
Animal Omens
Animals carry omen value in Albanian folk belief. The owl and the cuckoo (qyqe) are often named as birds of bad news, as in much of Europe. These are popular beliefs rather than well-documented customs. The most detailed animal omens on record, though, come from bones: Durham described guests reading the breastbone of a fowl or the shoulder blade of a sheep to foretell the future (see below). In the north she also heard that devils appeared at night as fiery sparks and lost their power at the first cock-crow (Durham, High Albania).
The best documented positive animal is the house snake, gjarpri i shtëpisë or bolla e shtëpisë, a guardian spirit of the household. A 2024 comparative study by Oksana Tchoekha traces the same belief among Greeks, Albanians and Balkan Slavs, with shared features such as identifying the snake with the master of the house, feeding it, and burying a snake killed by accident (Tchoekha, 2024).
Wedding Superstitions
Albanian weddings are ritual-dense events with specific beliefs about what protects the new union. Before entering the groom’s home, the bride may break a glass or a plate to ward off bad luck, and guests throw rice and sweets as wishes for fertility and a sweet life (Il Nuovo Mediterraneo, 2025). In some families a small boy is set on the bride’s lap as she arrives, a wish for sons (Wedded Wonderland). Honey is also part of the welcome: in one Kosovo account, the mother-in-law anoints the bride’s hand with honey so the marriage will be sweet and free of quarrels (Balkan Hotspot).
Many of these practices persist in diaspora Albanian weddings even when participants cannot explain their origin.
Mythical Beings in Albanian Folk Belief
Alongside everyday superstitions, Albanian folklore is populated by a cast of supernatural beings that shaped how people understood the world. The most important is the drangue, a winged hero born to protect the community, whose eternal enemy is the kulshedra, a monstrous serpent that brings storms and drought. Their battles in the sky were said to be the thunderstorms themselves. Albanian fairy tales also tell of E Bukura e Dheut, the Beauty of the Earth, a magical woman of the otherworld. These figures, part of the deep mythological layer of Albanian belief, stand behind many of the smaller superstitions still observed today.
Everyday Superstitions
Beyond the major life events, Albanian superstition shapes everyday behavior in smaller ways, and the household rules differ from one family to the next. Some are recorded in old sources: in Seltze, Durham was told that hair cut at the new moon soon turns white, so it should be cut while the moon is waning (Durham, High Albania). Many others are shared with neighboring countries and passed on by word of mouth rather than written down.
These everyday practices are often maintained in diaspora households even by people who do not consider themselves superstitious. They are absorbed in childhood and continue as a habit long after their origin is forgotten.
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Albanian Magic, Witches and Curses
When people search for “Albanian magic,” they usually mean three things: the evil eye, the witch figures of folklore, and charms. The evil eye was believed to be powerful: in Vukli, Durham was told that a man had recently stared at a bunch of grapes to prove his power, and the grapes withered and dropped (Durham, High Albania).
The best known witch is the shtriga, a woman believed to drain the blood of children in secret; Durham wrote that all the northern tribes believed in her. Charms were the answer to both. Besides beads and amulet cases, Durham recorded a charm from the Gjakova (Djakova) area: kill a snake, cut off its head with silver, dry it, wrap it with a silver medal of St. George and have it blessed, after which it was said to guard against these dangers and even against gunshot.
These are records of belief, not practices we recommend. Today most Albanians who keep a blue bead or a toy on the balcony treat it as a family habit or a mark of identity rather than literal magic.
What Edith Durham Recorded in the Northern Mountains
Some of the most detailed early descriptions of these beliefs come from the British traveler Edith Durham, who set out from Shkodër in May 1908 and published her account, High Albania, in London in 1909. She wrote down what she saw and what people told her, tribe by tribe. Her notes describe the northern highlands at that time, not every Albanian region.
Durham called the evil eye, which she spelled Syy kec, one of the curses of Albania, and listed the charms people used against it. Blue glass beads hung on the halters of most horses. Children had a coin tied on the forehead. Catholics wore crosses, saints’ medals and triangular amulet cases holding Latin texts written out by the priest, and the same cases were tied to the horns of cattle and the manes of horses.
