Tove Jansson

[Stewart]

Tove Jansson (August 9, 1914 – June 27, 2001) was a Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. She was the author of, among other works, the Moomin books.

Tove Jansson was born and died in Helsinki, Finland, and was the daughter of the sculptor Viktor Jansson and the illustrator Signe Hammarsten-Jansson. Her brothers were also artists in different fields: Per Olof Jansson was a photographer, and Lars Jansson was an author and comic strip artist.

As a Finnish citizen whose mother tongue was Swedish, she was part of the Swedish-speaking Finns minority. Thus, all her books were originally written in Swedish.

The sea was Tove Jansson's greatest inspiration. When she was a child her family lived in summer in the islands of the Gulf of Finland. Later in life, she had her atelier in Helsinki, but lived much of her life on a small island called Klovharu, one of the Pellinki Islands near the town of Porvoo. Tove Jansson lived with her partner, the graphic artist Tuulikki Pietil?.

Her book Bildhuggarens dotter (1968, Sculptor's Daughter) is an autobiographical account of her youth.

BIBLIOGRAPHY (partial)

• Bildhuggarens dotter (1968, Sculptor's Daughter) (semi-autobiographical, translated into English)
• Sommarboken (1972, The Summer Book) (translated into English)
• Solstaden (1974, Sun City) (translated into English)
• Den ?rliga bedragaren (1982, The Honest Swindler)
• Sten?kern (1984, The Field of Stones)
• Anteckningar fr?n en ? (autobiography; illustrated by Tuulikki Pietil?) (1993)
• Lyssnerskan (1971, The Listener)
• Docksk?pet och andra ber?ttelser (1978, The Dollhouse and Other Stories)
• Resa med l?tt bagage (1987, Travelling with Light Luggage)
• Rent spel (1989, Fair Play) (translated into English)
• Brev fr?n Klara och andra ber?ttelser (1991, Letters from Klara and Other Stories)
• Meddelande. Noveller i urval 1971-1997 (1998, A Winter Book)

RELATED LINKS

• Tove Jansson on Wikipedia
• Biography
• The Moomins
• The Moomintrove

[Stewart]

I'd be lying if I said I was interested in the Moomins but I have picked up a couple of Jansson books (A Winter Book and The Summer Book), recently published by Sort Of Books. They've also reissued Fair Play.

Anyone a fan of Jansson, Moomins or otherwise?

[Bjorn]

I'm actually a huge Moomin fan - at least I was when I was a kid, and I've been meaning to re-read the later books in the series; there's a remarkable progression from the colourful children's stories of the first few books to more adult (not in the American sense) themes in the later ones, especially Moominpappa at Sea and Moominvalley in November. (Apparently the old Moomin comics are finally getting re-released this autumn, I'm tempted to buy them just for nostalgia's sake.)

Jansson always struck me as one of the quintessentially Scandinavian authors, mixing melancholy and comedy into one mood somehow, but thinking back I'm not sure of how many of her books I've actually read. I know for sure that I read The Summer Book about 15 years ago, and I may have read The Sculptor's Daughter too, but I only remember that I liked it.

Plus, I always enjoy reading Finland-Swedish literature (when I get around to it, which isn't nearly enough); something about reading a language that's almost identical to my own but just different enough to notice... I'm sure the British get the same feeling when reading something American, but for us it's not as common.

[Eric]

I've read quite a lot of Tove Jansson's stories for adults. The Moomin books are charming enough, but her stories for adults are beautifully and succinctly crafted, and I'm glad that there are now, if I'm not mistaken, three collections of such stories available in English.

What is fascinating about the author and her stories is a number of things:

* She was Finland-Swede, which as Bj?rn suggests, is a very special status in the Swedish-speaking world. Some of the very best work written in Swedish has come from Finland. Poets Edith S?dergran, Gunnar Bj?rling, Rabbe Enckell and a few others were Modernist in Finland, before the Swedes in Sweden had cottoned on to the new movement. Nowadays, Finland-Swedish poets are gradually becoming recognised in Sweden; ironically, just when the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland is dwindling.

* The Finland-Swedes have a relationship with the sea which, in previous generations, few Finnish-speakers have had. This was for the pretty banal reason that the whole of the coastal area of Finland, from Kotka in the east to Karleby (Kokkola) in the north-west, was populated by Swedish-speakers. Nowadays, this is but a memory, but the Swedish-speakers, plus the citizens of the ?land archipelago where about 95% of inhabitants are Swedish-speaking, still cling to their language. Travelling out to the summer cottages on the skerries in southern Finland is part of the ritual of Finland-Swedes.

