MOOMIN MAGIC Featuring the voices of a host of British stars, a new animated Moominvalley series is reviving interest in Tove Jansson’s cult characters, says
LARGER than an igloo and just as solid, The Groke appears lost in her own icy thoughts. Gaze fixed on an empty space, Tove Jansson’s lumpy, lonely and largely misunderstood character bares her trademark grimace.
And, in keeping with the cult Moomin books, she’s literally frozen to the spot.
Expertly sculpted from eight blocks of Lapland’s finest ice, the mysterious creature is part of an ambitious new ice cave exhibit at the Vesileppis Resort in Leppavirta, a small town in Finland’s central Lakeland region.
Here, inspired by Moominland Midwinter, Jansson’s fifth Moomin
book, the attraction features 16 tableaux, set amid snow scenes and slides, all chilled at – 40C, 30 metres below the hotel.
It cost around £26,000 to transport and store blocks harvested from the Lainio and Puruvesi rivers, where currents slow the icing process, leaving it clear and bubble-free. Anne Lantto from the resort’s marketing department justifies the expense, declaring: “Moomins deserve the best.”
Anne, like thousands of other Finns, is a dedicated fan of the Moomins, a family of flumpy, wide-eyed creatures resembling bipedal, albino hippos, whose sense of adventure and thought-provoking observations appeal across the generations.
And when Vesileppis’ own icy inhabitants take a long summer dip
in August, she hints (and hopes) they may be returning in some other form next year.
Born from childhood stories of ghouls guarding candy cupboards, Moomintroll became artist and author Tove Jansson’s alter-ego, later starring in nine illustrated books, published between 1945 and 1970 and shaped by a period of post-war confusion and despair.
The inhabitants of Moominvalley first found international fame in the 1950s, and their appeal has only continued to grow. In March, Japan plans to open a theme park in the city of Hanno, and around the same time, a new animated TV series by Gutsy Animations will be broadcast in the UK through Sky Original. It’s the most expensive production by minute of any Finnish show to date.
I’m in Finland for the programme’s premiere, attended by British voice stars Jennifer Saunders, Rosamund Pike and Taron Egerton, so after a short but blissfully crisp-blue stay in Lakeland, I board a six-hour train south from Kuopio to capital city, Helsinki.
A fan of the Moomins since childhood, when I was given a book with a note promising me a visit to Moominvalley one day, I’ve loved them even more as an adult.
Beyond the charming illustrations and poetic storytelling, it’s the sentiments they evoke; from flower-strewn forests to rough seas and misty winter suns, the landscapes are distinctly Nordic, reflecting a love of nature, even in its darkest forms.
Around 74% of Finland is covered by trees, making it the most densely forested country in Europe, and dressed in winter whites, their regimented spines are fleshed out with all sorts of monstrous, amorphous limbs.
“Some of my favourite book covers are of landscapes,” says Moomin expert and author Sirke Happonen, who has penned academic papers on the subject.
Over dinner later that evening at Elite restaurant, an elegant 1930s-style salon once frequented by Tove Jansson, she shows me a collection of first editions, neatly packed into her canvas knapsack. “Tove loved nature and flowers, and these often appeared in her illustrations,” she explains, showing me a drawing of a horse smothered in colourful petals.
Achieving the correct tones and hues was vital to the new Gutsy Animations series, modernised to compete with the likes of Pixar,