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Old Belief
← Maahinen
Woman in a long undyed wool overdress standing with her back to the viewer on deep moss between spruce and birch trunks in a dark Finnish forest at dusk. A maahinen standing in the wood, seen from behind.

seen once

The accounts almost never give a face. What they describe is somebody standing in the wood who was not standing there a moment before, and who does not turn round.

Basis: Finnish earth-folk belief · AI-generated

About the Maahinen

The people who live under the ground you are standing on, and whose ceiling is your yard, which is why what you pour out matters.

  • Finnish Literature Society, Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot (SKVR) (1908)The collected oral poetry, including the charms used to treat the skin afflictions attributed to the earth folk.
  • Martti Haavio, Suomalainen mytologia (1967)The standard synthesis of Finnish folk belief, including the underground households and the obligations toward them.
  • Risto Pulkkinen, Suomalainen kansanusko: samaaneista saunatonttuihin (2014)Sorts the invisible company of Finnish belief into those who own a place and those who merely live in it, and puts the earth folk firmly among the second.
  • Uno Harva, Suomalaisten muinaisusko (1948)The older standard survey, and the source for the earth folk's cattle, their marriages with the living and the several layers of belief underneath them.
  • Lauri Simonsuuri (ed.), Myytillisiä tarinoita (1947)The collected belief legends, including the visits to the earth folk's house and what a guest there must not do.
  • Matti Sarmela, Suomen perinneatlas (1994)Dates the strata, and places the earth folk as neighbours late rather than early in the tradition.

Read the full Maahinen entry →

More of this creature

Close view of dry trodden yard earth split by a deep narrow crack running the full height of the frame, grass tufts at the corners and a rusted spike on the ground. The yard floor that is the maahiset's ceiling.the ground under the yard →Wooden pail lying on its side against the stone footing of a log building, wash water spilled into the bare soil and running away down a worn channel in the grass. The one place waste water is poured, so that it does not land on the maahiset.where the water is thrown →Narrow timber-framed doorway set into a grassy earth bank in a spruce forest at night, firelight inside showing packed earth walls, a beamed ceiling of split logs and a table holding a bowl and a loaf, a woman standing in the opening. The door of a maahinen household in the hillside.the door in the hillside →Two cows grazing on moss in a Finnish forest clearing at dusk, one brown and close to the viewer and one white further off, with a man in an undyed linen tunic and woven leg wrappings standing apart from them at the right. The cattle of the maahiset, grazing above ground.the cattle →Pale wooden bowl heaped with dark crumbled soil on a scrubbed table, a crumpled cloth behind it, a dry leaf and a pale shell on the boards. Soil used against maan viha, the earth's anger attributed to the maahiset.earth in the bowl →

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