The dark side of the Moomins
111 comments
·April 13, 2025tikotus
TeMPOraL
I've been listening to Moomin audiobooks and reading some of the books to my wife in recent years, and I started to spot some of the more adult/darker subtext in it (I'm still processing the one where the Moominpappa makes the entire family move to a lighthouse, and Moominmamma is desperately trying to cope with growing depression). Still, I have an answer for the author's conundrum, that's accurate for a significant fraction of the readerbase:
> "One of the oddest aspects of the Moomin phenomenon is how these complex tales of apocalypse, breakdown and disfunction have been consistently misread as cutesy celebrations of domestic life."
It's actually really simple. Here in Poland, myself and my entire generation grew up watching the children cartoon adaptation of the Moomins. It was cute, it was happy, it had nice art and music, it was suitable for small children but engaging even to older ones, and it was aired when all kids would be watching[0]. This was our generation's intro to the Moomins, and it colored how we read the books.
I imagine the case is similar all across Europe. A whole generation primed to read these stories as positive and light-hearted, because of a TV adaptation.
--
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieczorynka - public TV (TVP1), every day at 19:00, just before the evening news slot. In times I grew up, watching this was pretty much a national tradition for any family with children.
i_hate_moomins
Light hearted? Suitable for small children? Are you kidding me.
I'm in my mid-30's and still remember nightmares those stupid series gave me when I was in kindergarten. It was X-Files-tier scary ("The X Files" being other show aired by polish TV around same time), masquarading behind cute animations. How can anyone in their right mind call the episode where the Moomintroll swaps bodies with Stinky lighthearted and positive? What about the collection of monsters like Groke or Hattifnats? On some occasion I remember my parents would call me to get out from my room to watch the "wieczorynka" and I would pretend I can't hear and come out only as I hear the outro song starting, just to avoid whatever insane plot the Moomins would bring on me that time. I hate Moomins so much and wish could erase it from existence. Calling it "cute and happy" is like saying candybar with razorblade inside is delicious; technically true but not exactly an accurate description.
jnurmine
I've not seen other Moomin TV-series than the one made in Japan, so I can't comment on the others. The Japanese-made TV-series was probably watched by almost all children of a certain age group in Finland. Of course not all children liked the series or some episodes etc. but I'd say the vast majority did.
And yes, empirically, there were several "scary" things which freaked out the smaller children but were just amusing for an older child. The scary parts usually had a logical explanation or a backstory which made sense (or reflection with an adult made it make sense).
For example (I hope I remember all the details right):
The angry Ant Lion preying in a sandpit: eventually the Moomins manage to shrink it to peanut-size with the Wizard's hat, and it's not so scary anymore. It's still an Ant Lion, but very small, and the voice is high-pitched. Why isn't it scary anymore?
The Groke is scary as it stares while making gnarling sounds and all other characters are afraid of it, but The Groke doesn't want to harm anyone. In some episode a character explains that The Groke is actually very lonely. So it follows people as it wants to hang around them, but expresses itself in a scary way and since The Groke unvillingly freezes things where it goes, others avoid it.
The Wizard was dressed in dark clothes, looked scary and rode on a flying panther. But while The Wizard had a stern face and voice, he did not want harm to anyone and helped Moomins too.
Stinky may have a scary appearance, but also he is is not evil as such, just smells bad and does mischief like steals stuff. Which is why the characters are not so fond of him.
The Hattifatteners are like mushrooms, they grow from seeds, and move about, trying to reach the horizon in groups. They are drawn to thunder and electricity and they can zap someone with electricity if one touches the charged-up Hattifatteners. I always interpreted them like a force of nature, they're not looking to harm anyone, and are no more evil than wind that falls a tree is evil.
npodbielski
You created another account just to write how you hate moomins? Dude chill out.
Anyway, the fact that you did that and still remembering it after all those years proves how extra ordinary this work was.
klntsky
It's funny that you made a throwaway just to post an opinion on a book for children on this site
hjgjhyuhy
What you describe is the very reason I let my children watch moomins. Not everything needs to be bland and boring like today’s children’s shows. World is not like that.
Over here im Finland me and every other 90’s kids watched these shows, and mostly turned our fine. There’s so much nostalgia around it all.
null
trhway
i wonder what you'd think about Brothers Grimm's tales :) And in general children folk tales in many countries do contain strong violence, cruelty, torture, etc. if you'd focus on those details.
mrmlz
I agree there is a scene with the Groke when everything freezes and the moomins are inside their home.. That was freakishly scary.
