IT’S MOOMIN’ MARVELLOUS
With a new museum in Tampere and an art exhibition in London in the pipeline, the world is set to go Moomin mad. SARAH MARSHALL visits the cult characters’ birthplace
TOSSED between clawing waves with only a wooden oar and magician’s top hat, Moominpappa embarks on a whimsical journey to find a distant lighthouse.
It’s 34 years since I read the story of a snouty patriarch who frolics with seahorses and befriends The Groke, a desperately lonely figure scarred with a permanent scowl.
But I do recall a handwritten inscription in my copy of Moominpappa At Sea, promising the Moomins would take me on a special adventure one day.
Now I’m standing in front of a first edition illustrated book sleeve, part of a 2,000-strong collection of drawings, triptychs and related paraphernalia on rotated display at the world’s only Moomin Museum, which recently opened in Tampere, a two-hour train ride north from Helsinki.
Since Finnish artist, sculptor and illustrator Tove Jansson published her first book in 1945, the magical Moominvalley has become a worldwide cult phenomenon; children are drawn to the playful, fanciful characters, while the droll humour resonates with an older audience.
Jansson’s Moomin work was donated to the Tampere Art Museum in 1986, after Helsinki City Museum declined the collection on the basis it wasn’t “proper art”. A temporary exhibition of 100 pieces in the Tampere gallery’s basement lasted for three decades, until structural damage resulted in an evacuation three years ago.
Moomin Museum Director Taina Myllyharju was given an “almost unlimited” budget to employ the best architects, artists and designers in her quest for creating a new space in the park-fringed Tampere Hall.
A reading library stocks the 12 Moomin books in multiple languages, and a shop sells themed postcards and stamps (conveniently, there’s a postbox on site) and exclusive merchandise given the seal of approval by Tove’s niece, Sophia Jansson.
“We even have the world’s only Moomin conservator,” Taina proudly proclaims.
Restoring the works, particularly the detailed triptychs Jansson worked on with her life partner, graphic artist Tuulikki Pietila, was a painstaking business. Often, the women would use anything they could find lying around in the summer cottage they shared on the remote island Klovharu. These colourful 3D scenes were ephemeral snatches of imagination; they weren’t designed to last.
Crossing a wasteland on spindly, insect-leg stilts, Moomintroll and Sniff stare up at a cobweb-shrouded model schooner. The Jansson family heirloom forms the centrepiece of a tableau from the apocalyptic Comet in Moominland, which critics have linked to post-war gloom and the looming spectre of nuclear attacks.
As for the delicate charcoal, pen and watercolour drawings, they will never go on loan again, she insists, and lights are kept permanently dimmed in the two-storey exhibition space to preserve them.
Under the cover of darkness, I comfortably sink into the Moomin’s make-believe world, with the help of several interactive displays; inside a cavernous top hat, a projector bestows my shadow with loppy Sniff ears, and by waving my hands, I can throw bolts of lightning above a mural of ghostly, wide-eyed Hattifatteners.
From fireball comets hurtling towards Earth, to belligerent waves threatening to swallow the sky, Jansson was fascinated by the forces of nature. On her birthday, August 9, which also marked the museum’s official opening, she would swim in the sea with a crown of plaited flowers around her head.
So it’s fitting Tampere is a city connected to wilderness.
Two giant lakes sitting at different elevations create a source of hydroelectric power which has shaped the industrial ‘Manchester of Finland’. But the environment is
still respected.
Heidi Savolainen from Adventure Apes introduces me to the region’s sauna culture, on a trip to Rauhaniemi, set on the birch tree-lined shores of Lake Nasijarvi.
“There is always room for one,” she declares as we squeeze our pefletti (wooden sauna seats) into a narrow room heaving with sweaty flesh and plumes of steam.
Fat men with bloated, braised bellies line the benches like a coconut shy, and gasping women shake rivulets of sweat from their cleavages. It’s a level of body confidence that would send shivers through most Brits.
After 20 minutes spent boiling my blood, I step outside and climb down a set of metal stairs into the crisp, satin-soft lake, where the stinging shock of cold water becomes perversely addictive. Afterwards, I follow a path into the forest, picking plump blueberries and fan-leafed wood sorrel so sharp it leaves me grimacing like The Groke.
The herb appears on my dinner plate that evening, as part of six-course taster menu at restaurant C. Ilka Isotalo and his team take pride in using ingredients sourced from a maximum 50km radius. Snowy elderflower sprays dance around a party of peas and roasted rooster, and slithers of rose petal perfume a sweet brown butter cream.
Although Jansson spent much of her time on Klovharu and visited Tampere, she lived, worked and died in Helsinki. Throughout her life, she was desperate to be taken seriously as an artist and several of her murals are on display at the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM).
In Electricity, a piece commissioned for the Pitajanmaki factory of the Stromberg company, luminous lightning veins strike just like they do above Moominvalley, and in the fresco Party In The City, a small Moomintroll hides in the corner.
In fact, the fairy-tale creatures can be found all over the capital; since December 2016, five themed Mumin Kaffes have opened, with play areas, plush toys and peaceful surroundings.
Next month, fashion label Chinti & Parker will launch a range of limited edition Moomin cashmere jumpers, and in October London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery will host a major UK retrospective of Tove Jansson’s work.
Clearly, Moominpappa’s humble ship is setting sail for world domination, and we’re all invited to jump on board. Several decades on from my first encounter with the adorable flumpy characters, it’s an adventure I’m happy to embrace.