The Moomins are fictitious characters created by the Finnish-Swedish author Tove Jansson. They are white hippopotamus-looking trolls with tails. And while they do not resemble people, they are very much humane. The Moomins live in a place called Moominvalley, which is both strange and a little dangerous, while being pleasant and familiar at the same time. Even if the Moomins encounter many peculiar things, from great floods to comets, they live the most normal lives, troubling themselves with the same fundamental questions of life as ordinary people do.

Professor Tove Jansson, creator of the Moomins, is one of the most beloved authors in Finland. First and foremost, she regarded herself as a painter, but the whole world remembers her as the creator of the Moomins. Her stories have been translated into 34 languages and her books have sold millions of copies. Today the Moomins are considered to be one of Finland's national treasures; they are a significant part of Finnish contemporary literature. Not only the novels but also the Moomin merchandise is very popular among the young and old in Finland. Almost every Finnish home has some Moomin products.

This paper introduces Tove Jansson’s life and career. It also explores why the Moomins have become so popular. Is it an exaggeration to say that every Finnish school child would recognize the Moomins?

The Creator: Inspired by Bohemian Freedom

Tove Marika Jansson was born in Helsinki, Finland, on the 9th of August in 1914. Her father was a Swedish-speaking Finn, ¹ the bohemian sculptor Victor Jansson (1886-1958); her mother was Signe Hammersten-Jansson, a Swedish illustrator, cartoonist and graphic artist. Tove was the oldest of three children. Her brother Per Olov was born in 1920, followed by her youngest brother Lars in 1926 (Aejmelaeus 14).

If Tove Jansson would not have had a peculiar and free childhood in creative surroundings, she never would have started to write. It was her childhood which inspired her to write about the Moomins (Oerjasaeter 9). Her father loved thunder, and he used to take her outside of their fisherman’s cottage, which they rented every summer, to see the stormy Gulf of Finland. In winter-time, when they returned to their studio flat in Helsinki, it was Tove’s mother wh entertained her. Signe was an inexhaustible source of stories, and Tove loved to listen to her. Because Tove’s everyday life was full of art and tales, she soon began to express herself through writing and drawing. Even as a young child she would illustrate her diary and her own little stories (Aejmelaeus 14, 16).

In addition to writing and drawing, Tove read a lot as a child. She would read all the interesting books she could find. She especially liked the novels of H. C. Andersen, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Mark Twain (Aejmelaeus 18-19).

Tove had always known that she was going to be an artist like her parents. She drew constantly, and in 1930, after finishing the Finnish middle school, she went to study art at Tekniska Skolan in Stockholm (Aejmelaeus 94).

At that time her first illustrations appeared in several magazines and papers. She became a contributor to the cultural and political magazine Garm, where her mother used to work. Tove’s cartoons appeared sporadically at first, due to her art studies in Stockholm, but she had taken the first steps to become an artist (Kivi, Moominvalley 11).

Moomintroll and a Year Abroad

Two separate events in Tove Jansson’s life inspired her to create Moomintroll, the main character of her Moomin novels. Moomintroll got its name from the first incident, and its figure from the second. It was sometime in the 1930’s when the first idea of a Moomin character was born. While studying in Stockholm, Tove lived with her uncle Einar Hammersten. She had the bad habit of sneaking into the pantry at nights, and her uncle tried his best to restrain her visits. He used to say that a 'moo-oo-oomintroll' lived behind the stove and would blow a cold breath down her neck if it caught her in the pantry (Kivi, Moominvalley 14).

The figure itself was created one summer day a few years later. Tove and her little brother Lars had a dispute about Immanuel Kant. Tove lost the argument, and in her frustration she drew the ugliest creature she could think of on the wall of their summer cottage’s privy (Oerjasaeter 62-63).

After graduating from the Tekniska Skolan in 1933, Tove returned to Finland. She continued her art studies at the Finnish Academy of Arts, in Helsinki, up till 1937. She finished her training through various trips abroad. In 1938 she studied in France, Italy and Germany (Oerjasaeter 68).

The March of the Moomins

Tove returned to Finland after her year abroad in 1938. There she continued to paint and illustrate, and also to work as an illustrator for Garm (Oerjasaeter 69). The Moomin-like figure began to show up in Tove’s illustrations. It became her logo, complementing her signature in Garm from 1944 onwards. Eventually she became a permanent member of the Garm staff, continuing until the magazine ceased publishing in 1953 (Kivi, Moominvalley 11-13, 15).

