‘The smaller you are, the bigger Christmas is.’ Tove Jansson’s present tense recollections of her childhood Christmases, first collected in her memoir Sculptor’s Daughter, contain the same combination of pragmatism and fantasy that runs through the Moomin stories. But where her trolls feared the coming of the spruce in her story The Fir Tree, young … Continue reading
The Moomins aren’t a naturally Christmassy species. They prefer to spend their winters tucked behind an old boiler, or huddled together in their drawing room. You wouldn’t have thought the irascible Hemulens would have much truck with the celebration either, other than to give them something else to get cross about. But in The Fir … Continue reading
Tove Jansson knew a thing or two about merchandising. Like a one woman Nordic Disney she was, as early as the mid 50s selling handkerchiefs, piggy banks, dustbins, suspenders and marzipan Moomins. Although she did stop short of allowing a line of sanitary towels for young girls – the company wanted to brand them ‘Little … Continue reading
Here begins the year of Tove Jansson. 100 years since her birth, The Egg theatre in Bath bring us the UK’s very first staging of one of her Moomin stories (ridiculous!). The year also sees their first original motion picture outing in Moomins on the Riviera and a stage musical of Moominsummer Madness. But I’ll … Continue reading
I've just been watching the strangely affecting BBC Four Christmas offering The Fir Tree, a Danish drama about the life of a Christmas tree; from birth through his brief, shining glory to a tragic death, it's quite unusually told by the fir itself. The story is based on a rather pessimistic tale by Hans Christian … Continue reading
