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Old Belief
← Maahinen
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

The cattle are the part of this belief that people claimed to have seen, and the sources agree on one thing about them: they are good.

Basis: Harva's account of the earth folk's cattle · 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 →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 →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 →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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