Other than than the Moomins are pretty great. I got the branded coffee cups now (even with the Groke!)
thih9
> It was cute, it was happy
Many episodes had darker undertones as well, especially those with the Groke[1] or hattifatteners. Tvtropes has a list[2].
> The Groke was so horrifying in fact, that in Poland it caused a nation-wide fear in almost all children, some of which were even left traumatised for years, leading to some parents forbidding their children from watching Moomins, and some using the Groke as a Bogeyman to scare their children into good behavior. Any 90s or 2000s Polish kid will know how it felt.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Groke
[2]: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/TheMoom...
krige
This is extremely exaggerated. The Groke is more of a meme here than some sort of night terror. Sure it had an impact and was memorable but there was no wave of traumatized kids spawned by it.
philips
I love the books, I have read them all to my kids, and I agree that I think the article takes its thesis too far.
The books are strange tales. They have dark undertones. And sometimes the adults take actions that only someone with life experience would really understand (e.g. Moominpappa wanting to suddenly upend everything in the families life and move to an isolated island). But, my kids mostly pick up on the adventure and the friendships.
I feel that the Moomins are like most media that is enjoyable by both children and parents in this way (e.g. Bluey, Pixar films, etc.).
eqqn
Another way to view it is a series that accompanies a child to young adult years. (It took me a few years to get through the series inbetween other books. I assume many bedtime reads for the first few, and independent reading for later ones). What starts as fantastical and whimsical, indeed becomes more somber and concerning interpersonal dynamics, especially those within Moomin family and those around them. "Moominpapa at Sea" is probably most relatable to adult readers. The underlying message of family unity, finding ways to cope with certain events, parenting styles, need to break routines (picnics), unrequited crushes.
Moominland Midwinter is interesting character study too, with sporty "artistic" coded Hemulen proving too much for most of the cast to handle, the forgetful grandpa. Perhaps the message was it is okay to not be friends with everyone as it is a bother.
Compare it to "Finn Family Moomintroll" which is just a constantly stacking ridiculous lighthearted escapade with a few more mature jokes mixed in.
kleinishere
Based on your experience, what age do you think is ideal for introducing the books to kids?
philips
I started reading the novel stories when the kids were 3yo and 6yo. Both love them. My 3yo for the drawings mostly.
There are a number of excellent picture book adaptations of stories that have been published too. But, we read those afterwards and obviously they aren’t as enjoyable to me.
Because this is HN: My tradition is to use my Inkpalm 5 and read them with the lights out at bedtime- we pass the reader around to look at pictures.
sireat
Not the previous poster, but based on my own experience as a kid and also my kids I'd say age 5 is perfectly good age to introduce the books.
As an adult you pick up on some the more serious themes but as a kid you just enjoy the story and the bit of danger and overcoming and the overall wholesomeness.
bazoom42
While all the books have both humour and darkness, the early books are more whimsical and playful while the later books are more about loneliness, alienation, and loss.
nonrandomstring
Mine started 5/6, but the more recent books are made for kids. The earlier newspaper cartoons are not. Same with TV, the later Japanese/Dutch produced TV series is lovely. The earlier TV series (there are several) are dark as the cupboard under the stairs and the Groke goes postal killing everything in one.
fsloth
Spot on. I think the author did not think through their argument: ""One of the oddest aspects of the Moomin phenomenon is how these complex tales of apocalypse, breakdown and disfunction have been consistently misread as cutesy celebrations of domestic life.""
But that's exactly what makes domestic life worth celebrating - at best it sustains you through disaster and hardship. What better way to celebrate it than to show it's strength?
bazoom42
Is it really a celebration of family life when Moominpappa uproots the whole family because of his midlife crisis and sends Moominmamma into depression?
fsloth
I would say yes. In my standards that still accounts for interesting-life-choices-but-safe-and-sane. But I grew up in an alcoholic family so realize my standards are likely slightly low-bar for what accounts for 'admirable'.
pavlov
They come through it wiser and more in touch with themselves.
A family is a place where you should be able to also be something else than the ideal version of yourself that you’d like to show the rest of the world, something less perfect and more work-in-progress. Moomins lean heavily on showing how that actually makes their family stronger.
bazoom42
The cutesy family parts kind of evaporates towards the later books though. The last book is about longing for a moominmamma which is no longer there.
