Happy Birthday, Tove

"Moomintroll thought about how he loved everything; the forest and the sea, the rain and the wind, the sunshine, the grass and the moss, and how impossible it would be to live without them all, and this made him feel very, very sad."

Tove Jansson, Comet In Moominland, 1946

100 years of Jansson

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of artist Tove Jansson. And when I say artist I mean author, painter, illustrator, cartoonist, caricaturist... 

She lived and loved freely and worked incessantly, wanted to be remembered for her paintings but is perhaps best known for the Moomin, their eponymous valley and adventures. Which is just as well. It's a microcosm of infinite wisdom adults enjoy and appreciate along with (or even without!) kids. Translated into more than 40 languages, you should be able to read them in your mother tongue. For other works, search

Tove Jansson Life, Art, Words: The Authorised Biography

Sculptor's Daughter: A Childhood Memoir
 
The Listener

The True Deceiver

The Summer Book

A Winter Book: Selected Stories

Art in Nature: and other stories

Travelling Light

Fair Play

If you're in London you're in luck, you have some two weeks left to get thee to the Institute of Contemporary Arts right on The Mall and catch the Tove Jansson: Tales From the Archipelago display that presents "original unseen photographs and material relating to her life and work, illustrated books and early first editions."

If you're near Covent Garden you're in a hurry,  there's a Moomin Summer Madness - A Birthday Party going on, a day for the whole family, this very weekend.

If you're in Scandinavia, or planning a visit, you still have some four weeks to catch a wonderful exhibition courtesy of the Finnish National Gallery that covers all periods of Jansson’s career.

If you're in Japan (Japanese love and I mean love all things Finnish in general and the Moomin in particular), you have a whole year ahead, filled with goodies, to look forward to.

If you're a curious being, you're in good company. Nothing was ever too tiny or trivial for Tove. Life was a big adventure in a small boat, every morning a new opportunity to start afresh. “All things are so very uncertain, and that's exactly what makes me feel reassured." (Moominland Midwinter)

Northward

Temperature: a sunny, no, cloudy, no, sunny, cloudy, make up your mind already -4/25 degrees

Eating: just had grilled halloumi salad for lunch

Drinking: gallons of green tea with tons of honey to nip this flu in the bud, the influenza was quite enough, thank you very much

Watching: Nature's balancing act. We had two days of skiing and two weeks of skating all winter, we did spring gardening just the other week, now we suddenly have more snow than we had Dec/Jan/Feb combined. WTH?

Listening: to Elbow.

Reading: loads of centenarian Tove Jansson to the wee ones who'll still sit still and listen. (She's not just for kids, hint hint. Oh and you just have to visit Helsinki this spring/summer and go see this.)

Writing: quoting (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow): The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers. And to my family, friends and fellow earthlings below Mother Earth's waist: Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. (Albert Camus)

Feeling: Looking out the window, neither one of the above is true, but I've caught whiffs in the air, I've touched proof in the ground, seen timid bugs and drowsy bees. Spring is a warm wind away.