Albania

Albania has high, rocky mountains.

The tallest one is called Korab. Thick forests grow in the north. Big lakes are near the borders. Summers are warm and dry.

The North Albanian Alps cover the north of the country. They are the most rugged part of Albania, thickly forested and with few people. The highest peak, Mount Korab, rises to about 2,750 meters in the east. In the south, bare limestone ridges are used as pasture for animals.

Albania's longest river, the Drin, is about 280 kilometers long. Its biggest lakes are Lake Shkodër in the northwest and Lakes Ohrid and Prespa on the eastern border. Summers are warm and dry and winters mild and wet, but the eastern mountains have cold winters.

The North Albanian Alps, an extension of the Dinaric Alps, approach 2,700 m and are the country's most rugged, heavily forested and sparsely populated region. The central mountain region is gentler and more densely settled; at its eastern edge the gypsum block of Mount Korab reaches 2,752 m in Britannica. Southern limestone ranges up to 2,500 m are bare or thinly covered with Mediterranean shrubs, oaks and pines. The fertile western plains run nearly 200 km along the Adriatic and up to 50 km inland.

The Drin (about 280 km) rises in Kosovo; the Seman, Shkumbin and Vjosë drain the central plains. The climate is Mediterranean in the west (Sarandë averages about 24 °C in July and 9 °C in January) and more continental in the east (Peshkopi about −1 °C in January). Precipitation ranges from more than 2,500 mm a year in the North Albanian Alps to less than 760 mm along much of the eastern border, and forests cover about one-third of the land.

Wolves and foxes live in Albania.

Bears live there too, and goat-like animals called chamois. Many birds come to the warm coast. Trout swim in mountain streams.

Hunting once took a heavy toll on Albania's wild animals. In the 1990s, new hunting laws and nature preserves were set up to protect jackals, wolves and foxes, and the even rarer wild boars, bears and chamois.

The mild coast attracts large numbers of migrating birds, including swallows, storks, ducks, geese and pelicans. Sardines and mullet swim in the coastal waters, and trout live in mountain streams and lakes.

Britannica notes that unrestricted hunting took a heavy toll on Albanian wildlife until hunting laws and nature preserves were introduced in the 1990s to protect the remaining jackals, wolves and foxes and the rarer wild boars, bears and chamois. Vegetation follows altitude: Mediterranean shrubs such as laurel and myrtle on the coastal lowlands, oak forests above them, beech and pine from about 900 m, and Alpine pastures above the timberline.

The mild coastal climate draws great numbers of migratory birds, among them swallows, storks, ducks, geese and pelicans. Sardines and mullet live in coastal waters and trout in the streams and lakes of the mountains.

About 2.3 million people live in Albania.

They speak Albanian. People in the north and south speak in slightly different ways. Singers in Albania sing together in many parts at once.

Albanian is a very unusual language. It is the only language left in its own branch of the big Indo-European language family, and it has borrowed words from Latin, Greek, Turkish, Italian and Slavic languages. Its two main dialects are Geg in the north and Tosk in the south, and speakers of both understand each other easily.

Albanian folk iso-polyphony is a kind of singing in which soloists sing a melody and a countermelody while a group holds a long, steady note called a drone. It is sung at weddings, harvest feasts and festivals, and UNESCO lists it as intangible cultural heritage, a living tradition worth protecting.

Albanian (shqip), regarded as a descendant of the extinct Illyrian language, is the only surviving member of its branch of the Indo-European family. Its two principal dialects, Geg north of the Shkumbin River and Tosk to the south, are mutually intelligible; a Roman-alphabet orthography was adopted only in 1908, and a unified standard based on Tosk was set by a congress in Tirana in 1972. The two main subgroups of Albanians are the Gegs of the north and the Tosks of the south.

Albania is predominantly Muslim by heritage after nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule; in the early 21st century about half the population was nominally Muslim, about one-fifth Orthodox and about one-tenth Roman Catholic, and Britannica notes that many people live largely secular lives. The communist government banned religious observance in 1967; freedom of worship returned in 1990. UNESCO inscribed Albanian folk iso-polyphony, with two solo parts over a choral drone, in 2008.