Tove Marika Jansson (; 9 August 1914 – 27 June 2001) was a Finland-Swedish author, novelist and comic strip author, painter and illustrator. Brought up by artistic parents, her mother an illustrator and postage stamp designer, her father a sculptor, Jansson studied art from 1930 to 1938 in Helsinki, Stockholm, and Paris. She held her first solo art exhibition in 1943. Over the same period, she penned short stories and articles for publication, and subsequently drew illustrations for book covers, advertisements, and postcards. She continued her work as an artist and writer for the rest of her life.
Jansson wrote the Moomin novel series for children, starting with the 1945 The Moomins and the Great Flood. The following two books, Comet in Moominland and Finn Family Moomintroll, published in 1946 and 1948 respectively, were highly successful, and sales of the first book increased correspondingly. For her work as a children's author she received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966; among her many later awards was the Selma Lagerlöf Prize in 1992. Her Moomin stories have been adapted for the theatre, the cinema, and as an opera.
She held a solo exhibition of paintings in 1955, and five more between 1960 and 1970. She carried out several commissions for murals in public buildings around Finland between 1945 and 1984. She created the illustrations both for her own books and for editions of classics including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Hobbit.
Starting with the semi-autobiographical (The Sculptor's Daughter) in 1968, Jansson wrote six novels, including the admired (The Summer Book), and five short story collections for adults.
Early life
Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki, in the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous state within the Russian Empire at the time. Her family, part of the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland, was an artistic one: her father, Viktor Jansson, was a sculptor, and her mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, was a Swedish-born graphic designer responsible for many of Finland's postage stamps, and an illustrator. Tove's siblings became artists too: Per Olov Jansson became a photographer and Lars Jansson an author and cartoonist. Their home was in Helsinki, but the family spent their summers in a rented cottage on one of the islands of Pellinki near Porvoo, east of Helsinki. The Söderskär Lighthouse island off Porvoo in the Gulf of Finland may have helped to inspire her later books, such as Moominpappa at Sea.
Jansson went to Finland's first co-educational school, in Helsinki. She then studied at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design), in Stockholm in 1930–1933, the Graphic School of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 1933–1937, and finally at and in Paris in 1938. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1943.
At age 14, Jansson wrote and illustrated her first picture book (Sara and Pelle and Neptune's Children). It was not published until 1933. She sold drawings that were published in magazines in the 1920s.
In the 1930s Jansson made several trips to other European countries. She drew from these for her illustrated short stories and articles, which were published in magazines, periodicals and daily papers. During this period, Jansson designed many book covers, adverts and postcards. Following her mother's example, she drew illustrations for Garm, a Finnish-Swedish political and satirical magazine.
Work
Moomins
Jansson is principally known as the author of the Moomin books. Jansson created the Moomintrolls, a family who are white, round and smooth in appearance, with large snouts that make them vaguely resemble hippopotamuses. She first drew a deliberately ugly creature as a caricature of Immanuel Kant, the philosopher; a kinder version became the Moomintroll. The first book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, was published in 1945. Although the primary characters are Moominmamma and Moomintroll, most of the principal characters of later stories were only introduced in the next book, so The Moomins and the Great Flood is frequently considered a forerunner to the main series. The book was not a success, but the third book, Finn Family Moomintroll (1948), made Jansson famous.
The themes of the Moomin books changed as time went by. The first books, written starting during the Second World War, up to Moominland Midwinter (1957), are adventure stories that include floods, comets and supernatural events. The Moomins and the Great Flood deals with Moominmamma and Moomintroll's flight through a dark and scary forest, where they encounter various dangers. In Comet in Moominland, a comet nearly destroys the Moominvalley. Some critics have considered this an allegory to nuclear weapons. Finn Family Moomintroll deals with adventures brought on by the discovery of a magician's hat. The Exploits of Moominpappa (1950) tells the story of Moominpappa's adventurous youth and cheerfully parodies the genre of memoir. Finally, Moominsummer Madness (1955) is set in a theatre: the Moomins explore the empty building and perform Moominpappa's melodrama.
Moominland Midwinter marks a turning point in the series. Jansson described it as a book about “what it is like when things get difficult”: the story focuses on Moomintroll, who wakes up in the middle of the winter (Moomins hibernate from November to April), and has to cope with the strange and unfriendly world he finds. The short story collection Tales from Moominvalley (1962) and the novels Moominpappa at Sea (1965) and Moominvalley in November (1970) are serious and psychologically searching books, far removed from the light-heartedness and cheerful humor of Finn Family Moomintroll. Moominvalley in November, in which the Moomin family themselves never appear, is especially sombre in tone, possibly in consequence of the death of Jansson's mother during the year that it was written. Because of this, it has been described as being a "textbook on letting go, being a mature orphan, existing spiritually alone". Following this book, Jansson stated that she "couldn't go back and find that happy Moominvalley again" and so decided to stop writing the Moomin books.
