The granite gorge with the sculpture of Väinämöinen, the main hero of the Karelian-Finnish epic "Kalevala," serves as a natural extension of the park's most "stone-like" section. The famous rune singer first appeared in the gorge in 1831.
Originally, a sculptural group with a statue of Saint Nicholas was planned to be installed on the large boulder where the statue now stands, but then the estate owner, Baron Nicolai, commissioned the Danish sculptor Gotthelf Borup (1804–1879) to create a figure of the hero of the Karelian runes.
Four years remained before the publication of the first edition of the "Kalevala," and there was no clear idea of what Väinämöinen—the singer-storyteller, magician, and protector of all the poor and destitute—should look like. The only sculptural depiction—a bas-relief by Erik Cainberg in the hall of the Åbo Academy—showed the long-bearded "eternal bard," like Orpheus, gathering forest listeners—bears and fish—with his playing on the kantele. Borup’s Väinämöinen, standing with a small lyre or kithara in his hands, dressed in garments resembling a Roman tunic, became a likeness of the ancient god Apollo and received mixed critical reviews. Despite this, the very fact of erecting a monument to the "father of songs" caused great enthusiasm in Vyborg and Finland as a whole. The statue, made of plaster according to Borup’s model, was produced in Saint Petersburg and installed in Monrepos in June 1831. The rune singer unexpectedly appeared among the rocks before a person walking along the narrow coastal path in a remote corner of the park, which came to be called the "End of the World."
In 1871, the statue was vandalized and broken. In 1873, a new statue of Väinämöinen by the Finnish master Johannes Takanen appeared in place of the lost one. Takanen was offered to use the picturesque images of the Kalevala heroes created in the 1860s by Robert Wilhelm Ekman as a model. During the work on the sculpture, Takanen lived in Copenhagen with the family of the Dane Magdalus Kold, who served as the model for Väinämöinen. Takanen gave the old man the facial features of the "elderly gentleman" Kold, as well as his "small hands, slender fingers." The monument sketch was ready by early 1872. Due to lack of funds, Takanen made the model not from wax, as planned, but from clay, after which he took the model to the Royal Porcelain Factory. During firing, the "old man shattered into pieces." Writing about this incident in a letter to Lyudeken, Takanen added: "I had no choice but to get some money to buy wax. I took two riksdaler from V. Thomsen and made a wax copy of the broken sketch as much as time allowed. That is why the model is in such poor condition." Another problem was the lack of funds allocated for the sculpture’s production. In letters, Takanen and Lyudeken discussed the possibility of making the sculpture in plaster or ceramics. Takanen himself considered cement the best material, but this did not satisfy the clients. Casting in bronze would have been too expensive. Then the decision was made to cast the statue from cheap and durable zinc.
When the sculpture was finally ready, in the summer of 1873 it was transported by sea from Copenhagen to Vyborg and installed in its former place—the stone that was once intended for the statue of Saint Nicholas.
Like the previous sculpture, this one also became a victim of vandals. Here is a photograph from the 1930s from the South Karelia Museum in Lappeenranta. It can be seen that Väinämöinen still had both fingers:
After the Finnish War of 1939–1940, a military sanatorium was established in Monrepos. In the archive of the Republic of Karelia, there is a letter from Gorelov dated February 1941: "In the Monrepos park itself, according to eyewitnesses, Red Army soldiers smashed the statue of Väinämöinen, the hero of the Finnish epic Kalevala, with stones. This statue was made by the Finnish sculptor Tokalen and was a copy of an earlier statue by the Danish sculptor Bordpa, which has not survived." There is also a Preliminary Inspection and Survey Report of the architectural buildings and structures of the city of Viipuri, compiled by the commission of the Arts Affairs Administration under the Council of People's Commissars of the Karelian-Finnish SSR on October 31, 1940. This document states: "In the Monrepos park itself, there is no security, as a result of which all park structures are being destroyed with impunity (some of them have been completely destroyed—for example, the sculpture of Väinämöinen)." In 2007, it was recreated (based on surviving photographs) by the St. Petersburg sculptor Konstantin Bobkov.
Sources:
https://www.parkmonrepos.org/portfolio/86
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Väinämöinen_playing_the_kantele
Yulia Moshnick, "On a 'Danish Theme' in the History of Monrepos"