In 1939 Finland was at war with the Soviet Union, ² and for Tove painting began to feel impossible. ‘Painting seemed futile when the world was in chaos. Colours died, everything turned grey,’ Tove had said (in Kivi, Moominvalley 15). She longed for her childhood summers and her mother’s stories, which had all started with the words ‘once upon a time’ (Oerjasaeter 72).

The figure and the name Moomintroll met for the first time on paper in 1939. Tove worked her anxiety into writing and illustrating a story for children. The first version of the first Moomin novel was born, but it had to wait for six long years until Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen (The Little Trolls and the Great Flood) was published in 1945, right after the Second World War had ended (Kivi, Moominvalley 15).

In 1946 Jansson’s second Moomin novel, Kometjakten (Comet in Moominland, 1951³) followed, and in 1948 Trollkarlenshatt (Finn Family Moomintroll, 1950) was published. This novel is said to be closest to her own childhood summers, and it is one of her happiest books (Oerjasaeter 85).

In 1952 Tove Jansson won the esteemed Swedish Nils Holgersson plaquette, for the best children’s and young people’s book of the year, for her Moomin picture book Hur gick det sen? (The book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My, 1953) (Kivi, Moominvalley 97). From that day onward her work got more attention from the press and critics. The same year she was approached by British Associated Newspapers. They wanted to start a satirical Moomin comic strip for adults instead of children. After long negotiations the first Moomin strip was published in The Evening News, 20 September 1954. At that time the paper had a circulation of 12 million. From there the cartoon spread to 40 countries and to some 120 other papers (Tolvanen 50, 63, 93-94).

For years Tove Jansson had illustrated, painted and participated in several group and solo exhibitions, but she never had money to spare. She believed that the Moomin comic strip was going to solve her monetary issues, and in that way give her more time to do the job she was educated for, which was painting. Unfortunately things went the other way round; now she had even less time for her art. And it wasn’t just painting, writing and making comics that took her time, for suddenly she found herself making Moomin paper dolls and wallpaper and other Moomin-related merchandise; she even wrote Moomin plays (Tolvanen 50, 61, 79, 80). The marketing of the Moomin characters had begun.

For five years Tove struggled with the comics. She felt that creating seven strips every week consumed too much time and energy. Luckily her little brother Lars came to help. For the last two years of her seven-year contract Tove created the strips together with Lars. After that Lars continued the strips alone until 1975 (Tolvanen 92).

Jansson as a Private Person

By the 1960’s the Moomins were known all around the world as novels and comic strips. Money was no longer an issue for Jansson, but privacy had become one. Jansson couldn’t find the peace and quiet she was looking for. The press and inquisitive people hardly ever left her alone. Therefore, after many years of searching, she made one of her childhood dreams come true and bought a remote island in the Gulf of Finland with her life partner Tuulikki Pietilä (Oerjasaeter 105-106). A one room cottage was built on the small Island of Klovharu in 1964, and Jansson and Pietilä spent nearly 30 summers together there (Jansson 19, 98).

Between 1945-1980 Tove Jansson had written and illustrated 13 books about the Moomins. Her final Moomin novel, Sent i November (Moominvalley in November, 1971), was published in 1970; the last two publications for children were picture books. After them she continued writing, but her main audience was adults. Altogether she wrote 10 novels and collections of short stories for adults. With all her works combined, her illustrations and paintings include hundreds of works; her Moomin sketches and drawings alone amount to thousands of items. She also illustrated several novels, including the Swedish version of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (Kivi, Moominvalley 15-16).

During her long career, Tove Jansson was awarded over 50 awards of various kinds for her literature, illustrations and art works (Kivi, Moominvalley 10). In August 1994 a conference in honour of Tove Jansson’s 80th birthday was held in Tampere. Several earlier she had been the guest of honour in the “World of the Moomin” seminar in Poland (Kivi, Moominvalley 10). The Moomins never stopped keeping her busy. As long as she was able, she replied by hand to the thousands and thousands of letters she got from her readers. Even if she was a person of privacy, she never forgot her main readership, children.

Tove Jansson died in Helsinki on 21st of August 2001 at the age of 86.

