Hiisi

Hiisis (root: hiisi, plural hiidet) are a kind of tutelary spirits in mythologies of the Baltic Sea area, especially in Finland. In Christian tradition, they are most often considered to be malicious or at least very horrifying. They are found near salient promontories, ominous crevasses, large boulders, potholes, woods, hills, and other awesome geographical features or rough terrain. Originally, the term meant "holy place". In the related Estonian language 'Hiis' still means sacred forest.

The eponymous chief Hiisi is helped by a number of smaller hiisis in the Kalevala. In Poems 13-14, Lemminkäinen pursues the chief Hiisi's elk.

"Hiisi" was also one of the twelve sons of Kaleva, the great king of Kainuu in Kalevala. Those sons were later transformed into twelve constellations in the sky.

Later the original aspect of nature's awesomeness inherent in the hiisis was diminished, and they passed into folklore as purely evil spirits vaguely analogous to trolls. According to this later view, Hiisis were often small in size, on some occasions gigantic. Hiisis could travel in a noisy procession, and attack people who did not give way to them. If somebody left his door open, a Hiisis could come inside and steal something. If you were chased by a Hiisi you should seek safety in a cultivated area. In folklore, it was the cultivated areas which were blessed in contrast to the pagan holiness residing in the awesome and forbidding features of raw nature, and evil hiisi could not step inside areas sanctified by human cultivation.

Pre-historic stone structures and large stone boulders were thought to have been erected by Hiisis or giants. The Finnish term for a Bronze Age cairn grave (consisting of a pile of rocks) is still called a hiidenkiuas, Hiisi's pile of rocks. A giant's kettle is called a hiidenkirnu (literally, a hiisi's churn) in Finnish.

Often, the English "goblin" is translated as "hiisi" in Finnish, due to the numerous similarities between the typical goblin and hiisi. In the Finnish translations of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, where the word "goblin" is a synonym for "Orc", hiisi is used as the translation for "goblin", whereas "orc" is translated as "örkki".