Concepts:Hiisi/Tero Mustonen

Hiisi has several layered meanings in Finnish and related languages but in its core it refers to a sacred place, grove, forest, a graveyeard in the forest or other sacred place in the old Finnish forest religion. Some of the epic songs and early documentation refers hiisi to be a Forest power that controls animals and the hunt. These meanings are similar across the taiga boreal forest zone of the northern part of Earth. This article traces the evolution and subsequent loss of hiisi in Finland from the 13th century to 2025. The article proposes that this endemic cultural concept is the equivalent of the English concept community-conserved area – ICCA. The article mentions a long self-reflection process in Finland to find appropriate cultural concept of this important, emergent conservation meaning. Hiisi, despite the loss of meaning between 1700-1900s, links both the ancient and the re-emergent meanings associated with community- and village-relevant forests, groves and the biocultural and endemic meanings associated with them. The article also presents evidence of similar concepts from related languages Udmurtian and Estonian, strengthening the argument.

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Tero Mustonen

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"Hiisi, despite the loss of meaning between 1700-1900s, links both the ancient and the re-emergent meanings associated with community- and village-relevant forests, groves and the biocultural and endemic meanings associated with them"

Definition and Origins of the Concept

Hiisi has several layered meanings in Finnish language (Häkkinen 2007). It is also found in several related Finno-Ugric languages of the Baltic and boreal Eurasian region (see map of the languages). In short the original meeting of hiisi according to Häkkinen (2007) refers to sacred place, grove, forest, a graveyeard in the forest or other sacred place.

Later meanings infused with Christian deductions have included “devil and damned, sometimes trolls, etc”. In related languages, such as Udmurtian (see photo 1), equivalent of hiisi is keremet, a sacred community grove, where the concept and the use of the Udmurtian native religion at the Ural mountains has been preserved. Also in Estonian the concept has been preserved to refer to a sacred forest or a grove.

Photo 1. Keremet, a sacred grove of the Udmurtian people, located in the Ural region of Russian Federation, 2011. Photo: Snowchange Cooperative

Map 1. Finno-Ugric Languages. Wikipedia

Philosophies and Practices With Examples Associated with the Concept

Siikala (2013) reports that the earliest reference to the sacred groves and forests of Finnish people comes from the orders of Pope Gregorius IX who ordered these “pagan” areas to be overtaken by Christian forces or priests and sacred trees to be cut down. Mikael Agricola, the founder of Finnish written language, translated the Psalms into Finnish in the 16th century. In his Preface to the 1551 edition of Psalms he lists the forest gods and spirits of Finnish people and we can find hiisi in this list of earliest deities known from Finland

Hiizi Metzeleist soi Voiton / ”Hiisi provided the success in hunting of animals (‘winning over the dwellers of forest’)” (freely translated by the author)

The role of the concept hiisi has several layers, but in its original or oldest iterations it referred to a sacred place, often in toponyms a hill or a forest area and in some iterations the overall being that provided for the success in hunting or “controlled the game”. Hiisi is also prolific with many place names in the Finnish boreal.

Siikala (2013) mentions the Hiiden hirven hiihdäntä / Hunting for the Moose/ Elk of Hiisi, one of the most important oral poems and songs from the Finnish-Karelian area. In different versions of this song that has several verses, the Hiisi warns the moose of the plans of the hunters in the boreal forest.

The hunter in the song is at first boastful and ultimately loses the moose in the hunt – reference to customary relations and need for humility and good behaviour towards animals (and hiisi) as a teaching in some of these oral songs. This collection of oral songs of the moose/elk hunt has been associated by researchers (Siikala 2013) with the more universal Cosmic Elk Hunt epic cycle, that can be found in several boreal and sub-Arctic peoples cultures and cosmologies.

Following the missionary campaigns of both Catholic, Protestant and Greek Catholic religions to Finland since early 1000s, the final sacred hiisi were either chopped down or lost from use by early 1900s. Additionally the concept was polluted with Christian elements and active re-naming. The native forest religion of Finnish peoples went underground, was destroyed and lost across the country. We note this is a specifically a Finnish and Karelian concept and the related Indigenous Sámi languages have their own terminologies such as ailigas in North Sámi.

