Paasselkä Devils

Also Known As: Finnish Paasselän pirut; locally Paasveden piru or Paasveen piru, “the devil of Paasvesi”, and in the Savo dialect Puasves; also called virvatulet, will-o’-the-wisps
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Finnish Mythology, Urban Legends & Contemporary Folklore
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: They appear as burning lights over the deepest water of a Finnish crater lake, rise from beneath the surface, and outrun anyone who approaches.
Role in Mythos: They are the resident supernatural presence of Lake Paasselkä in Savonranta, explained variously as devils, as the souls of drowned Russian sailors, and as spirits that mark good fishing grounds and buried treasure.
Relation to Humans: They approach people and then flee from them, and in three centuries of local accounts they have never been reported to harm anyone. Those who live on the shore treat them as a neighbour rather than a threat, and autumn boat trips now carry visitors out to the water where they show themselves most often.

The ice on Paasvesi carries sound the way water carries oil, and on a still February evening a man standing over a fishing hole can hear a door shut on the far shore. What he sometimes sees is worse company. Out toward the middle of the lake a light lies flat on the ice, burning steady, about the size and shape of a hayrick that has been set alight and somehow goes on burning without ever being consumed. He watches it. It watches back, if that is the word. Then it begins to come toward him, and when he does not move it changes its mind and slides away across the ice faster than any wind that has ever crossed this lake.

People in Savonranta have been telling versions of that for three hundred years. The written record begins in the eighteenth century and has never stopped. To maps and to the outside world the lake is Paasselkä, and the phenomenon has picked up the English name Paasselkä devils; to the people who live on it the water is Paasvesi, Puasves in the local dialect, and the lights are pirut, devils, always plural even when only one is out.

The lake they haunt is not shaped like other lakes. It is a rounded oval roughly ten kilometres across, and it sits in an eroded impact crater. Argon dating of a pale band of feldspathic melt inside a gneissic impact breccia put the strike at about 231 million years ago, in the Late Triassic, which made Paasselkä the first Triassic impact structure on the Baltic Shield ever dated by isotopic methods. Something the better part of a kilometre wide came down here and rang the bedrock like a bell. The shatter cones are still in the rock. Over the centre of the lake there is a magnetic anomaly, and local report has it that compasses and satellite navigation occasionally get strange out there.

The lights themselves are described with an inconsistency that is itself part of the tradition. White and red are the commonest. Fishermen have reported a brilliant green ball that sat beside the boat and then shot off to the far side of the lake at a speed nobody was willing to estimate. A cabin owner watched a reddish column stand up at his own shoreline. In winter they turn up on the ice in almost every colour there is. They rise from under the water. They hang perfectly still, or they cross open water in an instant, or they dim, go out, and come back somewhere else entirely. Sometimes there are several. There is no body to any of this, no face, no limbs, no shape that stays put long enough to be drawn, and that absence is the whole point of them.

Where they come from depends on who is asked. The oldest and most durable answer is that they are devils, which is what the name says and what the Lutheran centuries would naturally supply. A second answer makes them the souls of drowned Russian sailors, which suits a lake on the old contested water routes east. A third, and much the friendliest, holds that they are beings who show honest people where the fish are running and where treasure lies buried. There is also a border tradition. Savonranta means, literally, the shore of Savo, and the line between Savo and Karelia has been drawn and redrawn across this ground for centuries, including by the Swedish and Russian negotiators at Teusina. Finnish folklore keeps a class of rajapirut, boundary devils, who turn up to settle disputes over where a line properly runs. The local telling is that Savo still borders Karelia exactly where the devil drew it with his light.

A pohu, which is what the Savo country calls its cunning-folk, is on record explaining that the piru keeps its lair in the deepest part of the lake and comes out mostly after dark. That is a piece of practical geography dressed as demonology, and it happens to be where most sightings still cluster. The same pohut prescribed offerings for the Paholaiskivet, the devil’s stones on the nearby island of Läpisyöksy, great boulders eaten through with strange rounded hollows that local story attributes to the maahiset, the earth folk. In a hard north wind, when the air enters those cavities from the right direction, the stones are said to sing. They are also called the devil’s trumpets.

Much of what survives in detail survives because one man went and collected it. Sulo Strömberg gathered the stories of the Paasvesi devil and of the pohut village by village around Kerimäki and Savonranta, and the material was published in 2006. The tradition is now formally listed in Finland’s national inventory of living heritage, submitted by the Savonranta-Seura local heritage society, and in 2021 the Argentine artist Axel Straschnoy made a film of it, interviewing eight witnesses while failing, on camera, to find the lights himself.

That failure is the reliable part. The devils do not perform. Their powers are simple and absolute within their small territory: they appear where they choose, mostly after dark and mostly over the deep water; they move faster than anything on the lake; they change colour and brightness at will; they can be in one place and then another with nothing in between; and they can lead a person to fish or to treasure if they happen to be feeling generous. Their limits are just as simple. They will not be approached, they will not be held, and they will not be explained. Marsh gas rising from the sediments has been proposed and disproved more than once. So have piezoelectric discharge, electromagnetic effects and luminous bacteria. Nobody has ever brought back a convincing photograph. The lake keeps its light and gives back nothing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Paasselkä devils?

The Paasselkä devils are unexplained light phenomena seen over Lake Paasselkä in Savonranta, Southern Savonia, Finland. They appear as balls or columns of light, most often white or red but sometimes green or other colours, hovering above the water or the winter ice. Local people call them pirut, meaning devils, and have reported them for about three hundred years.

Where do the Paasselkä devils appear?

They appear over Lake Paasselkä, known locally as Paasvesi, an oval lake formed in an eroded meteorite impact crater about ten kilometres wide in eastern Finland. Sightings cluster over the middle of the lake and its deepest water, which local tradition names as the devil’s lair. The surrounding marshes and forests also produce reports.

Are the Paasselkä devils dangerous?

No account describes the Paasselkä devils harming anyone. They are reported to approach people and then retreat rapidly across the water when anyone comes closer. Some local stories treat them as helpful, saying they reveal good fishing grounds and the locations of buried treasure.

What causes the Paasselkä devils?

No explanation has been confirmed. Swamp gas rising from lake sediments, piezoelectric effects, electromagnetic radiation and luminous bacteria have all been suggested and none has held up. There is a magnetic anomaly over the centre of the lake, which is sometimes linked to the phenomenon, but the connection remains unproven.

Why is Lake Paasselkä unusual?

Lake Paasselkä fills an eroded impact crater roughly ten kilometres across, created when a meteorite struck about 231 million years ago in the Late Triassic. It was the first Triassic impact structure on the Baltic Shield to be dated by isotopic methods. A magnetic anomaly sits over the centre of the lake.