On the 2nd of September we (Elina and myself) arrived at Tampere around noon and headed straight for Tampere Hall where the Moomin Museum is housed. Walking from the railway station, it was easy to find the place (even for a topographically challenged person like myself) thanks to the signs giving directions to the museum. Upon reaching Tampere Hall and spending some time in the museum shop, we proceeded to the museum itself. I’m not sure I’ve seen it before in museums, but it said on the ticket that it is valid for 4 hours only – considering our experience, I don’t know how well they monitor it and how the workers make visitors who have overstayed leave…
Anyway, 4 hours – one would think it is more than enough – turned out not to be enough for nerds… I mean, enthusiasts like us, as we were very thorough; it is a rather short time if one wants to read everything there is to read and spend time looking at installations, also one tends to get hungry… would be nice to be able to take a break, visit the cafeteria at Tampere Hall or go and have lunch, then come back and continue without being pressed for time. I’m not quite sure about the idea behind this limitation, considering it’s supposed to be a child-friendly place… On the other hand, the designated time is enough if one intends just to briefly look through, and indeed families with children passed us by many times, as they interacted with the exhibits at a higher speed, and even those who arrived later than we did probably went home earlier.
For copyright reasons taking pictures/filming inside the museum is not allowed, but there are areas designated for photographs – like the flower field, or the boats. Also we were allowed to take pictures in the Studio/Atelier – about that later. The walkthrough is organized in a way that you follow the books in order they were written and/or published, starting with The Moomins and the Great Flood (original Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen), and the subsequent sections are arranged following the timeline of the narrative, each section concentrating on a particular book. Like I’ve already mentioned, there’s material a plenty for a true fan: in addition to information-containing labels, there are printed guidebooks which you can use while you’re there; there are also interactive electronic tableaus in every section of the museum as well as Moomin Museum App available for downloading. You can choose in which form you prefer to get the information – the guidebooks, the electronic tableaus and the app all contain almost similar descriptions of the books, publication dates and history of publication, translations are also provided; illustrations from each book are described – what is special about them, whether Jansson’s style changed; there are also short biographical notes on Jansson – what happened in her life during the creation of each book and how the writing and illustrations were affected by these events. I haven’t read all the books yet, so after a certain point, to avoid spoilers, I skipped the tableaus which revealed the plot of subsequent books.
The Moomin miniatures and installations – which are sure to attract the attention of younger visitors – are featured in every section of the museum, at least one installation for each book, depicting the important events in the narrative. As Elina mentioned earlier in her entry, the miniatures and installations were created by graphic designer Tuulikki Pietilä, who was Tove Jansson’s life partner. The Moomin House was a collaborative effort between Pietilä, Jansson and Pentti Eistola, with the help of Reima Pietilä. The amount of details in each installation is impressive, that’s why you can spend quite some time looking at them; some recreate original illustrations, some depart a little from the original (characters might be added or absent), some recreate scenes from comics (like that impressive Moomins in the Wild West installation), audio recordings are available in different languages for each installation – these are excerpts from the books corresponding to the installations. The signs, guide books, electronic tableaus and the audio recordings accompanying the installations are provided in Finnish, Swedish, English, Japanese and Russian.
I’m repeating myself, but really, the attention to details in the installations reminds of modern-day high-quality professionally painted gaming miniatures – same little things, not even noticed by most of the viewers, which tell their own story; however, with materials and tools available now the miniature sculpting is much easier than it was back then when the Moomin miniatures were created. So I guess they managed with what they had, and it is still quite impressive. Considering that the project of creating the Moomin house and the furnishings only involved four people, it is quite a lot of work and dedication required.
Since the opening of the museum, new sections – the Observatory and the Studio/Atelier – were added. Observatory opened on 9th August, from what I understand it is a temporary exhibition, and is dedicated to Tove Jansson and her life and career as an artist, writer and Moomin creator. A number of her works for satirical magazine Garm are presented. An interesting feature is the introduction of two versions of the story of how the first Moomin appeared: the first version features an ugly creature named Snork that was drawn by Tove on the wall of an outdoor privy at the family’s summer house after an argument with her brother; an alternative story is that young Tove was told about a scary Moomintroll by her maternal uncle. (Note: Boel Westin, in her biography of Tove Jansson, reveals that both occurrences took place and, at first, for quite some time Jansson envisioned Moomintroll as a somewhat creepy ghostly creature).
Observatory section also sheds some light on the so-called Moomin boom and its origins, on the appearance of Moomin comic strip and the 90s anime. What was surprising to me is that the first commercially produced Moomin merchandise went on sale already in the 50s, with Finnish companies like Arabia and Finlayson obtaining the rights to produce Moomin-related products. This coincided with the first so-called Moomin boom: books were translated into other languages, comic strips for English-speaking audiences (in London Evening News) contributed to popularizing the characters abroad.
I personally thought the Moomin boom that happened in the 90s, thanks to the anime, is a new phenomenon, but it was more of a Moomin revival, based on the information provided at the exhibition. Now Moomin merchandise seem to be a “must” for almost every family, at least in Finland, as children- and adult-oriented Moomin things like plates, cups, cutlery, home textiles, napkins, lamps and whatnot are very common features in an average Finnish household. I guess if you were born before the revival, like earlier than the 80s, you were not surrounded by the Moomins from the moment you were born.
The merchandize pre-dating currently available Moomin-featuring items, including figurines made by Signe "Ham" Hammarsten-Jansson, Tove’s mother, as well as commercially produced items from the 1950s are also exhibited in this section. A short film on Tove and the Moomins, shown on one of the screens in the Observatory, also touches on commercial aspects: among other things, it is mentioned how anime and Jansson’s involvement in its production attracted a lot of criticism from the “cultural people” (funny thing, considering that Finnish children who grew up in the 90s seem to know the Moomins predominantly from the anime, and to a lesser degree from the books, that is anime was very successful in helping popularize the characters); author’s niece, Sophia Jansson, is also shown expressing an opinion that merchandise (featuring Moomin characters) brings people back to the books.
The studio/atelier is another new section in the museum, a truly great idea, can be fun for both kids and adults. There one can try his/her hand at drawing/sketching/painting with a number of tools, such as quill and ink, pencils and ink pens – similar to those Jansson herself used for illustrations; different types of paper are provided, and the museum workers offer instructions on how to use the tools and teach the techniques . Whether to draw Moomin characters or some unrelated is up to you, and after you’re done you can pin your creation to the wall (like we did) or take it with you.
Footnotes
Gutsy Animations https://www.gutsy.fi/moominvalley Moomin Museum website https://muumimuseo.fi/en/
Westin, Boel. (2014). Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words. The Authorised Biography. Translated by Silvester Mazzarella. London: Sort of Books.
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