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Author: Barbara Tesio-Ryan, ECDS Postdoctoral Fellow in European Languages, University of Edinburgh
Original article: https://theconversation.com/tove-jansson-lessons-in-life-from-her-beloved-moomin-characters-255280
This year marks the 80th anniversary of The Moomins, the Finnish/Swedish trolls that have delighted generations of children, becoming a cultural phenomenon in their own right. While posterity will likely remember her as the inventor of Moomins, Tove Jansson was in fact a strikingly multi-talented creative force.
Born in Helsinki in 1914, the daughter of artists, Jansson grew up surrounded by creativity, allowing her to develop her own in many different ways. During a career that spanned over 70 years, her work included illustrations, cartoons, paintings, murals, theatre productions, children’s books and beautifully crafted novels.
The main thing in life is to know your own mind.
Snufkin, Moominsummer Madness
In 1929, aged 15, Jansson began her career as a cartoonist. Her illustrations were first published in Garm, the Finnish satirical magazine for which she later became the in-house illustrator.
Her work as a cartoonist, before and during the war, gave her an outlet to be outspoken and express her militant anti-fascism and opposition to the war. For a woman at that time to assert her views so boldly and publicly was an act of defiance in itself, and she later recalled how liberating it had been to be able to be “so beastly to Hitler and Stalin” through her daring cartoons.
This is part of a series of articles celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Moomins. Want to celebrate their birthday with us? Join The Conversation and a group of experts on May 23 in Bradford for a screening of Moomins on the Riviera and a discussion of the refugee experience in Tove Jansson’s work. Click here for more information and tickets.
No one was spared, and her cartoons captured the megalomania of the main political figures of the time, as well as the impact of the war on everyday life. During the strenuous war years, Jansson refined her craft as an illustrator, and also, crucially, learned the importance of laughter in ushering light into the darkness. This is a skill that would characterise her entire output, both as an artist and as a writer.
Everything looks worse in the dark, you know.
Moominmama, The Moomins and the Great Flood
She used humour as a tool to both critique and understand life and the world around her. Through the act of making art, Jansson brought light and lightness when life got darker.
While Jansson had been sketching some variation of Moomintrolls her whole life, it was during the war that she began creating their Moominvalley world and imagining stories for them.
In 1991, she wrote that the Moomins had come to her as an escape from the horrors of the war: “Perhaps it was understandable that I suddenly felt an urge to write something that was to begin with ‘once upon a time’.”
When her first Moomin book, Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen (The Moomins and the Great Flood), was published in 1945, Finland had been through the second world war, as well as the “winter war” and the “continuation war” with Russia. So, while it was published during a time of peace, darkness surrounded the origin of the Moomins.
This dichotomy of light and darkness pervades all the Moomin books. Often a catastrophe is waiting to happen, or has just happened, and how the Moomins react to those events is central to the story itself. This is what makes those books so universal and so timeless.
The Moomins are so special because they are normal. Not everyone is a hero and not every day is great. There is space for both sadness and joy in Jansson’s tales, and this is why we keep reading them, because they are just like life itself.
It would be awful if the world exploded. It is so wonderfully splendid.
Snufkin, Comet in Moominland
In the first two Moomin books, Moomins and the Great Flood, and Comet in Moominland, natural catastrophes mirror the horrors of the war and postwar era (such as the atomic bomb). Environmental disasters are also ongoing threats to the the creatures of Moominvalley.
These are often, and mainly, brought by the sea, and can be fully appreciated only by someone like Jansson who lived between coastal and island landscapes most of her life. The natural landscape of Finland and Sweden, Jansson’s two homelands, are an essential part of her art.
Moominvalley in particular is a decidedly Nordic landscape, and was in fact inspired by her grandparents’ house on the island of Blidö, and by the Pellinki archipelago. It was here that Jansson spent many happy summers with her family, and later, with her partner Tuulikki Pietilä.
There is a humbleness to be learned in living by the sea, and a respect for the power of nature that Jansson captured beautifully in so many of her creations, such as The Summer Book.
In Moominpappa at Sea, where Moominpappa goes on an existential journey to find his purpose in life again, the relationship to the sea also becomes pivotal to his personal development: “There was the sea – his sea – going past, wave after wave, foaming recklessly, raging furiously, but, somehow, tranquil at the same time. All Moominpappa’s thoughts and speculations vanished. He felt completely alive from the tips of his ears to the tip of his tail. This was a moment to live to the full.”
The Moomins’ unconditional love and respect for nature also translates beautifully into an acceptance of all of life’s diversity. The Moomin’s universe is one where everyone is welcomed and loved for whoever they are and however they feel.
One of the biggest teachings of Jansson’s work for any reader at any age, is that all feelings are valid, and learning to accept this simple and profound truth makes life so much easier. As Moominpappa says: “For if you’re not afraid, how can you really be brave?”
You seem to be yourself again. Actually, you’re nicer that way.
Mymble, Moominvalley in November
Jansson’s motto, labora et amare (work and love), did indeed mark her existence. She worked incessantly and loved fiercely. Well ahead of her time, Jansson lived her sexuality with a freedom that was truly revolutionary for her time (Finland, like many other countries, decriminalised homosexuality only in 1971).
What characterised this artist’s life and career was the ambition and the courage to live differently. To create and to love without boundaries and without fear. And this is perhaps Jansson and her Moomins’ most important legacy.
Barbara Tesio-Ryan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.