Lönnrot's travels in Kainuu are very well documented. While travelling in his capacity of district physician, he submitted bills for travel expenses to the National Board of Medicine which included detailed itineraries. He also wrote detailed accounts of the trips he took that were supported through academic grants.

Old Poems of the Finnish People (Parts XII, 1 and XII, 2), the collection of Finnish folk poetry which includes virtually all of the Finnish folk poetry collected through the first half of the 1900s, includes sixty-four poems, some 2,045 lines in all, collected by Lönnrot in Kainuu.

Unfortunately, as far as the poetry he collected in Kainuu is concerned, Lönnrot did not record from whom he obtained the poems or even the municipalities in which he recorded them. However, some of the people who sang poems for him can be identified on the basis of his other notes. Yet, it was not unusual at that time to leave out the name of the person singing a poem which one recorded. Even for Viena, Lönnrot only mentioned the best known bards, but he did not record their names along with the poems they sang.