* Her homosexuality was always treated lovingly and discreetly in these stories. There was no shouting about the fact (which every literary Finn knew about) that she had a long-term relationship with the artist Tuulikki "Tootikki" Pietil?. Homosexuality, or androgynous hints at it, are part and parcel of the Finland-Swedish literary heritage. It crops up in hints in the poetry of Edith S?dergran (bisexual, by all accounts), Gunnar Bj?rling, and in the prose of the ?land author Joel Pettersson and the Helsinki author Christer Kihlman. I'm not a gay blade myself, but you simply have to know where an author is coming from.

* Short-stories are an underrated genre. Jansson proves more than adequately that stories can be pithy, concentrated and still reveal so many subtle things.

* The stories are very translatable. This is because Jansson never writes florid purple passages, but keeps her use of language simple. There is little dialect. She tried to keep the stories honed down; there is no redundancy. All this makes them a great deal more accessible to the foreign reader than she would have been had she used a surfeit of couleur locale. I am quite a fan of using local characteristics, but Jansson chose not to. She deals with many everyday matters, psychology. She must have been an excellent observer.

[iiris]

Plus, I always enjoy reading Finland-Swedish literature (when I get around to it, which isn't nearly enough); something about reading a language that's almost identical to my own but just different enough to notice... I'm sure the British get the same feeling when reading something American, but for us it's not as common.

I hate to go off-topic so soon after joining the forum (my second post) but I simply have to ask... Have you read anything by Kjell West??

[Bjorn]

I hate to go off-topic so soon after joining the forum (my second post) but I simply have to ask... Have you read anything by Kjell West??

I haven't; any recommendations?

[iiris]

I haven't; any recommendations?

Well, I've only read Drakarna ?ver Helsingfors which was really good. And now I'm reading D?r vi en g?ng g?tt, which won the Finlandia Prize in 2006. I usually want to check out the award winners, and go either "yeah, good pick" or "what on Earth were they thinking?!?", just for conversations sake. This one slipped through the net, so I'm catching up.

But the first one is good! I'll let you know about the second one after I'm further into it than the current 30-something pages.

[Bjorn]

Thanks! Drakarna ?ver Helsingfors seems to have been in print in paperback rather recently; I'll see if I can find a copy.

[Eric]

Iiris and Bj?rn: I've read a series of short-stories by Kjell West? called Utslag some years ago, which I appreciated. I didn't find his crime novel Lang as good (although it is available in English translation). I'm looking forward to reading Drakarna ?ver Helsingfors, V?dan att vara Skrake and his latest D?r vi en g?ng g?tt (his latest, to date), which, as Bj?rn says, has won prizes. Glad to hear that the first of these three is good. I met West? when I was in Sweden in May, so I think he's probably busy writing the next book.

Website about him: http://www.soderstrom.fi/forfattare/WestoK.htm

At present, I'm having a Finland-Swedish binge. I've just read a very good novel by another Finland-Swede, Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo, called Fem knivar hade Andrej Krapl, and am reading Henrik Jansson's Protokollsutdrag fr?n subversiva m?ten, which I'm also enjoying. The Finland-Swedes never cease to surprise me. There are fewer of them than there are Icelanders, but they still manage to sport at least three publishing houses (S?derstr?ms, Schildts, Scriptum) and are still publishing new and lively work.

The two leading Finland-Swedish poets I'm also going to be tackling soon are Eva-Stina Byggm?star and Catharina Gripenberg.

So there's more to the Finland-Swedish literature than Tove Jansson, excellent though her stories are.

[nnyhav]

This just in ...

The Summer Book review

The most recent addition to the complete review is our review of Tove Jansson's classic The Summer Book.
Sort Of Books recently brought out a UK edition, and now New York Review Books has published a US edition.
__________

They also have a review of Fair Play up. But this seems more ... seasonal.

PS I see BlogSpy picked it up, but untagged ...

[Eric]

Thanks, Nnyhav. I found a British review, which stands out:

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson - Reviews, Books - The Independent

[Eric]

Reviews can make or break the reception of a book, especially in Britain where readers have relatively little experience of reading contemporary literature from smaller countries in translation.

So I feel that Dea Birkett in the Independent, whose review was referred to in my previous posting, did The Summer Book a disservice back in 2003 when it first came out in English.

First of all, the references to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Jonathan Livingston Seagull seem strangely arbitrary. This book has nothing in common with them, stylistically.

Secondly, she calls Jansson Swedish, which is indeed the language the original was written in, but is inaccurate. There appears to be no awareness in Birkett's mind that this book is anything other than "Scandinavian", whatever that all-embracing term may mean. The fact that the island is in the Gulf of Finland still doesn't help her twig. For travel writer Birkett, Scandinavia appears to be one lump.

Then the condescension sets in. There is "no plot but bucketloads of positive feelings presented simply". Words like "truism" are dropped.

