Happy Easter! Glad pÄsk! HyvÀÀ PÀÀsiÀistÀ!
They discover a mysterious giant egg and tries honoring it by decorate it! Looks like a postcard. I could scent the water paint somehow while experimenting painting fake digital water painting.
I rushes this through two days while practicing digital water painting on Clipart Studio. Hey, we almost got everyone in the main cast from the later books plus some extras! Including less known characters and less known designs. Many of the designs came from me reading the picture books Skurken i Muminhuset 1980 [The Crook in the Moominhouse] (using photos of the famous giant dollhouse of Muminhuset that you could see in the Tampere Moomin museum with almost all characters making appearance there) and Den farliga resan [The Dangerous Journey] 1977.
List of characters in this artwork
Characters based on the diorama dolls
Homsan (center beneath Muminmamman) has the coloration and clothing from the diorama doll design while kept the tufted troll-tail and large feet from Farlig midsommar 1954 (the 5th book) (not sure if that's supposedly be the same young adult Homsa, I just forgot my visit from the Tempere museum last year where I forgot to film and take photos so I relied heavily on Skurken i Muminhuset).
Onkelskruttet (patterend hat and dark clothes).
Tofslan & Vifslan [F you with you shitty English names turning Tove's avatar into male!!!] and their suitcase (I do remember them making cameo at the ship diorama which was also shown a close-up of them there at a preview video at YLE).
Skruttet [Miffle] (hat only)
Characters based on Den farliga resan [The dangerous Journey]
Tooticki (mostly the clothing)
Characters of mixed/other design origins
Lilla My's striped black/white dress is very common outside the books and comic strips such as theaters, diorama dolls (reused by Skurken i Muminhuset), Lars Jansson's style-guide for the 90s anime (can be found in Skatter frÄn Mumindalen 2024), Den farliga resan.
Förfadern [the Ancestor], mainly based on his puppet in live action Swedish 1973 calendar show Mumindalen and its illustrated marketing materials by Tove Jansson which happens to look like the diorama doll.
Snorkfröken [Snorkmaiden] here is mainly based on concept art of Mumintroll i kulisserna which also appears in other public materials.
Characters with mostly standard designs:
Would Mumindalen [Moominvalley] celebrate Easter?
Not really. According "StenĂ„ker och Ăngsmark â Erotiska motiv och homosexuella skildringar i Tove Janssons senare litteratur" 1992 (that also includes religious analysis and coverage of unpublished works) by Barbro K Gustafsson (Tove Jansson's female Swedish priest cousin Kerstin Hammarsten's previous same-gender partner who's a theologian priest activist), Tove Jansson confirms them not being Christians as mentioned in my Lucia post (that I don't dare to touch again as that one got my blog temporarily terminated right after posting likely from technical issues so I try replicate here).
Tove Jansson's quote regarding God in the Mumin books:
Original Swedish:
âJag har ju undvikit Gud i muminberĂ€ttelserna, troligen av stilkĂ€nsla; dessa varelsers uppsyn och hedonistiska instĂ€llning utesluter pĂ„ nĂ„got vis övermĂ€nsklig inblandning."
My English translation:
"I have you know avoided God in my Mumin stories, probably by sense of style; these creatures' countenance and hedonistic attitude excludes in some way superhuman involvement.â
That quote apparently prevented Barbro performing some bizarre bible study on Mumin.
They do have some divine-like figure called "Alla smÄdjurs beskyddare" ("The patron/protector of all critters/small-animals") not physically appearing in Mumin, sometime used as an expression similar to "Oh my God!" which Tove Jansson continued:
Original Swedish:
"PÄ nÄgot stÀlle har jag skrivit om 'alla smÄdjurs beskyddare'. Hur han ser ut vet jag inte. Kanske nÄnslags vÀnlig instÀlld Panfigur."
My English translation:
"In some place I have written about 'alla smÄdjurs beskyddare'. How he looks like I don't know. Maybe some kind of friendly Pan-figure."
If you are familiar to Tove Janssonâs original language use thatâs unusually distinct, these quotes are very much aligns how she normally speaks, writes and expresses in general (which differs from Barbro's own writing which makes this very much legitimate).
Unlike Tordis ĂrjasĆeterâs MĂžte med Tove Jansson 1986 which is really bizarre in structure and incoherently written just like most "interviews" written down in another language (might cover this very unusual book and why other biographies never actually use it despite often credit it). Non-Swedish written interviews are often written in overly simplified ways that blurs between the author's voice and Tove's own that dosen't match Tove's actual distinct language use (could be due to loss in translations as they were just written down in another language) or very fragmented (more like third-person recollection of Toveâs speech).
Anyway, the Mumin characters do practice pre-Christian holidays, traditions and rituals like midsummer (in old Finland-Swedish style that includes romantic connotation attached that got later lost in most places), Yule (Yule today is a result of syncretism), Lucia (various less-know public materials like newspapers and magazines do show them celebrating Lucia which have pre-Christian roots), boat burials (sometimes), ancestor worship and some animism.
I'm not aware if there are any older pre-Christian Nordic counterparts of Easter. Just like Lucia, there are Mumin-themed Easter celebrations Tove Jansson made where they paints eggs. According to Wikipedia, egg decoration is almost an universally common ancient practice. Motivations behind egg decorations might variate but the symbolism tends to have fertility and rebirth connotations.
There are some aspects that might have Christian influences. In outside sources like stories published on newspapers, angels exist which no specific ties to Christianity. When thinking about mortality, Sniff wonders if one would go to heaven/sky when one die however the concept of going to the sky when you die in by itself is not uniquely Christian concept. In Farlig midsommar [Midsummer madness] (5th book), when Mumintrollet and Snorkfröken greeted "Glad midsommar" ["happy midsummer"], Filifjonkan replies "Glad Johanne" which is an alternative way to say happy midsummer in Finland-Swedish. Johanne is the name for Saint John the Baptist. Normally in Sweden there's very little ties to Johannes as it's just named "Misommar" here but some churches do celebrate him during midsummer (although my Christian teachers denies Midsummer having anything to Christianity and it's just some old thing we just do for tradition). In Finland however for both Finnish-speakers and Finland-Swedish-speakers, it seems like Johannes play a role in midsummer still where it's named "Johannus" in Finnish and "Johanne/Johanni" in Finland-Swedish.
