My kids and I have read all the books, and loved them. It’s hard to get the full Moomin-fix in the US, though - they’ve never been on tv here, or had a movie, and if I want a Moominpappa t-shirt I have to send 30 euros plus god-knows-how-much in shipping to Finland.
Anyway, thought I’d start a thread to see if there is anybody who wants to talk Moomin (unless you want to talk about the Groke - don’t let him in the thread!).
[URL=“http://http://www.finnstyle.com/moco.html”]
I have not read any of the Moomin tales, but have seen character dishes on Ebay “Arabia of Finland”… expensive!
The above is a store in Minneapolis which carries a couple Moomin articles.
finnstyle was the link put in, but has disappeared.
I *love *those books–I grew up reading them! They are partially responsible for the dark, warped adult I became. They’re like Winnie the Pooh, if *everyone *was Eeyore.
My favorite character, of course, is Little My (I even used to wear my hair like hers). “Hello, Little My!” some idiot cheerfully says, and she snaps, “Hello, yourself, with knobs on!”
I love how the stories didn’t have happy, comforting endings: the Fillyjonk who was afraid of hurricanes got caught in a terrifying one. Moominpappa goes to sea and takes his family, and Moominmamma has an “episode” and retreats into the wallpaper.
God I love those books.
I’ve read some of them in Finnish, and I like the Finnish versions better than the English. The names seem too cute in English, but maybe that’s just me. I haven’t read them in the original Swedish, though. I do have some dvds of a couple of the tv shows, in Finnish.
And a source for some products:
http://en.moominvalleyshop.com/category/3/textiles
I love the Moomins! How I covet the new reprint series–mine are all old tattered paperbacks, and I don’t have them all. I love Snufkin, and Hemulen, and the Hattifatteners.
Moominland Midwinter was my fave!
I’m over 30 still and sometimes call my mother Moominmama.
Yeah, Moominland Winter captures that quiet loneliness of a long winter so perfectly.
They made a movie out of the Comet book, apparently. I hope that comes to the US sometime (although, even as out of touch as I am with marketing reality, recognize that the Bjork soundtrack to this kids movie about fearing a KT-boundary type apocalypse would be an uphill selling battle).
The books are so wonderfully strange, but quietly strange at the same time.
Those damn Satanic hippos gave me the jibblies. Especially this damn thing which still makes me want to piss myself in sheer terror: KILL IT WITH FIRE
I read them as a child, and loved them. Haven’t re-read as an adult, might give 'em a go at some point.
I once asked Terry Pratchett if he had read Tove Jansson and he answered “Of course, why do you ask?” When I told him that one of his books (don’t remember the title now) is a paraphrase of Comet in Moominland he was a bit taken aback. I don’t call him a plagiarist, though, it’s an homage. We had probably read the book at about the same age, but when I have re-read it any number of times he perhaps did it only once, but kept the basic story in the back of his mind.
For what it’s worth I once had a girlfriend called Tove, named after Jansson.
Comet in Moominland was pretty much an allegory for the Soviet invasion of Finland during WW2.
Tove Jansson was an interesting person. It was pretty much an open secret that she was gay and she and her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä, were together for nearly five decades. She belonged to the Swedish speaking minority, and many of the Moomin characters were based on her friends and family. The characters are thus less Finnish archetypes and more Swedish-Finnish archetypes. There is a subtle difference between the two.
I always thought that Too-Ticky was male until I learned about Tuulikki Pietilä.
I would *love *to meet the original Little My!
I too LOVE Moomin. I send a lot of postcards to Finland at a swap-site, and it is always really exciting to get one in return with a Moomintroll stamp. We sell a lot of Tove Jansson’s books at my comic shop, and it seems like they are really picking up popularity here. The other day a man walked in with a Moomin shirt!
Oddly enough, there is a lot of Moomin Sanrio-type merchandise (pens, stickers, etc) at the Korean markets around here. So if you are in the US and have an Asian-market near you, you might want to check it out to save on shipping. I hope to be able to track down a set of the pez dispensers some day.
A friend’s son went as Snuffkin for a halloween costume once. I thought it was adorable.
So would I.
Not all that strange. Tove’s niece, who handles the business, has sold the out to some Japanese company that floods the market with badly drawn copies of the original figures (at least that is my impression of what has happened).
BTW I once met Tove’s publisher who told me about a signing session they had arranged. The book store was filled with children who wanted their books signed and at the end of the line she was sitting with a glass of whisky, smoking like a chimney.
The Groke is a her!
In one of the books (Moominpappa at Sea would make sense) they think they’ve escaped the Groke. But the Groke can cross water because it freezes under her and she floats, then she flaps her arms (wings?) to sail after you…
Read all the books as a kid and loved all the other worldly stuff, like the Hattifatteners who follow thunderstorms and grow from seeds. And the illustrations, remember the stilt walking in Comet in Moominland?
I still have some of them but I found they don’t really hold up as adult books. Floater I had the same thought about one of the Pratchett books but I can’t remember which, hmm.
There’s PEZ dispensers!?
But it turns out, when Moomin sort of befriends her, that she is so cold because deep inside she is very lonely.
ETA Groke, that is
If I saw this thing lurking silently outside my house and I had a shotgun I’d shoot first and worry about its emotional state later. Preferably I’d want to be inside a Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank before I was anywhere near Grimace’s evil cousin.
See here: Moomin Pez Dispensers. They are mini ones! I kind of get the feeling over in Finland there is Moomin everything though.
