Creator of the Moominstories, Tove Jansson, was born in Helsinki and spent most of her life there, though she travelled a lot and later in life divided her time between the city and the cottage she and her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä, had built for themselves on an island off the coast of Finland in Klovharu. Today Tove Jansson is resting in Helsinki, in the Hietaniemi Cemetery and a number of places in Helsinki retain (and some of them promote) noteworthy connections to Jansson. Apartment blocks where she lived, first with her family and later on her own, are marked with commemorative plaques. Her old school buildings are still here, though now they house museum collections. And in 2014 a park in the center of Helsinki was named after her, becoming Tove Jansson park.
Inspired by Toves biography and her works, we decided to visit some of the places which she frequented. We would go on to visit more locations in Finland, but to start with we decided to take a walk around Helsinki, visiting sites associated with her. The life path of Tove published online by Helsinki Art Museum served as a reference to us. We consulted a number of other online sources [1] and added some more places to our walk and some we decided to skip. Some of those sites were literary and artistic places in a traditional sense, and others were not.
So here’s what happened…
On a sunny day, on June 6th 2017, we set off to walk the Tove Jansson trail in Helsinki.
We started our walk from Lallukka Artists’ home [2] at noon. Tove lived there with her family since the house was built in 1933. The house is now still in use, with residents occupying the apartments, so we only got to look at the door and read the plaque next to it. Lallukka Artists' home is meant to offer a safe haven for artists, musicians and actors, where they are able focus on their creative work. Since Lallukka welcomed its first residents in the 1930s, many Finnish artists have lived there including the family of Viktor Jansson, Tove Janssons father. The Jansson family had a pet monkey, Poppolino, living with them in Lallukka and doves were regular visitors in the house from time to time, keeping company for the artists.
From the doorsteps of Lallukka we walked to the Hietaniemi Cemetery to look for the Jansson family grave. As we walked around the cemetery, taking wrong turns and looking in wrong places, we asked for directions from cemetery workers. Two older men we encountered on the way were also looking for Tove’s resting place. We finally found the place in the Old Cemetery quarter. Tove Jansson is resting there together with her parents and brother Lars. Although no flowers were to be seen at the grave, a group of Moomin miniatures – most likely placed by admirers – were guarding the site inside a little lantern. As we left the cemetery, across the road we found newly opened Mumin Kaffe at Mechelininkatu 3, a kid-friendly place, with walls and windows covered in Moomin characters and Moomin illustrations by Tove Jansson. We had a chance to enjoy tea from Moomin cups and pastries from Moomin plates just like any regural Finn. For children there are available Moomin books to read and wall bars to climb. To keep company for the kids, pets are allowed in the café as well. It was a really nice – more or less quiet at the time we visited – place to have a cup of coffee or tea.
Note: Last time I've checked Mumin Kaffe website, it didn't feature a cafe at Mechelininkatu (the one we visited) and the one in Stockmann department store is also closed, according to the website.
From Mumin Kaffe we made our way through the center of Helsinki to Tove’s studio at Ullanlinnankatu, which was one of the most important places to her during her whole life. Own studio is considered rather important by artists, and Virginia Woolf similarly emphasized the importance of having one’s own room for women writers (see her essay A Room of Ones Own, 1929), and this studio apartment was just that for Tove. We had almost reached the studio – with our slow walking and gazing around, it took about half an hour – when we walked by the Design Museum and, as it happened to be one of Tove’s old school houses, we decided to go in. Although the museum does not currently exhibit anything Tove Jansson-related, it looked like it could be an interesting place. A helpful lady at the info desk directed us to Toves studio, which was located in the next building.
So here it was. Again, the house is in use and the door is locked. Having checked the old pictures of the studio’s interior from the official Tove Jansson website, we concluded that it was on the top floor and included a loft with high windows (later confirmed from Tove Jansson website, which described it as her “tower studio”, also here) So as we were standing there next to the plaque with Toves young face (carved by Viktor Jansson), a gentleman living in the house happened to be entering the building. After discovering the reason of our being there, he was so kind to let us in. We went up in a very old elevator, and found ourselves once again before a closed door – Tove’s studio is not open to public, and visitors (granted, they are lucky to be allowed in the building) only get a chance to admire the studio from outside – that is, stare at the door. When leaving the building, we used the back door to get a peek at the inner courtyard. From below we got a glimpse of the studio’s exterior – the one with windows at the rooftop.
Having left the house, we went to check out a somewhat unusual sites related to Tove. The Janssons were an artistic family: Toves mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson was a graphic artist and her father, Viktor Jansson, a sculptor. Viktors sculptures are to be found at different locations in Helsinki as well as in other cities in Finland. For several of those sculptures, Tove modeled as a child and a teenager. So we strolled along the Esplanadi park, in the surroundings of which two of the sculptures are located. Warm and sunny weather brought many people outside, so we were not alone in our leisurely pursuits. The sculptures which we were eager to see were intended as central elements for the small fountains: the first one (Water nymphs, also known as Play II, 1940) is in the park, the second (The Mermaid, 1941) is close by, in the inner yard of the Bensow House – this one was hard to see, as the fountain does not work and is overgrown with vegetation. There is something peculiar about both sculptures: while both feature mermaids, their body shapes are kind of unusual in comparison with, perhaps, more known Western depiction of one fish-like tail – Viktors mermaids (or, nymphs more precisely) have legs, ending in fins instead [3].
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Our next stop, quite commercial, was Stockmann department store. During that summer, to make it easier for tourists to find Moomin-related souvenirs, special Moomin section was arranged, with thematic easily-noticeable stands filled with Moomin-themed products. Stockmann also has its own Mumin Kaffe on the fifth floor, which, although it serves meringue (which looks like, well, a piece of a Moomin), is in walk-through and does not feel as cozy as the one we visited in Töölö district, next to the Hietaniemi cemetery.
To conclude our walk, we walked by another of Tove’s old school houses: the building that used to be the Finnish Art Societys Drawing School now houses Ateneum art museum. We were too late to go in. From what we discovered reading Tove Janssons biography (Karjalainen Tuula, ‘Tove Jansson: Work and Love’, 2013), she did not particularly like her schools in Helsinki – the stranger it is to try to walk in her footsteps around the places she herself did not enjoy.
So that’s all about it for now. The next walk we took in December, we visited a number of other places in Helsinki. Stay tuned for more!
Footnotes
1. Another walk is featured on the Moomin franchise website https://www.moomin.com/en/blog/discover-tove-janssons-life-and-art-through-this/ Places with connection to Jansson are also listed here https://www.myhelsinki.fi/en/see-and-do/sights/tove-janssons-helsinki
2. Lallukka is also one of the first purely functionalist houses built in Helsinki area. There are 56 apartments in Lallukka, of which 24 are ateliers for visual artists. Lallukka Artists' Club and the inner architecture of the house, which consist of several communal spaces, like banquet and assembly hall, promotes communal lifestyle. The latest renovation of Lallukka was finished in autumn 2016.
3. For more sculptures see the Moomin franchise website: Discover Helsinki – see the beautiful sculptures of Tove Jansson https://www.moomin.com/en/blog/discover-helsinki-see-the-beautiful-sculptures-of-tove-jansson/
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