Hiisi
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Hiisi (root: hiite-) are a kind of tutelary spirits in mythologies of the Baltic Sea area, especially in Finland. Most often they are 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".
The 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 twelve constellations on the sky.
Later the original connexion with the nouminous aspect of natures awesomeness inherent in the hiisi was deprecated, and they passed into folklore as purely evil spirits. according to this later view; Hiisis were usually small sized, but sometimes also gigantic. Hiisis could travel in a noisy procession, and attack people who did not give way to them. If somebody left his door open, hiisi could came inside and steal something. If you were chased by Hiisis you should go to cultivated area. In the folkloric layer, it was the cultivated areas which were blessed rather than holiness residing in awesome and forbidding features of raw nature, and evil hiisi could not step in areas sanctified by human cultivation.
Pre-historic stone structures were told to been built and big stones were told to been erected by Hiisis and giants.
Often, the English "goblin" is translated as hiisi in Finnish, most certainly due to the numerous similarities between the typical goblin and hiisi. Likewise, English "orc" has been translated as hiisi in e.g. Tolkien's texts but in more modern translations "orc" is usually translated as örkki.
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