In
Finnish folklore, all places and things, and also human beings, have a
haltija (a genius, guardian spirit) of their own. One such haltija is called etiäinen—an image,
doppelgänger
A doppelgänger ( ), sometimes spelled doppelgaenger or doppelganger, is a ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts its own fleshly counterpart.
In fiction and mythology, a doppelgänger is often portrayed as a ghostly or p ...
, or just an impression that goes ahead of a person, doing things the person in question later does. For example, people waiting for someone at home might hear the door close, as if the one they're waiting for arrived, or even see their shadow or a silhouette, only to realize that they haven't arrived yet after all. When the person finally comes home, they would repeat the actions of their etiäinen that the people waiting witnessed earlier. Etiäinen can also refer to some kind of a feeling that something is going to happen. Sometimes it could, for example, warn of a bad year coming.
[Virtanen, Leea, and DuBois, Thomas Andrew. Finnish folklore. Finland, Finnish Literature Society, 2000.]
In modern Finnish, the term has detached from its shamanistic origins and refers to
premonition. Unlike clairvoyance, divination, and similar practices, etiäiset (plural) are spontaneous and can't be induced. Quite the opposite, they may be unwanted and cause anxiety, like ghosts. Etiäiset may concern everyday events and aren't necessarily too dramatic, although ones related to deaths aren't uncommon either. As these phenomena are still reported today, they can be considered a living tradition, as a way to explain the psychological experience of premonition.
Possible causes
One explanation given for the detail of the apparition is that when a person is waiting for someone, their anticipation can augment everyday sounds, for example of a cat or the wind, and bring to consciousness a vivid recollection of the person. This recollection will tend to produce the feeling that the remembered person is "coming". If no one comes, the "possible etiäinen" is forgotten. The failure of this explanation is that etiäinen does not necessarily occur when you expect someone to come. It more often indicates an unexpected visitor who would otherwise come as a surprise, without phone calls or any kind of announcement beforehand.
See also
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Bilocation
Bilocation, or sometimes multilocation, is an alleged psychic or miraculous ability wherein an individual or object is located (or appears to be located) in two distinct places at the same time. Reports of bilocational phenomena have been made i ...
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Fæcce
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Vardøger, a similar belief in
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...
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Vörðr
References
Finnish legendary creatures
Doppelgängers
{{Finland-myth-stub