Another advantage is that, in many countries, three generations
have grown up reading about and watching the Moomins. Japan,
which still accounts for more than 30 per cent of all sales, has
been reading the translated comic strips since the 1950s, and the
country’s first Moomin animation in 1969 was one of the first
cartoons in its soon-to-be-famous anime industry (Hayao Miyazaki,
famous for
Spirited Away
,
worked on it). In Soviet Russia, some
of the Moomin books were mandatory reading in schools, while
Moomintroll, Sniff, Snufkin and co also starred in a Soviet cut-out
animation that ran from 1980-’83.
It’s a serious history, and Jansson had to suffer stinging criticism
that she’d committed sacrilege by turning the Moomins into a
streamlined business. “People said, ‘How dare you commercialise
this heritage?’ I had to think about it, but I have no doubts now. First
and foremost, it’s about keeping the books alive – it’s not evident to
me that the books wouldn’t have been forgotten. We’re reprinting
and translating works all the time, which shows that people are
interested in the original works – not just mugs and candy.”
For Sophia, the whole business is deeply bound up with family,
as the Moomins were to Tove, who based some of the characters
on her family life (Moominmamma was based on her mother, and
Tuu-ticki on her partner Tooti). Having lost her mother aged six,
Sophia grew up with her father Lars, her paternal grandmother, her
aunt Tove and Tove’s partner, Tuulikki Pietilä, known to the family
as Tooti. The family were all artists in some way or other, and all
distinguished in their own right – Lars had published a book aged
15;
Sophia’s grandmother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, was the
daughter of a priest to the Swedish king, had founded Sweden’s girl
guides and was married to famous Finnish sculptor Viktor Jansson,
who died in 1958.
“
After my mother died, the family all made a special effort with
me,” Sophia says of her bohemian upbringing, with summers spent
on the Pellinge islands 80km east of Helsinki, where the family
bought houses to escape an increasingly intrusive media and public.
“
A lot of what was there in the Moomins was there in my life, though
I didn’t recognise it then. The most important value was to care for
your loved ones and there was an emphasis on enjoying life: books,
Top left
⁄
Originally published in Swedish
in Finland, Tove Jansson’s work has been
translated into more than 45 languages
Clockwise from top
⁄
Moomin
merchandise is now carefully controlled
and can only feature Tove Jansson’s
original artwork
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