Moomin: From Anti-Fascism to Global Merchandise

A short, round little creature known for its big snout and friendly appearance, the Moomintroll (also known as Moomin) is created by Tove Jansson. Whether people know him from the books, TV series, or even tableware, Moomin is known all around the world today, especially in Scandinavia. But where did it all start? In this essay we will explore the origin of Moomin. We will also look into how Tove Jansson’s life affected the themes and how the Moomin character became so well known.

Tove Jansson

In 19214, Tove Jansson was born into a creative family in Helsinki. With an illustrator for a mother (Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, also known as “Ham”) and a sculptor for a father (Viktor Jansson, also known as “Faffan”), naturally, the creativity flowed in Tove Jansson as well. She started her artistic career at a young age. At the age of 14 she had already published some of her illustrations.¹ One year later she started to work at the Garm magazine.²

Garm & Anti-Fascism

Garm was a Finnish-Swedish satirical magazine that published in the period between 1923 until 1953, when its owner Henry Rein passed away. Jansson’s mother worked there from the beginning as an illustrator, and in 1929 Tove had her first illustration published in the magazine, and from that moment, started her work as a cartoonist.³ During her time there, she created around a hundred covers for the magazine, and hundreds of illustrations and caricatures as well. Garms focus was to work as a satirical commentary on politics, especially on fascism and dictators such as Stalin and Hitler.⁴

Jansson’s caricature was brutal, and she didn’t hold back on the mockery of Hitler or Stalin in her art. Her art caused a lot of reaction from the Nazis and pro-Germans in Finland, and several of her artwork also got censored. In a memoir, Tove Jansson herself says that she enjoyed mocking Hitler and Stalin.⁵

In one of her covers from 1938 she depicts Hitler as a spoiled and unhappy child. He is screaming “more cake!” as adults around him try to please him and serve him cakes which are named after different countries.⁶ This illustration depicts his greediness and how he threatened democracy.⁷

Another cover she created of Hitler shows him running around and taking everything he can find. This was in regards of the German army evacuating from Lapland in 1944. But in the logo on the cover, we can see a small creature, hiding in fear, behind the leg of the “m”. This creature first appeared near Jansson’s signature but later gained more attention and a more central role on the covers. Later, the creature got the name Snork. Snork appeared regularly on the covers, highlighting the satirical point and the message, and he became an important part of Garm and Tove’s signature.⁸ Even though Snork was his first name, he was later known as Moomin and became the main character of Jansson’s books.

The difficulties of war and the Moomin Books

The war affected Jansson as it did with everyone else. In a letter to a friend of hers, she wrote, “The fact is that life is just waiting now, one isn’t really living, one just exists”.⁹ With her friend Eva leaving for America and her brother Per Olov and her lover Tapio Tapiovaara at the front of the war, she felt lonely and divided. Family and friends were very important to Jansson. When they all left, to either flee the war or fight in it, it affected Jansson heavily. She could mock the cruelty of the dictators in her illustrations in Garm, but the longing for hope and happiness would still be there. To comprehend the heaviness of the war, she sought out to writing down her feelings.¹⁰

The family felt even more divided as Jansson grew distant from her dad. Her father had fought in the Civil War when she was a child, which had shaped him into an intense patriot and anti-communist. To him, Germany was a friend and the communists were the threat. This angered Tove as she didn’t share the same opinion.¹¹

Her creative work was as important to her as breathing. An escape from everything happening, but also a space for her to let out anger and frustration. The longing for another place grew strong. A new world, filled with colour and warmth. Going back to good childhood memories and familiar places became an inspiration to the new world she created for her new character, Moomin.¹²

Most of her inspiration for creating the Moomin-universe comes from the Finnish archipelago, where she spent several summers. The peaceful environment became an inspiration to her Moomin stories. The Glosholm lighthouse, which is one of the inspirations Jansson found during her visits to Archipelago, has the same familiar shape as the house in Moominvalley.¹³

The first Moomin tale she wrote was called The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945). She had drafted the story between 1939 and 1940 and finished it in 1944. It tells the story of a mother and a child searching for a home for the winter. Along the way, they find an abandoned child and take him with them (this characters is later called Sniff). The father is missing and they don’t know if they will ever see him again. In the end, they are reunited and find a house in the valley, symbolizing hope and a new beginning. The first book becomes the origin of the Moomintrolls.¹⁴