She snatches briefly at the plot, but has already made her mind up: "This book is in danger of taking itself too seriously". Then she regrets her dismissive tone and starts backtracking. But she soon swings back into patronising mode: "Jansson is a better writer than this sort of book deserves". And the coup de gr?ce is the word "sentimentality".

In true journalistic style she ends: "The Summer Book says so much that we want to hear in such an accessible form, without ever really saying anything at all." Thank-you, world famous author and critic Dea Birkett. Website: The official website of Dea Birkett | Writer & Journalist

Finally, our gifted reviewer fails to even mention who took the trouble of translating the book. (It was Thomas Teal, an American living in Sweden, as far as I know.)

All in all, a terrible review, which runs the risk of putting Independent readers right off Tove Jansson.

[iiris]

Just a few things... First off, anyone who knows "mainland Swedish", i.e. the Swedish spoken in Sweden, has a slight disadvantage in traslating books written by Finnish-Swedes, as the Finnish-Swedish is a little bit different than the "mainland Swedish". Some vocabulary diffreneces, changes in connotations, that sort of things.

Second, Finland is NOT a part of Scandinavia. Scandinavia is Sweden and Norway. Just to get that clear. Finland is, however, a part of Nordic Countries.

[Stewart]

Second, Finland is NOT a part of Scandinavia. Scandinavia is Sweden and Norway. Just to get that clear. Finland is, however, a part of Nordic Countries.

I suppose it all becomes blurred. The wikipedia article for Scandinavia, states:

Scandinavia is a historical and geographical region centred on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe, which includes, depending on various interpretations, the nations of Norway, Sweden, Finland, IcelandDenmark along with their associated territories: The Faroe Islands, The ?land Islands and Greenland. Occasionally, sources limit the word "Scandinavia" to describe either only the three kingdoms of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; or Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland; or Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland. Regardless how the word "Scandinavia" is defined, the term Nordic countries is used to denote all of the above-mentioned nations and territories as one collective group. and

The notes provide a number of different sources, mostly dictionaries and encyclopaedias, that both back up and refute your claim.

[Eric]

Iiris is technically right about Nordic and Scandinavian. But I have to say that two words are used interchangeably. Since one Scandinavian language (and here the word Scandinavian is pertinent) is spoken in Finland, and since it was part of Sweden for centuries, it is surely only purists that maintain the difference between Scandinavia and the Nordic countries, when speaking about geography.

However, correctly speaking, Scandinavian languages are indeed only Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Faroese and Icelandic. Finnish, Saami (i.e. Lappish) and Estonian are Finno-Ugric languages, along with their distant cousin, Hungarian.

I (Eric) am an Englishman and originally learnt my Swedish at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich, England in the early 1970s. But after only one year, I went to ?bo Akademi in the city of Turku / ?bo in Finland, to do my so-called "year abroad". Ever since 1972, I have spoken Swedish with a clear Finland-Swedish accent, even after six years living in Uppsala, Sweden, during the 1980s. So I am keener to translate Finland-Swedish literature than that of Sweden itself, with a few exceptions.

[Eric]

This is a good review of The Summer Book by the not unknown Scottish author Ali Smith in The Guardian:

Lights on a string | Review | guardian.co.uk Books

She mentions the Finland-Swedes and she mentions the translation.

[Bjorn]

Nice review of recently Anglified The True Deceiver (Den ?rliga bedragaren).

Tove Jansson: The True Deceiver Asylum

[hdw]

Today's Guardian Review section has a very enthusiastic review by Ursula Le Guin of "Swedish author-artist" Tove Jansson's The True Deceiver. Much is made of Jansson's "everyday Swedes" and her "Swedish village in winter", etc.

I have written in to point out that writing in Swedish doesn't make you a Swede, any more than writing in English makes you English, and that Jansson was a Finn, albeit one whose native language was Swedish.

Harry

[Bjorn]

Here's the review in question. She managed to sneak the words "Sweden" or "Swedish" into it 5 times. Well, LeGuin is 80. ;-)

[Eric]

It is appalling that a national newspaper with a huge circulation can treat nationality in so cavalier a fashion. It's like calling John Steinbeck British, Borges Chilean, or Am?lie Nothomb French.

Quotes from Ursula K Le Guin's Guardian article:

After the enduring international success of her Moomintroll fantasies, the Swedish author-artist Tove Jansson, in her 60s, began to write adult fiction. It has taken a while for these books to get much attention outside Sweden.

Her everyday Swedes are quite as strange as trolls, and her Swedish village in winter is as beautiful and dangerous as any forest of fantasy.

The Guardian will no doubt take a sadistic delight in totally ignoring you, Harry, or letting some bossy little temp write something to the effect of that the Guardian cannot check out every little subtlety.

Technically-speaking, Tove Jansson was born in the Russian Empire, so she must have been Russian really, like Edith S?dergran...