The Moomins’ Journey to Popularity

The Moomin novels have been translated into 34 languages. Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, is the only Finnish book which has been translated into more languages than the Moomin novels. The Moomin books have sold millions of copies. They have been the subjects of conferences, seminars and research all around the world. Besides in Finland there are Moomin shops in Norway, Hawaii and Japan. Several Moomin television series have been made in Europe and Japan. There seems to be no end to this Finnish success story.

There is no explicit answer to what has furthered the popularity of the Moomins in Finland and abroad. The whole new world of fantasy; the marvellous characters; and the multi-dimensional stories, which have such a depth that they appeal both to children and to adults; are probably the most important reasons for the Moomins’ success abroad. There is no doubt about the fact that Tove Jansson’s novels are extra-ordinary; they are among the most loved classics of Finnish literature. In 2004 Tove Jansson’s Tarinoita Muumilaaksosta [Tales from Moominvalley], a collection of her Moomin novels, was number 13 with 14,200 sold copies in the category of the Best Selling Finnish Children’s and Young People’s novel (Vuoden 24). But even the best novels need some help from the field of business in order to maintain their popularity.

It is important to remember that Tove Jansson wrote in her mother tongue, which was Swedish. Thus the Moomin novels had a wider readership right from the beginning than Finnish children’s novels usually have, since the stories could be read by children in Sweden as well as in Finland. Consequently it is perhaps not a surprise that the first literary awards also came from Sweden.

In fact, at first the Moomins were more known abroad than in Finland (Hypén). The First Moomin novel translated into Finnish was Comet in Moominland in 1955, whereas the first English novel, Finn Family Moomintroll, was published five years earlier in 1950. Before Comet in Moominland the picture book The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My was translated into Finnish in 1952. It seems that at that time people abroad were more interested in the Moomins than publishers in Finland.

According to Salme Aejmelaeus, one of the first researchers on Tove Jansson, the Moomins made their major breakthrough in 1953, when Tove Jansson received the Nils Holgersson plaquette in Stockholm (21). The same year she was approached by British Associated Newspapers.

The importance of the Moomin comic strips in making the Moomins known abroad hadn’t been acknowledged until the publishing of the book Muumisisarukset [The Moomin Siblings] by Juha Tolvanen in 2000. Tolvanen implies that it was especially the Moomin comic strip (1954-1975) that made the Moomins known abroad, as well as in Finland. When the Moomin comics started to appear in one of the Finnish afternoon papers, Ilta Sanomat, on 21 April 1955, no Finnish-language Moomin novels had yet been published, for the Finnish Comet in Moominvalley came out only in September 1955. ‘... over 200,000 Finnish readers had become acquainted with the Moomins through the comic strips,’ Tolvanen once remarked in a article in Helsingin Sanomat, Finland's leading national paper (quoted in Jokinen).

Abroad the numbers were much bigger. The Moomin comics are said to have had up to 20 million daily readers; no other Finnish comic, novel or movie has reached these figures. And the same strips are still being reprinted in papers in Finland, Sweden and Norway (Tolvanen, 94). Today the original strips have also been assembled into a series of comic books.

The Well-oiled Marketing Machinery Behind Moominvalley

Marketers both in Finland and abroad were interested in the Moomins already at the end of the 50’s Tove was asked to design Moomin wallpaper, neckties, candles and wrapping papers. One of the first companies to buy a licence to manufacture Moomin merchandise was Arabia, a well-known porcelain company in Finland. Back then Tove Jansson illustrated the first Moomin mugs and plates; today they are designed by Tove Slotte-Elevant, who has kept to the original style of Jansson in the new versions of the Moomin dishware (Muumit Arabiassa 7, 17).

In the late 1950’s more and more companies approached Tove Jansson with new ideas and ways to exploit th Moomins. She did not like the idea of her Moomins as part of a large-scale business, but in a way she had to accept the fact that the Moomins had become a brand (Hietanen). In 1958 Tove and Lars founded a family-owned company, which was converted in 1978 into the joint-stock company Moomin Characters Ltd, to sell the rights to Tove Jansson’s Moomin characters around the world (Kallio et al 29.).

Tove and Lars did their best in choosing which products would be suitable for the Moomin brand. Unfortunately it was not always easy. A good example of an unsuccessful idea is one of the versions of the animated Moomin series made in Japan, where the Moomins used guns (Banks). As Tove Jansson had mentioned during an interview with Helsingin Sanomat: ‘We try to criticize, accept or deny the manufacture of the product fairly. I cn assure you that we have said no to a whole lot of nonsense. But some things always slip through’⁴ (in Hietanen).

On TV and As Part of a Museum Collection

The Moomins have been featured in at least 4 different television series. The first series was a puppet version, produced in Germany for ‘Augsberger Puppenkiste’ in 1959 (Banks).

Then a Japanese animated cartoon series followed in 1972. Unfortunately Jansson did not like the liberties taken with the original material, which included the addition of guns, alcohol and swearing, so she did not allow this series to be licensed for overseas sales (Banks).

The next version was ‘The Moomins’, made as a German/Polish co-production between 1977 and 1982. It was originally shown on German television, but it was also broadcast in the United Kingdom. The narration for the UK edition was provided by British comedian Richard Murdoch (Banks).

All but the first Moomin novel were translated into Japanese in 1968-1972. Apart from Sweden and Finland, Japan is one of the countries where Tove Jansson is most highly esteemed (Tomihara 127). In May 1996 The Encyclopaedia of the Moomin Stories, by Shizuo Takahashi, was published, and Japan’s five biggest newspaper noted the occasion with large articles. The book sold out in 10 days (Kuivasmäki).

The Moomins have also been produced as radio plays, a considerable amount of merchandise and even an opera, which had its premiere in Helsinki in 1974. But when in 1986 Tove Jansson, Tuulikki Pietilä and Pentti Eistola donated a large-scale, self-made model of the Moomin house to the City of Tampere and Tampere Art Museum, the idea of an authentic Moominvalley was born. The Moomivalley museum would be a counter-move against the commercialized Moomins (Virkkula).

The Moomin museum was opened in Tampere on the 9th of May in 1987. Since then the Moomin exhibition has become a huge collection based on Tove Jansson's original Moomin books, illustrations and paintings (Kivi, Moominvalley 75). Every year the museum has approximately 40,000 visitors, some 30% of whom are foreigners (Kivi, Interview).

The Moomin Boom

A number of companies had always been interested in the commercial opportunities which the Moomins offered; but never had the attention around the Moomins and Tove Jansson been so great as in 1990, when the animated TV-series Tales from Moominvalley, consisting of 104 episodes, was aired across Europe and Japan.

It had been Dutch-Finn David Livson’s 10-year dream to make an animated Moomin series. After long correspondence with Tove Jansson, he got permission to make the series under her close supervision. The series was drawn in Japan, and it was produced in The Netherlands by Livson’s Dutch company (Tenhunen).

The series became a huge success in Finland as well as abroad. The popularity of the series encouraged businesses to invest in the Moomin brand. One of the biggest investments was the theme park Moominworld, which was founded in 1993 in Naantali, Finland, on David Livson’s initiative. Nowadays there are about 220,000 visitors during the two summer months when the park is open. 30% of the tourists are foreigners; 16% come from Sweden, 8% from Norway, 3% from Estonia and 2% from Japan. By 2005 almost 2,000,000 tourists had paid visits to Moominworld (Moominworld). According to Kate Honey in The Independent on Sunday, Moominworld is the world’s 4th-best theme park for children (Honey).

The Moomin boom which began in the 1990’s is still going strong. Today one can eat Moomin sweets, drink Moomin juice, wear Moomin shirts, write with Moomin pens, and decorate one’s home with various kinds of Moomin products. In 2005 the largest jewellery manufacturer in Finland, Kalevala Koru, launched its own Moomin collection. ‘Just like Kalevala jewellery, the Moomins have been a national symbol of the Finnish people’ is stated on Kalevala Koru’s website (Kalevala Koru, New). This is high tribute indeed, as Kalevala Koru — which for over 50 years has produced high quality bronze, silver and gold jewellery inspired by ancient Scandinavian jewellery (Kalevala Koru, Roots) — was itself ranked in recent surveys as the 10th best-recognized brand name in Finland (Kalevala Koru, Company).

According to an article in the Finnish business magazine Talouselämä in 2004, Oy Moomin Characters Ltd is Finland’s most cost-effective business. There are some 80 Moomin licenses in Finland and almost 300 abroad. Licenses are used most often for toys, school supplies, and textiles. Oy Moomin Characters Ltd, the biggest owner of which is Lars Jansson’s daughter Sophia Jansson-Zambra, has come a long way from the early days of the Moomins (Hitting).

The Moomins are a well-known Finnish brand, successful both in Finland and abroad. The commercialized Moomin products may be far from the original atmosphere and spirit of Tove Jansson’s stories, but the merchandise helps to introduce the Moomins to modern children, and in that way lead them to the real stories and to the real Moominworld, which can only be found in the novels of Tove Jansson.

Pupils in the Aleksanteri Elementary School and the Moomins

From the above, it may be obvious that Tove Jansson’s Moomins will be known by at least all adult Finns. But how extensive is this Finnish ‘common knowledge’ of the Moomins? Would it also extend to young children? Would they also recognize the 60-year-old characters? To find out whether even young Finnish schoolchildren would recognize the Moomins, a survey was conducted among two classes of pupils in Tampere's Aleksanteri elementary school on the 9th of November 2005. After all, Tove Jansson originally wrote her Moomin stories for children.

Aleksanteri School was chosen as a typical elementary school in Tampere. In total, 43 schoolchildren, a roughly even mixture of boys and girls, answered the questions. The children were 6 to 8 years old.

The survey was conducted by the author of this paper, who was presented to the children by their class teachers. The children were told that they would be asked a few simple questions. The children did not know beforehand what the survey was about. The Moomins and Tove Jansson were not a part of the curriculum of the classes.

The picture is shown above. Moomintroll, by Tove Jansson © Oy Moomin Characters Ltd. Source: Markus Nybergh

The pupils came one by one into a hall and were shown a picture [shown at right]. The following questions were then asked:

• Do you recognize the character in the picture?

If the child recognized the character, several more questions were asked (below). Otherwise, there would have been no further questions.

• Do you know who created the Moomins?
• Do you know from what country the Moomins and Tove Jansson come?
• Have you ever seen the Moomins? If so, do you remember where?

When the picture was shown, every single pupil knew that it was Moomintroll. When they were asked if they knew who had created the Moomins, 19 (44%) of the 43 pupils knew it was Tove Jansson; 24 pupils (56%) did not know. One pupil guessed Lars Jansson; another thought it was Astrid Lindgren.

When asked if they knew from which country the Moomins and Tove Jansson had come, 16 (37%) didn’t even want to guess; 6 (14%) of the children thought that Jansson was Swedish; one said that the Moomins and Tove Jansson were English, and two pupils thought they were Japanese (5%). In total, a small majority of the 43 pupils in the Aleksanteri elementary school said that the Moomins and Tove Jansson were Finnish (18 pupils, 42%). Most of the children were quite hesitant when answering this, so by no means is Tove Jansson’s nationality clear to pupils of that age. After all, "Tove Jansson" is a name which sounds more Swedish than Finnish. And also the concept of nationality itself might be quite difficult to understand for children as young as the participants.

When asked if and where they had seen the figure, almost every child said on TV. David Livson’s Tales from Moominvalley is currently being re-run on the Finnish television channel TV2, and the children had not missed this. Four of them mentioned that they had been to the Moominworld in Naantali. The Christmas decorations above one street in downtown Tampere include Moomin figures, and one child remembered them. Videos, comics and books were also mentioned, but not as many times as the TV series.

All in all, the fact that Finnish schoolchildren do know the Moomins was not a surprise if one remembers the vast Moomin business in Finland. The real surprise was that nearly half of them knew that Tove Jansson was their author. After all, the children were quite young, and Jansson’s name is not on the Moomin merchandise or in the latest animated series which was most familiar to the children.

The Moomins as an Important Part of Finnish Culture

Tove Jansson and her Moomins are a central theme of Finnish culture. From the novels the Moomins have spread to all areas of Finnish life. The Finnish people have opened their hearts to the Moominfamily. If they were a bit slow in recognizing the importance of Tove Jansson’s Moomins in the 40’s and early 50’s, those days are now long gone. Today's Finns could not be more proud of Tove Jansson and her life-work. Even if one cannot really find anything especially Finnish from her stories, except maybe the change of the seasons, the deep forests and the archipelago, the Moomins are still regarded as an important part of modern Finnish culture.

But one must not be too sentimental when speaking about the Moomins. It is important to remember that they bring money to Finland in the form of tourists and jobs. The Moomin business has grown into large-scale commerce. Some of the biggest companies in Finland have their own Moomin products, and new ones are constantly being created.

