Tove Jansson, a white woman with short dark hair, wears a flower crown and looks into the distance.
“I always fell in love with a person. Sometimes that person was a man, and sometimes it was a woman. But the important thing was that I fell in love with that person.”
– Tove Jansson
Tove Jansson is well-known as the author and artist behind the universe of the Moomins, a phenomenon that has slowly grown in popularity throughout the world. Lesser-known, however, is her queerness, her love for women as well as men, and how her various partners inspired the characters of her life-works. She spent her life loving her people and her world fiercely, and she translated that love into beautiful works that convey strong themes of chosen family and the importance of self-acceptance.
In 1914, on August 9th, Tove was born into a family of artists, and she grew up in Helsinki, in what can be considered bohemian circumstances. Both her parents being artists, it is no wonder that Tove, along with both her brothers, chose an artistic career. The family spent most of their summers in their cabin, where Tove learnt to appreciate nature and the freedom that came along with it, something that can be seen reflected in all her works. Later in life she would, along with her life-partner, build a cabin on an uninhabited island. She spent all her summers there to write and relax.
She wrote her first book at the age of thirteen and continued writing for the rest of her life. She illustrated her own books and made comics for the London Evening News. She was also worked for the anti-fascist magazine Garm, making satirical drawings of world-leaders during the 30s and 40s. She wrote for both children and adults, and she surrounded herself with other artists and creatives, including all her romantic partners. She found community and friends everywhere she went.
““But what has happened now is that I’ve fallen madly in love with a woman. And it seems to me so absolutely natural and genuine,””
Tove’s sexuality, while somewhat of a controversy, has until recently rarely been discussed in the public eye. As a children’s author, very little was said about her relationships with other people, and specifically, her queerness was toned down by agents and publishing houses; the blurbs in the back of her books often identified her as living alone. Even when silencing the queerness, the lack of information about her same-gender relationships was not replaced by anything, leaving her somewhat desexualized. This is a tactic often used to erase queer women from history, and to work against this effect, most publications about her after her death write about Tove as a lesbian. However, according to her niece, “the word lesbian was never ever used”, even though Tove was open with her family about her relationships. She often spoke about herself as having gone to “the spook side,” a Swedish term of queerness, and had romantic relationships with both men and women. There is a quote from her about attraction to the person rather than the gender, something that may have been a sign of her being pansexual or bisexual.
One of Tove’s first experiences with queerness was when she fell in love with Vivica Bandler, a married theatre director. She immediately wrote of her realization to a friend:
“Something has happened to me that I realise I have to tell you about. I’m so happy, so elated and relieved. You know I feel like Atos’s wife, and I expect I always shall. But what has happened now is that I’ve fallen madly in love with a woman. And it seems to me so absolutely natural and genuine – there’s nothing problematic about it at all. I just feel proud and uncontrollably glad. These last weeks have been like one long dance of rich adventure, tenderness, intensity – an expedition into new domains of great simplicity and beauty.”
Tove and Vivica had a short-lived romance until Tove realized the other woman was not going to leave her husband and was also having affairs with other people. Still, the two stayed friends and worked on projects for the rest of their lives. Vivica is also immortalized in the Moomin universe; the characters Thingumy and Bob (in Swedish: Tofslan and Vifslan, after Tove and Vivica) are based upon the two women, and they are seen as inseparable, always holding hands. The two characters speak in their own secret language, something Tove and Vivica also did in their letters, and they carry with them a secret treasure in a suitcase. Considering that queerness was illegal in Finland until 1971 and declassified as an illness in 1981, their relationship was considered by them both a secret, and the ruby that turns out to be Thingumy and Bob’s treasure is often viewed as an allegory for Tove and Vivica’s love.
The Atos mentioned in the quote was Atos Wirtanen, a writer and journalist, and Tove’s fiance for a period, who she was devoted to for a long period of her life. Even after their relationship ended, the two remained close friends and impacted each others’ works greatly. He was also the man who inspired Snufkin, especially in his travelling and his ability for storytelling.
Tove met the woman who ended up being her life-partner in 1955 when at a party she asked Tuulikki Pietilä to dance. She was declined, however, as Tuulikki, who was often called Tooti, was worried about breaking societal norms. But the two did, in the end, spend the entire night together by the record player, talking and guarding the music so they could play their favourite records. After some time of being friends and several phone calls, Tove visited Tuulikki’s studio, and the two spent the evening drinking wine and listening to French records. Later, they would move into adjacent buildings, and, seeing as their apartments were connected by an attic hallway, would visit each other constantly. This was later depicted in one of Tove’s books, Fair Play, one of the few of her novels that deal with queerness directly.
Tuulikki was also the inspiration for Tove to write another book on the Moomins, something she had not previously thought she was capable of managing, seeing as she was exhausted by the pressure by the public demand for another book. She inspired the character Too-Ticky, an androgynous and pragmatic creature who appears for the first time in the book Moominland Midwinter. When Moomintroll, often described as Tove’s alter-ego, wakes up from his hibernation and panics at having to manage by himself in the snow and the cold, Too-Ticky is the one who calms him down and makes him realize that winter is not that bad. Similarly, Tuulikki was the person who grounded Tove and made her calmer, but also more creative and excited about creating again, after years of feeling uncreative and burnt out. The pair spent all their summers together on the island of Klovharu, in the Gulf of Finland, and were devoted to each other for the rest of their lives.
Tove died from cancer on June 27th in 2001, at the age of 86, and is buried with her family in Helsinki. The legacy she left behind has impacted people worldwide, teaching lessons of kindness and understanding and love above all. While her characters have flaws and can be selfish and petty at times, they always return to the themes of self-acceptance and kindness. And with Tove experiencing a world where queerness has been illegal, it is no wonder these are themes she wanted to share with the world and especially children. She centred her life around love and relationships, writing her loved ones into her works as well as working with her loved ones in real life. And her capacity for translating her love for people and nature into her art is in part what makes her work strike such a chord with so many people. We all wish for a place to belong and love, an idyllic and beautiful place both in terms of its view and its people, and Tove, with her beautiful queer life, shows us the possibility for a dream come true.
[Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material]
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“I’ve fallen madly in love with a woman” – Queer themes in Tove Jansson’s life and work, part 1. (2019, June 20). Moomin. Retrieved from https://www.moomin.com/en/blog/ive-fallen-madly-in-love-with-a-woman-queer-themes-in-tove-janssons-life-and-work-part-1/#95049e2d
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The secret message in Mymble’s name – queer themes in Tove Jansson’s life and work part 2. (2019, June 25). Moomin. Retrieved from https://www.moomin.com/en/blog/the-secret-message-in-mymbles-name-queer-themes-in-tove-janssons-life-and-work-part-2/#95049e2d
Tove & Tooti – the love story of a century – Queer themes in Tove Jansson’s life and work, part 3. (2019, June 26). Moomin. Retrieved from https://www.moomin.com/en/blog/going-over-to-the-ghost-side-queer-themes-in-tove-janssons-life-and-work-part-3/#95049e2d
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Williams, H. (2018, October 3). The Gay Love Stories of Moomin and the Queer Radicality of Tove Jansson. Autostraddle. Retrieved from https://www.autostraddle.com/the-gay-love-stories-of-moomin-and-the-queer-radicality-of-tove-jansson-431832/