Ajatar is an evil female spirit of Finnish folklore. She is pictured with a hair-plait reaching to her heels and breasts hung to her knees, deeply bound up with serpents, so that modern art renders her as a dragon or a half-serpent figure. She is said to spread disease and pestilence, and is linked to Hiisi and Lempo.
Her name may derive from the Finnish ajattaa, “to pursue” or “to drive,” and in some Finnish translations of the Bible the word refers to demons. That she is “the pursuer” by her very name and an indifferent malice that carries sickness shares a register with our world, which turns on calamity spreading without cause.