Ilmarinen's courtship duration

Ilmarinen's courtship duration is not stated consistently: the poem names three years in two passages and seven years in another. The differing figures attach the wooing to the transition into marriage, but leave its precise length unresolved.

The Two Durations

One passage says that Ilmarinen has been wooing for three long years; the same three-year figure recurs in counsel concerning the bride. A separate wedding-song passage gives seven years of wooing. The text offers both counts without explaining the discrepancy, so neither can be treated as an unambiguous correction of the other.

Courtship and Marriage

The references frame wooing as an extended pursuit that reaches its desired outcome: the marriage is completed, and the Maiden of the Rainbow is addressed as Ilmarinen's life-companion. The three-year wording occurs both in a passage about wooing and in counsel that looks back on the years spent hoping to win the bride. The seven-year wording appears in the wedding-song material, linking that longer count directly to the celebration.

Departure and Significance

The wedding is followed by the bride's farewell and departure from her native fields. This change of home gives the duration references a place in a larger passage from courtship to marriage and separation from childhood surroundings. Their variation also cautions against reading the poem's time markers as a single, consistently measured chronology: here, the courtship is remembered in more than one span, while the wedding and departure remain the decisive transitions.