To be fair, Jansson never claimed she wrote for kids in the first place.
xg15
I wonder if the title was tongue in cheek. Dark Side of the Moo(mi)n?
briandw
I lived in Finland for a couple years. Finns, like the Moomins, are whimsical yet profound, like midsummer’s fleeting joy before the long winter. They mirror Finland’s love of nature and quiet isolation, with their cozy valley echoing the Finns forest cabins by a lake. The happy vibe hides struggles—tough winters, heavy drinking—but the Moomins’ warmth reflects the Finns’ wholesome character.
Paianni
Finns (or at least, the successors to tribes that assimilated into the modern-day Finnish nation) were exposed to Christianity later than most of Europe. Pre-Christian religions generally held a higher regard for relationships with nature, that might explain what you're getting at.
weregiraffe
You might reconsider trying to explain a nation of millions through a few books.
xandrius
[flagged]
47282847
I think it is crucial that children get exposure to the sad reality, not in order to normalize it but because the idea of hiding it is what stops progress in the first place and confuses children more than the plain truth. Children need truth and not shielding from it. Highly recommended book around this fundamental mistake in education by a French child psychologist: A corps et a cris. Être psychanalyste avec les tout-petits (Caroline Eliacheff).
dusted
I loved Moomins as a kid, and was so surprised when I talked with my wife about it, she thought they were so scary and "off" feeling.
I'm watching them now with our son, and I guess I was just born with a strong appreciation for melancholia.
I changed my mind, when I was a kid I thought they were good, now I think they are great!
In many ways, what makes moomin dark is that it shows us what we already know, the world _just_is_ and in the big picture, does not care about you, you might die, someone you care about might go away, and everyone is, fundamentally, alone, and what makes a person who they are, is partly how they deal with, if at all, being alone in this world of loners.
Moomin is very real and very direct in its dealings with the pain of the meaninglessness of life.
Snufkin, as a child, I took him for a cynic and disliked him, but he taught me something about the world, I think he is a stoic and a nihilist, and I very much like him now, he simply _IS_ in the world, and he accepts, and so appreciates that which also simply is, and which he cannot control.
Yeah, Moomin is dark, but life is dark, life is pleasure and pain, and we will all die, everyone we ever loved will suffer and die, but they will also experience pleasure and life, one could chose only suffering and death, one cannot chose only pleasure and life, and must come to terms with the fact that the underpinnings of pleasure and life is indeed suffering and pain. That's it, the world just is, and we're just in it.
I feel like a lot of the cartoons and tv shows of my childhood was like this, life.. it kinda has bad parts.. and back then, they showed them to kids, and what do I know.. maybe it prepared us to take it on ?
culebron21
Question to Swedes: what were you child impressions of "Pettson och Findus"? I read it to children as an adult, and impressions are that it tells of the funny & sad sides of taking care of children, and I sympathize to Pettson, of course. I wonder how you saw it as children.
On topic: interesting read. I'd never think these stories had so much dark side to them.
I got all 9 stories in 3 books at the age of 11 and read most of them, and was very happy with the stories, never noticing any of the dread the article speaks about.
Especially the Midwinter story was fascinating - we lived not that North, but in cold winter mid-continent, and the story was like looking out watching for the first signs of the spring, that eventually always comes, but you shouldn't celebrate any of those too early -- when day temperature comes above 0 in March, you know it's going to be freezing in the evening. (Later I was stunned with foreigners in our city complain of this March weather, call it "winter" and be depressed!)
A few years ago someone on social networks posted her impressions from reading them out loud to children -- that indeed it's depressive.
So I guess, the conclusion is that people make opposite meanings and moods of the same events.
impossiblefork
I liked Pettson because he's awesome and invents things. I think he's like a physical version of the guy who writes a bunch scripts that together are able to do all his work.
Findus is more of experimenter. He comes up with an idea about something, and ends up following that idea so that it gets tested. He isn't a systematic, scientific experimenter though, since he's a cat.
I also liked all the little animals. To contrast that with the Moomin stories, I only saw it on TV, but it was immediately obvious that they were very austere and very Finnish, even though of course, the author is a Finland-Swede. It's good stuff, but can be, not scary, but something adjacent, to watch as a child. It might be worth it since it allows you to understand these characters in this very austere, isolated environment.
culebron21
Interesting. I've only watched Soviet cartoons about Moomins, so no idea what's no dreadful in the Dutch one.
justaswede
I did like me some Petsson och Findus. Besides agreeing with sibling commenter, the melancholic story with the fox and the fireworks was impactful. The dark moments and their resolution were in general the most meaningful. Fully agree with the notion that it's misguided to deprave ("spare") children from struggles and difficult questions of life. Nothing graphical or depraved but you get the point.
