In the book “The Rule of Law in Comparative Perspective” by Mortimer Sellers and Tadeusz Tomaszewski, published 2010, the authors suggests that the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini has elements of pre-Christian values, such as animism, manism, totemism and even ancestor worship.

Cited:

“The Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit is the most widely known comprehensive summary of traditional Albanian law ever published in Albanian language. The customary law of the “Kanuni” was divided into 1263 paragraphs, gathered into twelve books. The Kanuni regulate both civil and crimi-nal issues. Gjeçovi’s collection also includes the Appendix “Shembuj në Kanun të veçanta (The Examples from the Canon of Lekë Dukagjini), which illustrate how the Canons had been adapted to suit the evolving needs of Kosova and Northern Albania.

Numerous Albanian customs have been carefully collected and recorded in this collection. Although Gjeçovi recorded Northern Albanian tradi-tional law in its fairly late stages of development, there are also significant survivals of an earlier way of life, such as the rules governing the birth of a child, blood brotherhood, wedding customs, death and burial custom, and customs in extended family groups etc.

The stratification of this unwritten body of law across the various historical ages can be easily observed through the mixing of powerful pre-Christian motifs with motifs from the Christian era. Likewise, it embodies customs that can be connected with manism, animism and totemism.

The tribes of the northern areas preserved and respected the Kanun as having priority over any other legal system, despite the fact that over time both national law and Church legislation made attempts to supplant it. The Kanun lived on as an alternative or supplementary body of law to Albania’s national law.

This helped the mountain tribes to preserve their identity, neutrality, and way of life in the face of centralizing incursions. Unfortunately this has also meant the preservation of certain retrograde tendencies in customary law, such as discrimination against women.

Until recently, Gjeçovi’s collection of the Canon of Lekë Dukagjini, has been studied primarily by those interested in oral literature. However, this work is also important for legal research.

The Kanun has the following cultural features:

1. There is no state
2. A kinship system Is great
3. A kinship is transcendental containing both the living and the dead
4. The kin is ethically obliged to keep its existence in the community
5. Animism, totemism, and ancestor worship is important
6. The ethos of the warrior is important 
7. Spoken words are preferred to written ones”

What is the history of 19th century Albanian animism?

The area seems unexplored but i found one source: In the book “Tito Lifts the Curtain: The Story of Yugoslavia Today” by Hallam Tennyson from 1955, we can read:

“I met one student in Zagreb, Radomir, a Croatian Serb , whose great-great-grandparents had been Albanian nomads converted in Bosnia from animism to Serbian Orthodoxy .”

Sources

The Rule of Law in Comparative Perspective. Mortimer Sellers, Tadeusz Tomaszewski. 2010.

“Tito Lifts the Curtain: The Story of Yugoslavia Today”. Hallam Tennyson 1955. https://books.google.se/books?hl=sv&id=xiENAAAAIAAJ&dq=Albanian+nomads&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=animism