She noticed protection in the landscape too. Near Baitza, crops were guarded by horses’ skulls set on poles. In Kthela, a priest’s beehives were fenced with ox and horse skulls, which he told her, laughing, were there to keep off the evil eye. In the graveyard at Baitza she saw a cross with three carved birds perched on it, a type she said was common in many parts of the country. Locals told her the bird was a dove and was there for beauty, while Durham herself read it as another guard against the evil eye.
Other beliefs in her book have nothing to do with envy:
- The shtriga: a woman believed to drain the blood of children in secret. Durham wrote that all the tribes believed in her, and that amulets were hung around babies’ heads and necks against both the shtriga and the evil eye.
- Night lights: devils were said to appear at night as fiery sparks that made travelers lose the way until the first cock-crow, after which they were powerless.
- Meteorite: a piece of a meteorite was carried as protection against gunshot.
- The open grave: in Dushmani she was told that a grave should not be dug ahead of time, that no one may step across it, and that it may not be left empty, so something made of iron was placed in it.
Reading the Future in Bones
Durham also described a form of fortune telling that she first saw in the mountains of Shpat, near Elbasan, and met again in the north. After a meal, a guest would hold a bone up to the light and read the markings in it. Only two bones would do: the breastbone of a fowl or the shoulder blade of a sheep or goat.
The rules she collected were strict. To read your own future, the animal had to be one you had raised, not one you had bought. The best bone of all was the breastbone of a black rooster with no white feathers. Red spots meant blood, and a hole in the line of marrow meant the owner’s death. At a house in Hoti, she watched a guest from Kastrat study the breastbone of the fowl from the meal and announce that it foretold no evil for the household.
Spring Garlic, Door Charms and Eggs for a Newborn
Durham returned to the subject in her 1928 book, Some Tribal Origins, Laws and Customs of the Balkans. There she wrote that in Albania evil spirits were thought to be most active in spring, and that garlic was tied around children’s necks on or about Shrove Tuesday as a precaution. In Shala, women tied a black cord with three knots to the doorposts, together with a pair of scissors, the wool-carding comb and some berries. Spring has its brighter customs as well, which we cover in our guide to Dita e Verës.
She also recorded a birth custom from both Shkodër and the mountains. Women neighbors visited the new mother with eggs, an even number for a boy and an odd number for a girl, and one egg was broken over the baby’s face to protect it from the evil eye. On the eagle, which she noted Albanians connect with their own name for their land, Durham could learn only what she called a vague idea that killing one is unlucky.
The Third Night and the Fates
The anthropologist Albert Doja, writing in the journal Anthropos in 2005, describes the belief that a child’s destiny is decided on the third night after birth, when three invisible old women come to the cradle. Citing the 19th century scholar Johann Georg von Hahn, he notes the preparations made for them: dogs kept out of the courtyard, doors left ajar, and three places set with silverware, a cup of honey with three almonds and three pieces of bread.
Doja records that in parts of the south these figures are called Fatat, Fatitë or Mirat, while in the northern mountains the same task falls to the Ora and the Zana. In the Dukagjin highlands, people distinguished a White One who brings good luck, a Yellow One who brings bad luck and a Black One who deals out death. Each person was also said to have an ora of their own from birth.
The same study covers birth omens. A baby born with a caul, in Albanian lindur me këmishë or “born in a chemise” in his translation, was considered lucky for life, and the caul was often sewn into a small pouch for the child to wear. In Devoll, in southeastern Albania, Doja cites a custom of burying the shell of an egg that had been dipped in the baby’s first bathwater.
Documented Beliefs at a Glance
| Belief or practice | Meaning given in the source | Documented by |
|---|---|---|
| Blue glass beads on horses, a coin on a child’s forehead | Protection from the evil eye | Durham, High Albania (1909) |
| Horse or ox skulls on poles around fields and beehives | Keeps the evil eye off crops and bees | Durham, High Albania (1909) |
| Reading the breastbone of a fowl or a sheep’s shoulder blade | Foretells the fate of the owner and family | Durham, High Albania (1909) |
| Iron placed in an open grave | A grave may not be left empty | Durham, High Albania (1909) |
| Garlic around children’s necks near Shrove Tuesday | Guards against evil spirits, thought most active in spring | Durham, Some Tribal Origins (1928) |
| Black cord with three knots, scissors and carding comb on the doorpost | Protects the house from shtrigas and bad spirits | Durham, Some Tribal Origins (1928) |
| An egg broken over a newborn’s face | Protection from the evil eye | Durham, Some Tribal Origins (1928) |
| Honey, almonds and bread set out on the third night | A welcome for the three Fates who decide the child’s destiny | Doja, Anthropos (2005), citing Hahn (1854) |
| Teddy bear or dordolec on a new or unfinished house | Draws the evil eye away from the house and family | Peterson-Bidoshi, Journal of American Folklore (2006) |
| Birth with a caul | Lifelong luck; the caul is kept as a charm | Doja, Anthropos (2005) |
Each of these was written down in a particular place and time. They show how wide the tradition is, but they do not mean every Albanian family follows them, then or now.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is syri keq?
