Nëna e Vatrës (Nana e Votrës) is the Albanian hearth mother — protector of the domestic fireplace (vatër/votër) and a personification of household fire cult, ancestor continuity, and family life centered on the woman of the house. She is sometimes classed as hyjni e zjarrit të vatrës (“deity of the hearth fire”). Worship site is the hearth of each house, not a civic sanctuary (Poghirc; Gjoni; Tirta). Comparative Hestia/Vesta parallels hold for function, not temple architecture; Gjoni notes closer analogy to household-eternal fire cults. Folk rules are domestic and concrete. The fireplace should be cleaned in the evening; if left dirty, Nëna e Vatrës grows angry. Household members owe respectful behavior at the fire. At feasts, offerings are made by casting prepared food into the fire and around the hearth (Tirta; Gjoni). Appearance and fate overlap (Elsie): envisaged as an old woman spinning or combing grey hair beside the fireplace; sometimes identified with the three Mira who set a child’s fate on the third night after birth. Elsie also records an ambivalent house-demon reading: if children are up at night near the hearth while she combs, she may seize them and pick their eyes with a metal comb — a domestic night-taboo, not a separate blood-witch story. Kept distinct from: vitore (Gjarpri i Vatrës), the sacral household serpent / ancestor–fortune guardian (in some traditions Vitore also appears as an old woman like Nëna e Vatrës; serpent form stays on vitore); and enji / zjarri, the fire-name and deified Fire complex (weekday e enjte, calendar fires, Zjarri i Vatrës as Sun’s offspring and lineage continuity). Nëna e Vatrës is the maternal hearth guardian within that fire–hearth cluster, not the Thursday name itself. Critical disambiguation: dialectal epithet Shtriga e Vatrës / Votrës means the hearth hag/mother under this entry. It must not be conflated with shtriga (the vampiric blood-witch who drains children).