Lönnrot and Kainuu

Elias Lönnrot, the Creator of the Kalevala, worked as a district physician in Kajaani from 1833 to 1853. During this period he also travelled to the Kainuu villages where he also carried out his work of collecting poems. Most of the poems compromising the Kalevala were collected in the Viena Karelia, but Lönnrot and his contemporaries recorded a significant number of poems from the Kainuu district.

Recorded on these pages is information about Lönnrot's field trips and the collecting of folk poetry in Kainuu about the time he worked there as a physician and the birth process of the Kalevala epic. A view of Kainuu in 1800's spreads out before our eyes aided by Lönnrot's own travel reports, letters and notes.