Syri keq (also syri i keq) means “evil eye” in Albanian. It refers to the belief that admiration or envy can harm the person or thing it is aimed at. Traditional protections include blue glass beads, images of eyes, garlic, religious amulets and, on new houses, a teddy bear or doll.
Do Albanians still practice these superstitions today?
Yes. Many Albanian superstitions remain active in both Albania and the diaspora, especially around major life events like birth, marriage, and death. Younger and urban Albanians may practice them culturally rather than literally, but the traditions persist.
Where do Albanian superstitions come from?
They come from several layers: old Balkan folk religion shared with neighboring peoples (the house snake, for example, is also found among Greeks and Balkan Slavs), Christian and Islamic practice, and newer habits such as the teddy bear on the balcony. Researchers find the same core beliefs among Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox Albanians, which suggests they were kept alive by families and communities rather than by any one religion.
Is the house snake a real Albanian belief?
Yes. The house snake (gjarpri i shtëpisë or bolla e shtëpisë) is a household guardian spirit in Albanian tradition, and a 2024 study by Oksana Tchoekha documents the same belief among Greeks and Balkan Slavs, including feeding the snake and burying one killed by accident.
Why do Albanians hang teddy bears on houses?
To protect the house from the evil eye. The toy is meant to catch an envious look so it does not land on the house or the family. It is a modern form of the dordolec, a scarecrow-like figure, and a 2006 study in the Journal of American Folklore links its spread to new private property after communism.
Why is garlic used for babies in Albanian tradition?
Garlic is a traditional protection against the evil eye and evil spirits. Edith Durham recorded in 1928 that garlic was tied around Albanian children’s necks in spring, when spirits were thought to be most active, and families today may still keep a clove near a newborn.
What is a shtriga?
A shtriga is a witch of Albanian folklore, believed to drain the blood of children in secret. Edith Durham found that the northern tribes she visited in 1908 all believed in her, and that babies wore amulets against both the shtriga and the evil eye.
Sources
- University of Pennsylvania Digital Library: High Albania by M. Edith Durham (1909), full text
- Internet Archive: Some Tribal Origins, Laws, and Customs of the Balkans by M. E. Durham (1928)
- Anthropos: Mythology and Destiny by Albert Doja (2005)
- Kristin Peterson-Bidoshi, “The Dordolec: Albanian House Dolls and the Evil Eye,” Journal of American Folklore 119, no. 473 (2006): 337 to 355
- Alexander A. Novik, “The Evil Eye Among the Albanians of the Balkans: Damage, Power, Good and Bad Intentions,” Traditional Culture 25, no. 4 (2024): 105 to 115
- Oksana V. Tchoekha, “The Mythological Character of the Household Guardian Serpent and its Names in Modern Greek, Albanian and Balkan Slavic Traditional Cultures,” Traditional Culture 25, no. 2 (2024): 151 to 160
- Fabiana Chillemi, “The Albanian wedding: 4 days of tradition and celebration,” Il Nuovo Mediterraneo (10 December 2025)
- Paolina Elezi, “Albanian weddings: the old way,” Balkan Hotspot
- “9 Albanian Wedding Traditions That’ll Have You Partying All Week,” Wedded Wonderland
Author: Dardanë Halimi
Dardanë Halimi is a writer and communications professional with an M.A. in Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication from James Madison University. Her work focuses on storytelling, digital content, higher education, and strategic communication, with experience writing for academic, nonprofit, and marketing organizations in both the United States and Kosovo.