In addition to the Moomin novels and short stories, Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated four picture books: The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My (1952), Who will Comfort Toffle? (1960), The Dangerous Journey (1977) and An Unwanted Guest (1980). As the Moomins' fame grew, two of the original novels, Comet in Moominland and The Exploits of Moominpappa, were revised by Jansson and republished.
Critics have interpreted several of the Moomin characters as being inspired by real people, especially members of the author's family and close friends, and Jansson spoke in interviews about the backgrounds of, and possible models for, her characters. Tuulikki Pietilä, Jansson's partner, inspired the character Too-Ticky in Moominland Midwinter, while Moomintroll and Little My have been seen as psychological self-portraits of the artist. The inseparable pair known in English translations as Thingumy and Bob were in Swedish Tofslan and Vifslan: the pet names of Tove Jansson and her theatre director lover Vivica Bandler, a subtlety lost in translation. Snufkin is based on Jansson's friend, the journalist and member of parliament Atos Wirtanen.
The Moomins relate strongly to Jansson's own family – they were bohemian and lived close to nature. Jansson remained close to her mother until her mother's death in 1970; even after Tove had become an adult, the two often travelled together, and during her final years Signe lived with Tove part-time. Moominpappa and Moominmamma are often seen as portraits of Jansson's parents.
Other writing
Jansson's first foray outside children's literature was Bildhuggarens dotter (Sculptor's Daughter), a semi-autobiographical novel published in 1968. She went on to write five more novels for adults, including (The Summer Book) and five collections of short stories. The Summer Book is the best known of her adult fiction; it describes the summer stay on an island of a young girl and her grandmother. The girl is modelled on her niece, Sophia Jansson; the girl's father on Sophia's father, Lars Jansson; and the grandmother on Tove's mother Signe. The Summer Book was adapted into a 2024 film of the same name, starring Glenn Close as the grandmother.
Wartime satire in Garm magazine
Tove Jansson worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for the Swedish-language satirical magazine Garm from 1929 to 1953, when the magazine ceased production. One of her political cartoons achieved brief international fame: she drew Adolf Hitler as a crying baby in diapers, surrounded by Neville Chamberlain and other great European leaders, who tried to calm the baby down by giving it slices of cake – Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. In the Second World War (when Finland fought against the Soviet Union, part of the time cooperating with Nazi Germany), her cover illustrations for Garm lampooned both Hitler and Joseph Stalin: in one, Stalin draws his sword from his impressively long scabbard, only to find it absurdly short; in another, multiple Hitlers ransack a house, carrying away food and artworks. In The Spectators view, Jansson made both "Hitler and Stalin appear as preposterous little figures, self-important and comic".
Comic strip artist
Her earliest comic strips were created for productions including (, 1929), (', 1930), and (, 1933).
The figure of the Moomintroll appeared first in Jansson's political cartoons, where it was used as a signature character near the artist's name. This "Proto-Moomin", then called (in Swedish) or (in Finnish), was thin and ugly, with a long, narrow nose and devilish tail. Jansson said that she had designed the Moomins in her youth: after she lost a philosophical quarrel about Immanuel Kant with one of her brothers, she drew "the ugliest creature imaginable" on the wall of their outhouse and wrote under it "Kant". This Moomin later gained weight and a more pleasant appearance, but in the first Moomin book The Moomins and the Great Flood (originally ), the Immanuel-Kant-Moomin is still perceptible. The name Moomin comes from Tove Jansson's uncle, Einar Hammarsten: when she was studying in Stockholm and living with her Swedish relatives, her uncle tried to stop her pilfering food by telling her that a "Moomintroll" lived in the kitchen closet and breathed cold air down people's necks.
In 1952, after Comet in Moominland and Finn Family Moomintroll had been translated into English, a British newspaper man, Charles Sutton, asked if Tove Jansson would be interested in drawing comic strips about the Moomins. Jansson accepted the offer. The comic strip Moomintroll started in the London Evening News, which had a circulation of 12 million at that time, making it the world's largest daily newspaper. The strip spread to hundreds of other newspapers in 12 countries.
Painter and illustrator
Paintings
Although she became known first and foremost as an author, Tove Jansson considered her careers as author and painter to be of equal importance. She painted throughout her life. She exhibited during the 1930s and early 1940s, holding her first solo exhibition in 1943. Despite generally positive reviews, criticism induced Jansson to refine her style; her 1955 solo exhibition was simpler in detail and content. Between 1960 and 1970 she held five more solo exhibitions. The National Biography of Finland describes Jansson as going "against the conventional image of an artist with her unusually even balance between visual art and writing."
Murals
Throughout her career, Jansson created a series of commissioned murals and public works which may still be viewed in their original locations, including:
The canteen at the factory at , Helsinki (1945) The Aurora Children's Hospital in Helsinki The hotel at Hamina The Ten Virgins altarpiece in Teuva () Church (1954), her only church painting