My latest contribution to the ever-expanding Tove Trove Library
“Moomintroll woke up and lay a long time looking at the ceiling before he realised where he was. He had slept a hundred nights and a hundred days, and his dreams still thronged about his head trying to coax him back to sleep.”
– Chapter One
Finn Family Moomintroll
Finn Family Moomintroll, or Trollkarlens hatt (‘The Magician’s Hat’) in its earliest Swedish incarnation, was the third book in Tove Jansson’s original Moomin series about a family of benevolent, philosophical trolls with downy fur and soft, rounded snouts, who inhabit an unusual house in a beautiful woodland valley by the sea.
I chose to re‑read this title in June because the story begins in springtime and continues into late summer1, so it felt like the ideal moment to pick it up again.
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“In The Hobgoblin’s Hat Tove Jansson the writer enlarged her Moomin world, sharpened her aesthetic, honed her vocabulary and anchored the codes of her fictive world to a firm foundation.”
– Boel Westin
Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words
Finn Family Moomintroll, first published in 1948, marked the moment the Moomin world truly cohered: an optimistic tale of reawakening in which Moomintroll and his companions stumble upon a sorcerer’s hat and find their lives thrown into chaos by its unpredictable magic. What follows is a joyously unruly adventure that established the charm, wit and agreeable eccentricity of Moominvalley’s residents – qualities that came to define the series.
It is a book of many cherished character debuts, along with several welcome reappearances. For instance, Snufkin gains his full, pipe‑playing wanderer’s charm; the Snork Maiden returns, all neat fringe, glinting ankle ring and the most practical suggestions in a crisis; Thingumy and Bob2 arrive with their secretive suitcase and private language; and, of course, the mysterious Hobgoblin sweeps into the valley with his feline collaborator to retrieve something of great importance.
Swinging in his hammock with a heavy book (in every sense of the word), still making dour observations about the ‘uselessness of everything’ and generally bringing great gloominess to the proceedings is one of my favourites. Yes, the hairy philosopher – the Muskrat, who made such an impression in Comet in Moominland – is back, if only briefly. Unfortunately, he leaves his favourite set of teeth in the Hat for safe‑keeping while taking a nap and flees in terror at the disastrous outcome.
The story unfolds with a simple, episodic 
momentum, carrying the creatures from one baffling encounter to the next as the plot gathers pace – and, like any good farce, each diversion sends the characters scampering off in a different direction, yet the journey remains anchored in tenderness and good humour.
The mood throughout is one of playful peril, as the Hobgoblin’s Hat casts its puckish enchantments in all manner of unexpected ways. Yet beneath the hilarity lies a thoughtful reflexion on change, curiosity and the way magic, however disruptive, brings this circle of family and friends closer.
From awakening out of hibernation to the sound of the first cuckoo, through five small clouds materialising to take them for a ride, the Hemulen discovering a new hobby, an invasion of Hattifateners, the Moominhouse turning into a jungle and Snufkin’s departure, Finn Family Moomintroll – one of Jansson’s most popular creations (and the first to be translated into English) – leaves one smiling, if a little sad to reach the end of the adventure. But as we now know, there were plenty still to come.
“‘Oh!’ said Moominmamma with a start, ‘I believe those were mice disappearing into the cellar. Sniff, run down with a little milk for them.’ Then she caught sight of the suitcase which stood by the steps. ‘Luggage, too,’ thought Moominmamma. ‘Dear me – then they’ve come to stay.’ And she went off to look for Moominpappa to ask him to put up two more beds – very, very small ones.”
– Chapter Six
Finn Family Moomintroll
And now for a slight diversion…
A peculiar exclamation
I’m always fascinated by the odd expressions that crop up in the Moomin books, especially as one can never be entirely sure whether they were coined by Tove herself or slipped in by translators at a later date. In Finn Family Moomintroll, the expression that caught my ear was the mysterious “pee‑hoo”. Naturally, I had to investigate.
Although it looks as if it ought to have a folkloric pedigree, “pee‑hoo”3 turns out to be surprisingly elusive. It appears in this book as a thin, wavering cry linked to the Hattifatteners, and again in Moominland Midwinter4, where it drifts through the dark like a half‑heard warning. In the Swedish originals the sound is written as piu‑huu, a breathy, wind‑like call, but there is no trace of it in Swedish or Finland‑Swedish dialect sources before Jansson uses it. Nor does it surface in English as an established expression, despite its faint resemblance to the cheerful ‘yoo‑hoo’. Everything suggests it is one of Jansson’s own auditory inventions – a small, uncanny note that feels almost ancient but is entirely at home in the strange atmosphere of Moominvalley.
