The story of Gazivoda Lake

Beneath this calm water lie traces of older worlds: in the lake, tombstones, Serbian Orthodox churches and 19th-century houses have been found, and a team of Russian archaeologists has taken on the task of mapping them. This is Gazivoda Lake, called Ujman Lake in Albanian, an artificial lake formed by damming the Ibar River.

It lies about 15 kilometres northwest of Mitrovica, between the Rogozna and Mokna mountains. The idea of a reservoir for hydroelectric power dates back to the 1960s, and the lake was created between 1973 and 1978. It cost 90 million dollars, half paid by a Yugoslav infrastructure fund and the other half by World Bank loans.

Its surface covers about 12 square kilometres, of which 9.2 lie in Kosovo and 2.7 in Serbia, and it stretches for 18 kilometres. Since the break-up of Yugoslavia and the independence of Kosovo in 2008, Serbia and Kosovo have disagreed over who owns it, and each side sets out its own arguments.