Death Rituals in Albania An anthropological review

The structure of death rituals differs consistently among regions of Albania. The death ritual contains very strong patriarchal features in the Northern part of the country; in southern regions (next to the seashore) and in Albanian communities living elsewhere in the Mediterranean basin, the features are more animistic; the females playing an important role in grief proclamation, suggesting a more matriarchaloriented ritual organization. The wailing of men in the northern Albania, the so-called gjama, is an organized ritual of crying for the dead person, and till recently it has been accompanied with self-punishing behaviors such as face scratching etc. The wailing of women is acceptable and codified as well in the northern areas (the so-called wailing of milk). A different situation, probably related to the social organization and to the gender role of females, is apparent in southern Albania. The death rituals hereby are mainly accompanied from the socalled “kuja”, (wailing through words) more impressive and loquacious than the northern masculine “gjama”. Similarities with Greek and Hellenic rituals (“Thrênos” and “Goös”) are suggested; probably embedding multiple cross-acting and inter-related influences. Keyword: spirituality, grief, funerals, death rituals, wailing, mourning process. INTRODUCTION The anthropology refers about panoply of rituals, positions, 1 Lecturer of Human and Behavioral Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tirana 2 Professor of Bioethics and Forensic Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tirana Antrocom Online Journal of Anthropology 2010, vol. 6. n. 2 ISSN 1973-2880 Vyshka & Çipi – Death Rituals in Albania death-coping mechanisms and grief behaviors. The death has been always considered as a marginal phenomenon between the terrestrial existence, the hope for eternity and resurrection, and the fear of oblivion or hell suffering. When considering death rituals, dying coping mechanisms and the process of grief, obviously a departing position is particularly important, as it differs not only und an intercultural point of view, but also from an author to another (Rodger, 1991). On the other hand, particular emphasis in studying in a detailed form the death rituals has been pointed out, as long as such rituals might reflect directly or indirectly the social structure, the spirituality of the culture, the meaning of the world, and internal psychological world of a people (Morris, 1992). Pelasgian, Albanian and other pre-Hellenic or Hellenic rituals, such as described from Herodotus and found in Aeschylus, overlap in several aspects (Herodotus, 440 B.C.; Aeschylus, 472 B.C.). The lament and the wailing for the dead has a dichotomist manifestation in two geographical extremes of Albanian territory, since the wailing process and verbal laments are led from males in North, and from females in South. Similarities with the expression of grief from Greek men (the so-called Thrênos, θρήνος) or from Greek women (the so-called Goös, γόος, γόοι) are impressive. In Homer, the lament of Menelaus and of Penelope, offer a very similar situation, but the theme remains the same: there can be a womanly way of grieving, and a manly wailing. The γόοι of Penelope is described in Odysseus, Book XIX (Homer, 800 B.C.). The Homeric language offers therefore a precise distinction between the Thrênos and the Goös: it is not the same word, and it will not be the same action or reaction. Since Thrênos is performed from men and Goös from women, these lament forms should have been related to precise situations; should have had precise consequences, and socially would be controlled to the larger extent that the grief expression can ever be controlled, if at all. ‘Persians’ of Aeschylus, put into scene in 472 B.C., describes the evocation of a dead person through a necromantic ritual, mixed up with witchery and religiosity. The choir laments and recalls the spirits of the dead; the exclamations in the form of γόοι are in fact the equivalent of women’s Goös, highly emotional and full of tension. The difference between these two kinds of wailing and grief expression is described as follows: ‘Thrênos was a more controlled and orderly expression of grief. Already in Homer, it consisted of composed songs, sometimes sung by professional mourners, and was the type of lament most often associated Antrocom Online Journal of Anthropology 2010, vol. 6. n. 2 ISSN 1973-2880 236 Vyshka & Çipi – Death Rituals in Albania with men. Goös, in contrast, was spontaneous and emotionally powerful – sometimes excessively so’ (Johnston, 1999). In fact, the Goös (lament of women) have taken the value of a dangerous instrument, of particular importance in cases of violent death: the audience could therefore get informed in an urgent way not only about the suffering of the lamenting women, but also about the injustice and the brutality suffered from the dead. ‘The Goöi (γόοι) of women, sung in the presence of male survivors, could drive a cycle of murder and counter-murder’ (Johnston, 1999). Under such circumstances, in an attempt to avoid a vicious circle of personal, familiar and tribal revenges, there have been adopted strict rules since archaic times. Such rules were trying to discipline the funeral practices; among other elements, the number of wailing women was restricted together with the time length of the lament. Furthermore the lament should take place only in particular places (Johnston, 1999). The wailing process and laments, under a psychological point of view, are not only aiming at the pacifying of the dead’s soul, but as said above, also toward raising awareness on a possible brutality suffered from the dead. The laments are considered also a magical instrument for recalling the dead, since ‘... the same specialist who could send the souls to the nether world [...] could call them up again’ (Graf, 1999). SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF MOURNERS, SELFPUNISHMENT AND COLLECTIVE WAILING The Albanian tradition has expanded the restrictions and