Gandalf was a Maia with an eternal soul. When he perished with the balrog, his soul went back to Valinor, but the Valars decided his job isn't done yet and schmeised him back to Middle Earth.

 

I don't think Moiraine died after passing through the portal.

'finns and the Old Tongue: I rather like the thought that the OT is truly Finnlandish, and it found its way into Randland from there. From what we know of its grammatical structure the OT is a very odd way of talking/ thinking: eg Far Dareis Mai = 'for spear, maiden/s'; Aes Sedai = 'of all, servants'. But I'm no linguist.

 

Irish/gaelige is like that also.

 

An madra rua = a red dog/fox but directly translated its a dog red.

 

an caipin dubh is a black hat but again directly translated its a hat black.

 

Its all something to do with syntax, also I am not a linguist. My point being its not really that odd. As far as I'm aware all gaeilge or Celtic derived languages are completely different from other European languages in structure. I'm thinking of Irish, welsh and what they speak in the Basque region of Spain. These languages are older that Latin and these peoples where pushed further and further into the west of Europe which would of been the end of the world back then. So they would be considered old tongues of Europe.

So matbe the finns only picked it up from a very old race of humans in Randland.