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Lönnrot's fifth field trip was significant for the content of the Kalevala because it was on this trip that he met Viena's greatest bard, Arhippa Perttunen. It was immediately after this trip that Lönnrot took leave from his physician's duties to work on the manuscript of the Kalevala. The following account of the fifth field trip in Kainuu is from a letter Lönnrot sent on the day after his return to the Secretary of the Finnish Literary Society, C.N. Keckman. A more detailed account of the early phase of Lönnrot's trip in Kainuu can be found in his diary. He recorded the following - from scattered notes or from memory alone - at the beginning of January of the following year. The house in Kylmäsalmi provided Lönnrot with not only the bear-hunting poems but also the following fairy tale about the fox and his catch of fish. Lönnrot later published the tale in the magazine Mehiläinen. The entries in Lönnrot's diary bring us to Tormua, before he crossed the border into the village of Lonkka.
In his travel account proper, which was published in Helsingfors Morgonblad in 1835, Lönnrot tells how he crossed the border in Tormua.
Lönnrot's fifth trip yielded as many poems as the four previous ones altogether: 239 poems and some 13,200 lines. Not surprisingly, Lönnrot sent a message straight away to Helsinki asking that his previous collection of poems, approved for publication by the Finnish Literary Society in the spring, not be published until he had a chance to add the new material |