As for the Moomins, I don't know what you all are on about in the comments. I'm with OP on this one. Lasting child Moomin impressions:
- Original comic: Dark, heavy, existential, anxious, depressed, sarcastic, "this is probably not for kids". Still loved them and still find them underrated and wish more people read them.
- Mainstream TV cartoon: Fun fantastical times. And Groke (aka Mårran) was indeed nightmare material
- Newspaper comic: Couldn't keep track
- TV live action: Now this was the true nightmare material. I think it was supposed to be lighthearted but my brother at 37 still talks of how it traumatized him.
patall
Not a swede (yet) but grew up with the books (and merch): I never identified Findus as a child as he was, obviously, a cat. It was fun comic around 3-9 but I cannot say the lesson ever really made sense to me since it was just too abstract. Just funny, like the other Nordquist books. I also liked the associated PC games, which where interesting as they where quite challenging at a certain age with lots of engineering puzzles. But at that point it is really not much about Findus anymore, just the general mood that comes from the comics. Oh, and my brother loved the pancake-cake, whose receipt we somehow got from the book.
Arn_Thor
Grew up watching Moomin on TV and it left with life lessons, good values and deep trauma…
amiga386
Same here. I'm not sure what the "not translated into English until 2005" in TFA is meant to mean; sure, maybe that specific book wasn't translated until that date, but much of Europe watched the Polish fuzzy-felt TV adaption in 1978 or 1985.
binarysneaker
Same. Here's the first season (in English) for anyone who's interested https://archive.org/details/moomin-season-1/%5BMoomin+Master...
monero-xmr
Somehow encompasses the life outlook of all my Finnish relatives
baq
Now read the comic books…
npteljes
It's a good read, thanks for sharing. Really sad that people would pester the author about the creation. It needs to be realized that the author is just another complex human being, even though they created their fantastic thing. As I experience it takes a lot to think about other people as so complex. We much rather like them as just simple characters.
Another thing is that for long-running franchises, it's really interesting to watch the progression of character design. Both visually and characteristically. The first Moomins look really weird, but fun, compared to the later iterations. Because, of course, the context also changed a lot around them - in real life, not in-universe.
hanslub42
Janson created more than just the Moomin stories. Check out her murals: https://tovejansson.com/gallery/murals/. I don't see much darkness there... (there is even a small Mumintroll in "Party in the City", in front of the woman smoking a cigarette, a self-portrait of Janson)
internet_points
For anyone who has just seen the tv shows, I highly recommend reading the books. There are so many layers to her stories.
tejas911
It’s striking how Jansson’s cozy Moomin universe is layered with existential dread and the realities of a war-torn era.
hiAndrewQuinn
There is a fascinating throughline between the themes of Moomin universe and Adventure Time I've been waiting to see someone much more familiar than me with both sources spool out into a 3 hour long YouTube video I can set on in the background.
lifeisstillgood
They are children’s tales - which are designed to hide lessons and warnings on the dark side of life in a wrapper that does not traumatise - like an inoculation against what comes.
Everything the Grimms brothers collected and Disney sanitised still hides warnings.
I have read all my children “The Tiger who came to Tea” as well as taken them to theatre performances- and the author ran from Germany hours before the Gestapo came knocking and it affected much of her life and writing (“Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” is the autobiography I think)
So yeah. It’s got layers onion boy, layers.
Still have fond memories of my kid hugging a six foot moomin in Covent Garden.
logifail
"Kerr, however, stated more than once that the tiger represents nothing more than a tiger, and had no relevance to her upbringing"[0]
I'm not sure how tongue in cheek this was, but I assume it's serious. Either way, it's a fun and smart read.
The article spots well the dark side of the moomins, but in my opinion goes too deep into it. My disagreements boil down to this: "One of the oddest aspects of the Moomin phenomenon is how these complex tales of apocalypse, breakdown and disfunction have been consistently misread as cutesy celebrations of domestic life." Yes, all these things exist, but the point to me has always been that they are cutesy despite that! The stories paint a very typical family dynamic (at least of the time, at least in a Finnish swedish speaking family like Tove's), throws it into weirdest situations, and they all survive together thanks to, and despite, their dysfunctions. And Moominmamma is the most wholesome character ever, period.