Challenges and Opportunities Related to Its Implementation

The case for the ‘comeback’ of the concept hiisi has resurfaced as a serious and meaningful conservation notion in 2010s and 2020s with the advent of the global movement of community-conserved areas – ICCAs. Mustonen (2014, 2017) has explored in science the concept of endemic land and water uses of the Finnish peoples. Additionally the conservation journal Elonkehä published an article in 2020s in Finnish where a discussion domestically focused on the notion of community conserved areas in Finland (by 2025 five sites have been registered in the Finnish and Sámi communities under the United Nations Environmental Programme World Database of Protected Areas).

ICCA (or its alternative, territory of life) is a bulky and academic sounding term. In the Elonkehä as well as following the context of Mustonen (2014, 2017) a Finnish conservation and fishing Cooperative Snowchange took several years to identify how a community forest, an ICCA could be called in Finnish that would convey the depth, importance and reformative essence of the concept but yet be true to and respect the older forest culture of the Finnish peoples.

Hiisi emerged after a long self-reflection as a natural concept that fits. It is a fluid concept that refers on the other hand a community-relevant grove – a forest of no-take and sacred dwelling, and on the other had, as we can see in Agricolas list of powers associated with the old religion and the Cosmic Elk Hunt-related songs, hiisi is a being or a power that is associated with the being of the taiga boreal forest itself.

The hiisi are also renewed through the Landscape Rewilding Programme of Snowchange that enables community lands, waters and forests to re-emerge in Finland and become as applicable community conserved areas. In December 2025 the Programme has over 179 sites across the whole country positively influencing 60,000 hectares making it the largest non-state conservation programme in Finland.

Challenges rise from the loss of meaning and significance. When cultural concepts are re-emergent they ‘battle’ with the colonial in-between, i.e. in this case the funny and disrespectful meanings of ‘devil’ and so on the Christian missionary and administrative policies associated with hiisi.

Therefore not only the new/old use of hiisi requires a lot of use but also re-intepretations and clarity also to avoid being lost in the cacophony of todays New Age and self-help and similar social movements. One of the ways to do that is to link hiisi, the sacred forests of Finland direct with the community-conserved areas which are now beginning to dot the Finnish boreal and its remnant parts.

Ultimately the most powerful way of the hiisi to be re-emergent is to live where it is supposed to be – in the important and culturally central forests and remaining groves of the villages of boreal Finland, maintaining biological and cultural diversity, taken care of the people living in and next to them.

Perhaps in deep dark of the polar night in November perhaps someone in one of these villages, after the hunt, lifts the moose head to a Scots Pine, once again, after a century of loss, and thanks the hiisi for the animal that was given, continuing the eternal cycles of birth, death and re-birth in the boreal forest, the largest single ecosystem on land on the planet.

A hiisi or an ICCA of Forest of Hippiäinen, Selkie village, North Karelia, Finland. It is one of the publicly registered ICCAs under the United Nations. Photo: Snowchange Cooperative

Sohmero springs associated with village traditions and healing of spiritual kind in Pöllövaara, North Karelia, Finland. Photo: Snowchange Cooperative

Photo 5. Moose mother and two calves harvesting in the first ICCA registered in Finland, Havukkavaara. Photo: Snowchange Cooperative

References

Häkkinen, K. 2007. Nykysuomen etymologinen sanakirja. WS Bookwell: Juva Mustonen, T. (2014). Endemic time-spaces of Finland: Aquatic regimes. Fennia - International Journal of Geography, 192(2), 120-139. https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/40845 Mustonen, T. (2017). Endemic time-spaces of Finland: from wilderness lands to ‘vacant production spaces’. Fennia - International Journal of Geography, 195(1), 5-24. https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.58971 Siikala, Anna-Leena. 2013. Itämeren suomalaisten mytologia. SKS: Helsinki

Further Exploration

ICCA Registry. https://www.iccaregistry.org Landscape Rewilding Programme of Snowchange. www.landscaperewilding.org Seining for a Song – Film. 2024. https://vimeo.com/1004397721/ed9040eb43?share=copy Abstract