It is no wonder that Lönnrot wanted to visit Lapukka, since in April of 1834, when he met Arhippa Perttunen in Latvajärvi, he was given an eloquent account of traditional poetry-singing in Lapukka:

You should have been there that time we rested by the campfire after seine fishing on the shores of Lapukka. We had a helper with us, a man from Lapukka - a fine singer - but by no means anything to match my late father. They would sing night after night hand in hand by the fire, and it was never the same poem twice. I was a little boy then and I listened to them, and little by little I picked up the best songs.

Lönnrot had the opportunity to visit Lapukka on a work-related trip to Ylä-Kainuu in late summer 1835. He was there the last week in August. On 25 August he wrote a number of letters in Finland, and in his next letter, dated 30 August in Kianta, he wrote that he had just returned from Lapukka on the Russian side. He does not say whether he recorded any poems on the trip but the collecting that autumn all in all was successful. He focused his efforts on proverbs and riddles, getting "several hundred" of each.