the formal character of a death ritual in several aspects, since the wailing and lament had to be performed not only in particular places, but also in particular time points: no lament would ever be heard after the sunset, and it was considered a blameful thing to cry during the night. Such a regulated behavior on the other hand is contradicting the nightly crying performed in an epical song, the so-called Ajkuna's Lament, where an epical female figure (Ajkuna) laments the death of her son. The full text of Ajkuna’s lament, and respective commentaries, are available (Elsie, 2004; Ajkuna’s lament, Albanian Epos). The death is considered a divine curse, and Ajkuna laments through using the same way by imprecating a celestial object: “the mother began to curse the moon / May your light expire, old sir moon.” (Ajkuna’s lament, Albanian Epos). The epos in its narrative function seems to contradict the written rules of sociality; such an epical phenomenology is widely discussed Antrocom Online Journal of Anthropology 2010, vol. 6. n. 2 ISSN 1973-2880 237 Vyshka & Çipi – Death Rituals in Albania (Horkheimer, 1947). Together with apparent similarities with the Hellenic tradition of wailing and lament, the verbal expressions of wailing process in Albanian reflect as well this dichotomist separation between the crying of a man and the crying of a woman. The Albanian tradition depicts the highlander wailing in terms of a gjama, i.e. a kind of particular masculine crying, sound and controlled, very similar to the Hellenic Thrênos. The woman wailing is named kuja, very similar to the Hellenic γόοι; although already present in the Homeric language and for many authors considered as a nostalgic and painful way to express sorrow for someone’s absence, in fact, γόοι in Greek like kuja in Albanian, respect the onomatopoeia. Both words that depict the wailing of women consist of a lengthy onomatopoeic repetition of consonants shouted during the cry of women: o-o-o-o in γόοι (Greek), and u-u-u-u in kuja (Albanian). These elements can be traced since very remote times in Albanian regions where the performance of the wailing of men (the so-called wailing of blood) and the wailing of women (the so-called wailing of milk) will suggest a strict gender role in the process. Large collection of data and comparative points of view are available (Jahoda, 1977; Scupin, 1992; Taylor, 1992; Durham, 1929). The collective mourning and self-punishment behaviors related, or being part of a death ritual, are as well described in the written history. Characteristics of the collective wailing of males, of Egyptian and from other origins, are described from Herodotus (Herodotus, ‘The history’, Vol. 1, Book 2, no. 36). The ancient historical describes also the self-punishment behaviors of antiquity. This is probably one of the most ancient descriptions of a massive mourning and burial; thus selfpunishing or self-mutilating behaviors performed from Egyptians and “other men” (‘faces with mud’; ‘beating themselves’; ‘cutting the hair short’) seem to be an even more ancient occurrence, than the Greek, Pelasgian or Albanian historiography might otherwise suggest (Herodotus, ‘The history’, Vol. 1, Book 2, no. 85). The collective mourning has ever since become a structural part of the Balkan process of mourning and wailing for the dead persons. More than a mere process of grief, it has become a coping methodology, such as a famous narrator will describe later in the history of a Balkan city “...between the skies, the river and the hills, generation after generation learnt not to mourn overmuch what the troubled waters had borne away...” (Andrić, 1977). During the XIX and XX century Albanian Catholic clergy Antrocom Online Journal of Anthropology 2010, vol. 6. n. 2 ISSN 1973-2880 238 Vyshka & Çipi – Death Rituals in Albania collected a rich ethnographic documentation of mourning acclamations and blood rituals. The blood rituals were performed through face and chest scratching, pulling off the hair and other gestures, all of them initially aimed at selfmutilation and therefore, accompanied with a facial or more rarely a presternal bleeding of inconstant severity. The best collection of social and moral rules governing northern Albania is the Kanun, published in several editions (Gjeçovi, 2001). The rules of wailing process are detailed in several paragraphs. The Kanun, being mainly a social and juridical code, has been extensively and erroneously misinterpreted as the blood feud code or law; in fact the blood tribal rules administering the process of revenge in cases of perpetrated murder, are only a part of the Kanun. On the other hand the process of wailing and the ceremonials of death in southern parts of Albania have not been published as a single code, but rather observed and described from several authors, mainly Albanian (Tirta, 1996; Tirta, 2003; Llambrini, 1974). Some authors have shown interest also in profiling the infrastructure arrangement and the spiritual reflections it provides, through the cemetery structures and rituals differences (Bowden, 2008). The Albanian process of lament and wailing has safeguarded some of the psychological and magical elements that are definitely unavoidable; nevertheless the evolutionary and the socio-hierarchical scope seem by far much more important in the entire system. The socio-hierarchical and the sociability purpose of a ritual wailing has been elsewhere suggested (Urban, 1988). The evolutionary aspect has to be considered in terms of a merely defensive reaction (murder and countermurder) like some authors explain it (Johnston, 1999); it can quite well reflect the transition from a matriarchal or prepatriarchal society to a strictly patriarchal one; or it can merely suggest a gender role partition in the entire wailing process (Herzfeld, 1993). The gender role partition is more kin to the socio-hierarchical context, thus a wailing woman somehow pursues her attempts for emancipation (Herzfeld, 1993). The female lamentation paradoxically might serve even to disempower further the women, through narratives of suffering