Maiden of the Rainbow

The Maiden of the Rainbow, a daughter of Pohyola, is distinguished by the authority she claims over her own marriage. She refuses a sea-born suitor and later chooses Ilmarinen not for the costly presents he can bring from Kalevala, but for his wisdom, worth, and good behavior. Her courtship thus makes personal judgment—not wealth or parental arrangement—the basis of her choice, while her departure from home shows what that choice entails.

Identity and Courtship

As Northland’s daughter, she is courted across the boundary between the two lands. When a suitor comes through Northland’s angry seas and Pohyola’s peaceful waters, she answers that she will not marry a sea-born hero. The refusal establishes a limit on what the suitor’s journey or status can secure: arrival does not amount to consent.

Her response to maternal advice makes that independence explicit. She acknowledges the advice, but says that anxious mothers should not sell daughters to suitors they do not love. She will choose Ilmarinen without being swayed by his treasures from Kalevala, valuing his wisdom, worth, and good behavior instead. The contrast is pointed: gifts may accompany a proposal, but they do not determine her answer.

Choice and Departure

The Maiden’s choice brings her into a marriage with Ilmarinen, but the narrative does not present the decision as a cost-free passage. In her farewell she remembers the scenes of childhood and the happiness of days gone by; she then leaves her native fields and fallows and the dark Sariola. The concrete places she names give emotional weight to the transition: choosing a husband also means leaving the landscape in which her earlier life was rooted.

Her story therefore holds two realities together. She speaks and chooses for herself, refusing both an unwanted sea-born suitor and a match measured by presents; at the same time, her marriage carries her away from home. The farewell makes the consequence of her agency visible without undoing it: she leaves as the person who has chosen, but leaves behind the familiar world of her childhood.