Zana e Malit

Above a stream in the Accursed Mountains, the early light turns water into sheet-glass and the goats step through it without sound. Their horns flash gold when they catch the sun. Behind them, half-hidden, a young woman bathes in a place where no woman should be alone, and the cold of the snowmelt does not seem to touch her. Anyone who blunders onto the scene has already lived too long.

She is the zana e malit, the fairy of the mountain, and in the high country of northern Albania and Kosovo, every peak has one. The phrase is plural by implication: a zana belongs to her mountain the way a spring belongs to the rock it comes out of. Move from one massif to the next, and the spirit changes. Different moods, different animals, a different stretch of stream where she cannot be intruded upon. Children in those villages learn the rules early. Where not to walk at certain hours. That the mountains have residents older than the family does, and that some of them are watching.

The name reaches further back than written Albanian, kin to the Illyrian goddess Thana attested in Roman-era votive inscriptions, and cognate with Latin Diana, herself a moon-and-forest goddess whose roots run all the way down to the Proto-Indo-European word for sky and brightness. Whether the zana is a borrowing, a survival, or a parallel of an ancestral root, the answer shifts from one scholar to the next. The simpler version, in the mountains, is that the zana have always been there. They are what the place is.

Three wild goats with horns of beaten gold travel at her side, and tradition holds that these animals are the source of her power, which is why no zana goes anywhere without them. She is described as fair, with long unbound hair, athletic and built for the terrain, and a stillness that mortals find unnerving. Her eyes can paralyse. The Gheg verb shetuar names what happens to the man caught looking: he locks. The body forgets how to be a body. A whole expression survives in modern Albanian, trim si zana, brave as a zana, used for any human who can match a fraction of what she is in the moment of fight.

Her favour is what the warrior wants. In the oral epic cycle Kângë Kreshnikësh, the Songs of the Frontier Warriors, zanas appear at the side of the Albanian highland heroes, particularly the brothers Muji and Halili, granting strength of a kind only otherwise found in a drangue. The bargain is rarely spoken outright. A man does a small kindness for a zana, often without realising who she is, and she returns it many times over. In one tale the young Muji, lost in a thunderstorm, finds two cradles beside a great boulder and rocks the unseen children to sleep through the night. At dawn the zanas reveal themselves and offer him a choice between wealth, knowledge, and the strength of a hero. He chooses strength. They give it to him at the breast, and what he carries back down the mountain afterwards is less a gift than a transfusion.

Their other face is harder. The zana of Mount Vizitor, watching from her summit, witnesses the murder of the maiden Tringa by Slav bandits. She carries the body down to the alpine pasture and buries it under a linden, then issues a call to arms that pulls every able man in the region to the field at Noshiq for vengeance. In another canto of Lahuta e Malcís, the Highland Lute, the zana of the Sharr Mountains keeps watch over a gathering of nobles rallying against the Treaty of San Stefano in 1878, listening to their speeches with delight. The zanas are credited, in popular tradition, with sitting invisibly through the speeches of the League of Prizren that same year. They go where the country is being decided.

There is a ghost story attached to them too. In the folktale called The Lover’s Grave, a young captain named Bedri meets a zana on the road. She tells him to beware a wooden beam and a doe, and warns him that he will not be safe at the root. He prostrates himself, she reassures him, and they part. Bedri, being a young captain in a folktale, ignores all of it and walks straight into his fate.

Foretelling is not the half of it. In the northern highlands the zana arrive in threes on the night a child is born, and what they settle between them is the whole shape of a life. Among the people of the Dukagjini highlands the three are told apart by colour: e Bardha, the White One, who deals out good fortune; e Verdha, the Yellow One, who deals out bad luck and ill-wishing; and e Zeza, the Black One, who fixes the death. The same council sits in the south under a different name, the fatí, and a personal ora shadows each individual for life. A cradle, three visitors, and a decision nobody in the house is allowed to hear.

What they actually look like is less fixed than the warrior stories make it sound. Some accounts describe a zana as winged, or able to take the form of a bird; others as simply a beautiful young woman whose voice carries an entire register of wild things, since one possible etymology of zanë comes from the Albanian word for voice. The voice-meaning matters. It opens onto the figure of the muse. A zana sings, and the song settles a battle, calms a beast, heals a wound, or stops a man dead.

Their powers, then, follow from what they are. The mountain belongs to her, so she commands its animals, its springs, the weather around the peaks, and the will of any human who steps into her water. Her gaze can petrify. Her favour can make a shepherd into a giant. Her grief can summon armies. The limits follow the same logic. A zana is only as strong as her mountain. Cut down her forest, foul her stream, hunt out her deer, and she weakens with the place. Harm what she protects, and the petrifying eye turns. The arrangement is reciprocal and not particularly merciful. Travellers who treat the high country as their hosts may come home with a story. Those who treat it as their possession do not.

In modern Albanian the expression brave as a zana is still in use, and the mountains are still walked carefully.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Zana e Malit?

Zana e Malit, known equally as simply the zana, is a mountain fairy of Albanian folklore who guards a single peak along with its springs, forests and wild animals. In northern Albania and Kosovo every mountain is said to have its own. She is best known for granting chosen warriors superhuman strength and for paralysing anyone who intrudes on her.

Where does Zana e Malit live?

Zana e Malit lives on one specific mountain in the highlands of northern Albania and Kosovo, and she is bound to that place rather than roaming. Every peak has its own zana, and the spirit changes from one massif to the next. She is most often encountered bathing in a mountain stream.

What does Zana e Malit look like?

Zana e Malit is described as a fair young woman with long unbound hair, athletic and built for the terrain, escorted by three wild goats with golden horns. Some accounts give her wings or the ability to take the form of a bird. The goats are the constant detail, and tradition holds that they are the source of her power.

What powers does Zana e Malit have?

Zana e Malit can petrify a person with a glance, command the animals, springs and weather of her mountain, and grant a mortal strength comparable to a drangue. In the northern highlands the zana are also credited with deciding a newborn’s fate, arriving in threes on the night of a birth. Her limit is the mountain itself, since damaging her forest or stream weakens her along with it.

Is Zana e Malit dangerous to humans?

Zana e Malit is dangerous to anyone who intrudes on her or damages her territory, and the danger is literal rather than symbolic. Those who stumble on her bathing risk being petrified where they stand. She is generous to people who treat the high country with respect, and the arrangement is strictly reciprocal.

Related Entries

Bardha, Drangue, Kulshedra, Stihi, Perëndi, Albanian Mythology, Zână, Vila, Samodiva, Oread, Artemis