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Old Belief
← Metsänpeitto
Rusted cow bell lying on its side in deep moss with its unbuckled leather strap beside it, mushrooms and bilberries growing around it. A cow bell left behind, the kind of find attributed to metsanpeitto.

the bell in the moss

Animals went into the cover too. A bell on the ground with no animal attached is the kind of object the accounts turn on.

Basis: Livestock disappearances attributed to the cover · AI-generated

About the Metsänpeitto

Not a creature but a condition: the forest closes over a person, who is still there, still walking, and cannot be seen or heard by anyone looking for them.

  • Finnish Literature Society, Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot (SKVR) (1908)The charm corpus, which includes the texts used to release a person or an animal from the forest's cover.
  • Martti Haavio, Suomalainen mytologia (1967)The standard synthesis, including the väki of the forest and the states it was understood to cause.

Read the full Metsänpeitto entry →

More of this creature

Rank after rank of bare spruce trunks in blue-grey mist, mossy ground between them, no path and no landmark anywhere in the view. The forest where a search fails, which is where metsanpeitto begins.the search line →Grey woollen jacket spread inside out with its pale lining upward on a boulder in a forest clearing, a pair of leather boots standing beside it. Clothing turned inside out, the remedy against metsanpeitto.clothes turned inside out →

Similar creatures

Leshyslavic · spiritTikbalangfilipino · spiritTapiofinnish · nature-guardianAjatarfinnish · forest-spiritHiisifinnish · place-spiritLempofinnish · force