Eahpáraš is the spirit of a dead, newborn child longing for peace.
If you are outdoors and hear crying or shouting that sounds like a newborn baby, you may be witnessing an eahpáraš (called in Norwegian changeling), and you find yourself near a place where a newborn, unbaptised child lies buried.
In former times, it sometimes happened that children were abandoned in nature to die, or that murdered children, or children who died in other ways, were buried in nature. It was often women who had given birth in secret, and in despair took their own lives.
The Sámi spirit manifests itself by shouting, and in some cases can also appear.
For the child to find peace, it had to be baptised. There were special baptismal formulas for this.
Ole A. Thommassen wrote the following about the eahpáraš (The Lappish Relationship, 1999):
If children are murdered in secret – about the 'eahpáččaid' – there is a superstition that sooner or later after the murder, they begin to cry with the voice of a newborn baby when one happens to come near a place where such a murdered child lies buried. For some, it is said to appear as a small naked child. What it wants then is its name, therefore, one should give it a name, preferably after an inanimate object, e.g., call out to it: I want to go to the cinema. (Let the axe be your name).
