Tove Jansson
Born while Finland was under Russian control, Tove Marika Jansson was born in August 1914 to sculptor Viktor and graphic designer Signe who was born in Sweden and she had a brother called Lars. Despite being Finnish, Tove spoke Swedish which made her part of a linguistic minority of people who were Finnish but spoke Swedish. The people are descended from Swedish settlers to Finland when the two countries were in a union together until Russia wanted their turn with Finland but even then, these settlers stayed where they were, and their descendants are still in Finland to this day.
On account of her artistic parents, Tove studied art for most of the 1930s in Stockholm, Sweden, Helsinki, Finland and Paris, France. During that time, she was cartoonist working for the Swedish satirical journal Garm. It was in Garm was where, in 1946, her iconic creation made their debut, the Moomins. These characters strongly related to her own family, right down to one character called being based on her lesbian lover. She coined the ad hoc Swedish word mumintroll because she believed the consonant sound of m evoked a sense of softness and this was further proven with the design of the character where she gave her characters a shape that expressed softness in lieu of flabbiness. The world of the Moomins was also populated by the hattifatteners, hemulens, toffles and fillyjonks. The Moomin comics also appeared in London’s Evening News after appearing in the local papers around the Scandinavian region. It is said that the character of Snufkin was based on her former fiancé Atos Wirtanen. In fact, Tove had both male and female lovers but eventually settled in a lesbian/ gay relationship with an American born Finnish woman Tuulikki Pietilä with whom she spent the next 45 years of her life with which saw the two become one of Finland’s most visible gay couples, even if they had to live apart on account of Tove’s mother. Oddly enough, Tove related the Moomins to her own family, whom she described as “boheimian, tolerant to diversity andlived close to nature”. Tove wrote and illsutrated 9 Moomin books but it was the thied Moomin book that granted her the success that brought her franchise to the tremendous audience it has to this very day. At one point, Disney wanted some of that Moomin hype pie but Tove refused to allow the mouse house to take their precious creations away from her (even for a sizeable amount of cash) so with help from her brother Lars, the two created their own company called Moomin characters so they could help out merchandising and syndication for the Moomin franchise which was now accelerating in growth. To accomodate older Moomin fans, Tove also wrote 12 non Moomin books for adults so they could have more delightful reads to explore with one example being the Summer Book/ Sommarboken (1972).
Along with painting murals for places like Aurora’s Children’s Hospital in Helsinki, Tove also had a knack for music Tove worked with composer Erna Tauro to create musical wonder. One example would be in 1965, where they co-wrote the song 'Höstvisa' ('Autumn Song'), which finished third in a radio contest. The Swedish lyrics are known by people in Nordics off by heart.
Tove Jansson died in June 2001 but her legacy lives on through the Moomins, the adaptions of the Moomins as well as being the literary idol for Terry Pratchett who wrote the Discworld books.