http://www.home.no/dukagjin...


To be sure, there are established scholars - be they geographers, historians, anthropologists, or serious travelers and explorers - who have expressed opinions of a very different kind: H.N. Brailsford went even so far as to maintain that "from Byron's day downward it would be hard to find a Western European who has learned to know the Albanians without admiring them" (The New Republic, March 1, 1919).

The Epirotes having given him on the occasion the name of Eagle, he said, "If I am an eagle, you have made me one" for it is upon your arms, upon your wings, that I have risen so high." p.278 Pirro(Pyrrhus)
Plutarch's Lives by Plutarco, John Laghorne, William Laghorne

Lord Byron, in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, observed the "...Albanian kirtled to the knee", and T.S. Finlay in his Travels through Greece and Albania states, unequivocally, that "It was the fame of the Albanians which induced the modern Greeks to adopt the Albanian kilt as their national costume."

"The Albanian forms a distinct race among the nations of Europe. They have been supposed by some to be the representatives of the Pelasgians. They call themselves Shkipetar. Some suppose them to have occupied the regions they now inhabit before the days of homer, and that they are the lineal descendants of the race to which the ancient Epirots and Macedonians belonged as cognate tribes. Alexander the Great must, According to these archaeologists, have spoken an ancient Albanian Dialect at his riotous banquets with his Macedonian officers.
The researches of modern philology have established beyond question that the Albanian language is an early offset from the Sanscrit, and that its grammar was complete at as old a date as the odlest Greek dialect. Nearly the same boundary separates the Hellenic from the non-Hellenic population at the present day as in ancient times. Thucydides calls the Amphilochians who dwelt at the head of the Gulf of Arta barbarians. Strabo says that one race inhabited the whole country, from the Acroceraunian Mountains to the borders of Thessaly and to the plain of Pelagonia, under the name of Epirots or Macedonians, for both spoke the same language."
(History of the Greek revolution, Volume 1 By George Finlay p.41-42)

Balkan Background, Bernard Newman, 2007, p.231: "Albania is the youngest country of the Balkans, but its people are the oldest."

[Strabo, Geography, Book VII, Chapter 7]
"The Amphilochians are Epeirotes; and so are the peoples who are situated above them and border on the Illyrian mountains, inhabiting a rugged country — I mean the Molossi, the Athamanes, the Aethices, the Tymphaei, the Orestae, and also the Paroraei and the Atintanes, some of them being nearer to the Macedonians and others to the Ionian Gulf. It is said that Orestes once took possession of Orestias — when in exile on account of the murder of his mother — and left the country bearing his name; and that he also founded a city and called it Argos Oresticum. But the Illyrian tribes which are near the southern part of the mountainous country and those which are above the Ionian Gulf are intermingled with these peoples; for above Epidamnus and Apollonia as far as the Ceraunian Mountains dwell the Bylliones, the Taulantii, the Parthini, and the Brygi.
(...) Then, because one tribe or another was always getting the mastery over others, they all ended in the Macedonian empire, except a few who dwelt above the Ionian Gulf. And in fact the regions about Lyncus, Pelagonia, Orestias, and elimeia, used to be called Upper Macedonia, though later on they were by some also called Free Macedonia. But some go so far as to call the whole of the country Macedonia, as far as Corcyra, at the same time stating as their reason that in tonsure, language, short cloak, and other things of the kind, the usages of the inhabitants are similar, although, they add, some speak both languages."

Their religion makes little difference in their manner or conduct.
~Lord Byron, to his mother on a letter from Prevesa, November 12, 1809~.

There is a spirit of independence and a love of their country, in the whole people, that, in a great measure, does away the vast distinction, observable in other parts of Turkey, between the followers of the two religions. For when the natives of other provinces, upon being asked who they are, will say, "we are Turks"(meaning muslim) or, "we are christians", a man of this country answers,
" I am an Albanian"
~J. C. Hobhouse Brughton, A Journey Through Albania 1809-1810, page 131~

The misionary review of the world" p. 780: "Albanians...They are the direct descedants of the ancient Illyrians, Macedonians, Epirotes, the offspring of the Pelasgians...".

"To take one interesting case, the Albanian language (spoken north of Greece) was not written down until about the 15th century AD, yet Ptolemy mentions the people in the first century BC." The linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests