Winter in the Moomin Valley

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Winter in Moomin Valley (original title: Trollvinter ) is the sixth of Mumin -Books the Finland-Swedish author Tove Jansson . It was published in 1957.

action

In the middle of winter, Moomin wakes up from hibernation and cannot go back to sleep. His family cannot be woken, so he explores the house on his own, then the wintry Moomin Valley. Moomin is appalled by the changes in nature and suffers from the cold, silence and darkness. In the forest he meets Tooticki, who hibernates in the Moomins' bathing house. While little Mü, who has also become perky, plays carefree in the snow, Tooticki helps the confused and melancholy Moomin to see the wintry Moomin Valley and its special inhabitants - strange, lonely, hushed creatures that don't really fit into the other seasons to accept the necessary counterpart to the summer world. You prepare for the coldest days and then celebrate a restrained festival with the strange beings with a huge fire on the occasion of the return of the sun.

Other creatures from the surrounding area come to the Moomin Valley, freezing and starving. Moomin picks them up in the Moomin house and shares the Moomin family's supplies of jam with them. Special roles are played by a Hemul, who gets on everyone's nerves with his unwavering penchant for organized fun, winter sports, horn music and toughening rituals, the romantic dog Knick, who imagines he belongs to the wolves (and is taught better), and the shy one little wusel Salome, who is the only one who likes Hemul, but is not noticed by him.

For Moomin, winter loses its horror in a big blizzard: He surrenders himself to wind and weather like the ocean waves in summer and suddenly feels close and familiar with winter. In the same snowstorm, Salome is lost and is tracked down again by the Hemul.

As winter draws to a close, the guests leave the Moomin Valley - Hemul, Salome and Knick have teamed up. Moomin catches a cold after a dramatic rescue operation for Mü, who is skating breakneck on the breaking sea ice. His sneeze immediately wakes the Moominmother, who immediately takes care of him in her typical motherly way. Cured and rested, Moomin shows his mother the remaining snow and tells the interested and appropriately impressed listener about his winter experiences. The Moominmother graciously ignores the empty jam cellar and a number of missing or demolished furnishings and praises Moomin for representing her so well and for taking care of all guests.

The others wake up too. The snorkeling lady discovers a first crocus and wants to protect it from the night cold with a glass. Moomin stops them and says that it would “only be good for the crocus if everything doesn't go quite smoothly”. Tooticki pulls her organ through the sunny Moomin Valley to wake those who are still asleep, and Moomin's winter just past seems unreal again.

characters

The Moomin family appears only marginally in this book, as almost all of its members are in hibernation. Moomin is on his own for the first time. Apart from him, only little Mü is awake, who with her zest for life and her realistic, unsentimental demeanor forms a counterweight to Moomin. Moomin finds an advisor in Tooticki. The character and appearance of the figure are based on Tove Jansson's partner Tuulikki Pietilä , whose nickname was "Tooti". The large crowd of house guests forms the backdrop for Moomin's adventure, but mostly does not play a major role and leaves the Moomin Valley again at the end of winter. A key role is played by a squirrel that freezes to death on the coldest winter night and Moomin confronts death for the first time. The winter cold is personified in the ice woman, who appears in the coldest and darkest night and whose gaze turns all living beings into ice. As a beautiful and at the same time dangerous personification of winter, she stands in the tradition of the Snow Queen from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale. Moomin's fear and loneliness are personified in the Morra, which in the Moomin Valley stands for cold and darkness and at the same time for the longing for light and warmth.

subjects

Winter in the Mumintal can be seen as Jansson's first book, which is aimed more at adults than at children, although it also contains exciting elements for children and was still marketed as a children's book. Jansson wrote it at a time when her growing fame, the ubiquity of Moomin products and, most importantly, drawing the Moomin comics became a burden on her. So they put Moomin in a depressing situation that he has to overcome alone. The book covers more serious topics compared to the previous Moomin books. For the first time a living being dies in Moomin Valley. The tone is more thoughtful and the characters more complex. Much of the action takes place inside the characters. Moomin begins to grow up by having to do without his parents for the first time and taking responsibility for the house and family. Tooticki is Moomin's confidante in discovering his independence. He learns a lot from her, but she usually stays in the background, does not interfere and does not explain everything to him, since he has to learn the essential lessons himself. Tooticki reflects on her own role in the story by noting that much is being written about heroes, but never about those who warm up the frozen heroes at home after their exploits. Tove Jansson repeatedly emphasized the role that her partner Tuulikki Pietilä had in the creation of the book. She gave Jansson a new understanding of winter time, as Tooticki does for Moomin in the book. The book is dedicated to Tuulikki Pietilä.

Publication history

Jansson produced more illustrations for Winter in the Mumintal than for all of her previous books, many of them in the technique of scratching black surfaces, which she had rarely used before, which reflects the contrast between light and darkness in the Mumintal.

In Germany, Winter im Mumintal was published in 1968 in a translation by Dorothea Bjelfvenstam . In the German version, as in the original version, it was the sixth volume in the series. A new translation by Birgitta Kicherer was published in 2004.

Awards

In 1958, Tove Jansson received the Elsa Beskow plaque, which was awarded for the first time that year, for the best Swedish illustrated children's book and the Finnish Rudolf Koivu Prize for children's book illustration for Winter in Mumintal . Winter in the Mumintal was included in the shortlist of the German Youth Book Prize .

Adaptations

Tove Jansson and her brother Lars Jansson wrote a manuscript for the television game Mumindalen based on Winter in the Mumintal , the plot of which they simplified slightly. Pi Lind wrote the script . Börje Ahlstedt spoke the Moomin's voice, Toivo Pawlo was the narrator. The 24-part series was produced for Swedish television. In December 1973 it was broadcast daily as an "advent calendar" and set a trend for Swedish television.

A German-language radio play adaptation by HG Francis , directed by Heikedine Körting , was published on the Europa label .

A Finnish-language theater adaptation of Winter in the Mumintal was performed at the Vaasa City Theater in 2015 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Boel Westin: Tove Jansson. Life, Art, Words. The Authorized Biography. From the Swedish of Silvester Mazzarella. Sort Of, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-908745-45-3 , pp. 305-317.
  2. ↑ a b c Tuula Karjalainen: Tove Jansson. The biography. From the Finnish by Anke Michler-Janhunen and Regine Pirschel. Urachhaus, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-8251-7900-7 , pp. 236–241.
  3. ^ Sandra L. Beckett: Crossover Fiction. Global and Historical Perspectives. Routledge, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-4158-7936-1 , p. 95.
  4. ↑ Persiträgerinnen and winner of Elsa Beskow-Plaque (Swedish), accessed on January 3, 2017th
  5. ^ Boel Westin: Tove Jansson. Life, Art, Words. The Authorized Biography. From the Swedish of Silvester Mazzarella. Sort Of, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-908745-45-3 , p. 507.
  6. ^ Mareike Jendis: Moomin's miraculous adventures in Germany. To the reception of Tove Janson's Moomin books. Dissertation 2001, p. 179.
  7. ↑ TV movie "Mumindalen" (1973) on the website "Muminforschung", accessed on January 1, 2017th
  8. ↑ Mumindalen in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  9. ↑ Theater plays based on the original work of Tove Jansson on the official Moomin website moomin.com, accessed October 16, 2016.