A few words about the Hobgoblin
I was much intrigued by Jansson’s Hobgoblin and wondered whether he was one of her original creations or based on an existing legend – as I suspected, the latter proved to be the case. It seems hobgoblins are firmly rooted in traditional folklore5, and Tove merely borrowed the word and reinvented it for her own mythos.
In European folklore, a hobgoblin is a household spirit – a small, hairy, mischievous, sometimes helpful, sometimes troublesome being. It is a close cousin of the brownie and other domestic fairies, known for doing chores at night or playing pranks. Shakespeare even identified Puck as a hobgoblin in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Tove’s Hobgoblin, on the other hand, is a solitary, cosmic magician who travels the universe on a panther, seeking the King’s Ruby6. His character bears no resemblance to the domestic, prankish hobgoblins of folklore – Tove simply adopted the name and transformed him into something far more imposing and bizarre.
“For The Hobgoblin’s Hat the painter Tove Jansson took up her palette, spread out her colours and let them shine through the story. The butterfly7 that announces the Moomin summer is not yellow (which would mean ‘happy summer’) but golden. It stands for a happy new power that revels in warmth and colour, in everything that Tove was sick with longing for during the war.”
– Boel Westin
Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words
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My copy of Finn Family Moomintroll – a birthday gift from my mother some years ago – is the Collector’s Edition Moomin Hardback (complete with a fold-out Map of Moomin Valley) from Sort of Books. It was translated into the English by Elizabeth Portch and published in 2017.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki on 9th August 1914, the daughter of a Swedish-Finnish father who worked as a sculptor and a mother who was a graphic designer. She first trained as an artist and made a name for herself in her homeland as a painter and cartoonist. She became internationally famous after creating the Moomins. She later went on to create novels and short fiction for adults. She worked in her Helsinki studio, moving to a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland during the summer months with her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä. She died on 27th June 2001 at the age of eighty-six.
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NOTES
“The Hobgoblin’s Hat is the summer book of the Moomin world.” Boel Westin, Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words, translated from the Swedish by Silvester Mazzarella, published 2014, Chapter 8, ‘Moomin Passion’, p. 198.- In a 1947 letter to theatre director Vivica Bandler, with whom she had fallen in love, Tove wrote: “The Moomin book’s finished. Thingumy and Bob have now run riot at the end and definitely overcome the Groke. They are inseparable and sleep together in a desk drawer. No one understands their language, but that doesn’t matter so long as they themselves know what it’s all about … Do you love me? Of dourse you coo! Sanks and thame to you!” Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words, Chapter 8, ‘Moomin Passion’, pp. 197–198. “‘Thingumy’ and ‘Bob’ were codenames for Tove and Vivika, and the enemy of their love went under the name of the Groke.” Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words, p.198.
- “Moomintroll is characterised in a sketch with the words ‘Goodness gracious me! That’s what Mamma said. Pee-Hoo!’”, Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words, p.201.
- Moominland Midwinter (1957) is the sixth book in Tove Jansson’s nonalogy
- More detailed folkloric breakdowns – covering appearance, behaviour, regional variants and the connections to brownies, boggarts and other household spirits – can be found at Gods and Monsters and the Myth and Folklore Wiki.
- The King’s Ruby is a kind of cosmic MacGuffin: a jewel of impossible power, coveted by the Hobgoblin and used to illuminate the book’s themes of desire, transformation and the slipperiness of magic. I searched widely but the ruby itself appears to have no precedent in established mythology. As far as I can tell, it belongs wholly to Tove’s imaginative universe.
- “And suddenly they caught sight of the first butterfly. (As everyone knows, if the first butterfly you see is yellow the summer will be a happy one. If it is white then you will just have a quiet summer. Black and brown butterflies should never be talked about – they are much too sad.) But this butterfly was golden.” Finn Family Moomintroll, Chapter One, p. 30.
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Author’s images © Moomin Characters™
Categories: LGB, Tove Jansson, Translated Literature
Great write-up as usual.
I always figured “hobgoblin” was a mistranslation into English; Tove called him “trollkarl” in Swedish, which means “[stage] magician” (though the literal meaning is “troll man” since the verb “trolla” means “to do magic”). AFAIK, “trollkarl” was still a bit informal in the 1940s, so maybe the translator simply wasn’t familiar with it and assumed Tove wanted him to sound more like a mythical creature than Mandrake the Magician?
That’s really interesting. Thanks so much, Bjorn. 😊👍