Kajaani: where the Finnish national epic was born

In the heart of remote Kainuu in Finland, Kajaani holds the memory of Elias Lönnrot, who here collected the folk songs of the Kalevala.

A car remains helpful for exploring the remote wooded surroundings.

The suggestive ruins of Kajaani Castle, a seventeenth-century fortress on the river of the same name, preserve the remains of one of the northernmost fortifications of the ancient Swedish empire.

A few minutes away, the house of Elias Lönnrot recounts the life of the physician and linguist who collected at Kajaani the folk songs that flowed into the national Finnish epic poem.

Proceeding toward the surrounding lakes, one reaches the forests of Kainuu, among the least populated and most wild regions of Finland.

As evening approaches, local restaurants serve game and fresh lake fish according to the culinary tradition of eastern Finland.

Elias Lönnrot worked as a district physician in Kajaani for over twenty years in the nineteenth century, a period during which he patiently collected Karelian folk songs which he compiled into the Kalevala, the celebrated national epic poem of Finland published in 1835.

Kajaani, among the northernmost cities of southern Finland, remains entirely surrounded by vast boreal forests and numerous lakes that characterise the entire Kainuu region.