The fact that today’s Finnish children know their Moomins largely from a Japanese animated television series also tells something about the development which the Moomins have gone through during the past six decades, as well as the development of Finnish culture and society into a global dimension. But the fact that the children do watch the series and that they do know the Moomins also tells something about the timelessness of the world Tove Jansson created. While the Moomins can already be considered a part of Finnish culture, one might think that their story has just begun.

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Notes

1. Finnish and Swedish are both official languages in Finland.
2. The Winter War broke out when the Soviet Union attacked Finland on November 30, 1939, three months after the start of World War II.
3. The English translation and its publication are in parentheses.
4. Quotation translated by Soile Räihä.

Works Cited

• Aejmelaeus, Salme. When the Lanterns are lit. Saarijärvi: Finnish Institute for Children’s Literature, 1994.
• Banks, Clive. The Moomins. Viewed on 14 November 2005.
• Hietanen, Leena. "Sanoin lakritsatehtaalle, että muumin on oltava hiilenmusta" [I I told the liquorice factory that Moomintroll has to be coal-black]. Helsingin Sanomat 1 September 1991.
• Hitting is big with Moomins. The Finnish Digital Content Business Cluster. Viewed on 8 November 2005.
• Honey, Kate. Theme parks: 'The happiest place on earth' is not of this world. The Independent Online Edition, 23 Oct. 2005.
• Hypén, Tarja-Liisa (tarja-liisa.hypen@uta.fi). Assistant professor, Department of Literature and the Arts, University of Tampere. E-mail note sent on 09 November 2005 at 2206 EET.
• Jansson, Tove, and Tuulikki Pietilä. Haru, eräs saari [Haru, one island]. Porvoo: WSOY, 1996.
• Jokinen, Heikki. Muumi-sarjakuva on Muumilaakson kartoittamaton manner [Moomin comics are the unexplored continent of Moominvalley]. Helsingin Sanomat 19 August 2000.
• Kalevala Koru Oy. Company Today. Viewed on 27 November 2005.
• - - - . Kalevala Koru - roots firmly in Scandinavian culture. Viewed on 27 November 2005.
• - - - . Kalevala Koru's new fascinating Moomin Jewelry. Viewed on 8 November 2005.
• Kallio, Jukka, Matti Pulkkinen, and Jussi Tiilikka. Sisältötuotannon liiketoimintamallit. [PDF] LTT Research LTD. Viewed on 8 November 2005. 29.
• Kivi, Mirja [Museum educator in the Moominvalley Collection of the Tampere Art Museum]. Moominvalley from stories to a museum collection. Tampere: Tampere Art Museum, 1998.
• - - - . Telephone interview. 17 November 2005.
• Kuivasmäki, Riitta. Muumisanakirjasta tuli suurmenestys Japanissa [The Moomin encyclopaedia became a great success in Japan]. Aamulehti 8 August 1996.
• Moominworld. Viewed on 9 November.
• Muumit Arabiassa. Porvoo: Otava, 2005.
• Nybergh, Markus. Moomintroll Viewed on 13 December.
• Oerjasaeter, Tordis. Tove Jansson Muumilaakson luoja [Tove Jansson the creator of Moominvalley]. Porvoo: WSOY, 1987.
• Piikkilä, Tuula (tuula.piikkilä@uta.fi). Assistant professor, Department of Literature and the Arts, University of Tampere. E-mail note sent on 02 November 2005 at 1118 EET.
• Tenhunen, Iris. Muumilaakso muutti televisioon [Moominvalley Moved to Television]. Uusi Suomi 1 August 1991.
• Tolvanen, Juhani. Muumisisarukset Tove ja Lars Jansson [The Moomin siblings Tove and Lars Jansson]. Porvoo: WSOY, 2000.
• Tomihara, Mayumi. Tove Jansson ja japanilaiset lukijat [Tove Jansson and the Japanese readers]. Toven matkassa [Travelling with Tove]. Ed. Helen Svensson. Juva: WS Bookwell Oy, 2004.
• Virkkula, Simopekka. Muumibuumi lähestyy [The Approaching Moomin Boom]. Aamulehti 1 August 1991.
• Vuoden 2004 myydyimmät kirjat [The Best Selling Books in 2004]. The Finnish Book Publishers Association. Viewed on 10 November 2005.

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Last Updated 24 April 2010