Tove Jansson’s tales from Moominvalley have been delighting children and adults alike for decades. Now, as her much-loved characters hit the big screen, Tove’s niece Sophia Jansson tells Charlotte Pearson Methven why her aunt’s stories are more relevant than ever today

Sophia in 2011 at the opening of the Moomin Shop in London

'But what I really want to know is: are they hippos or trolls?’ I cannot quite believe I have just uttered the above sentence – and not to one of my children, but to Sophia Jansson, a cool Scandinavian blonde. Sophia, 53, is the niece of the late Tove Jansson, the Finnish painter and illustrator. Tove created the Moomin, a family of mouthless creatures (who, according to Sophia, are neither hippos nor trolls) in 1945, as doodles to distract from the horrors of the Second World War. These became comic strips, which ran in London’s Evening News in the 1950s, and so it was that the characters (often referred to as Moomins, even though the collective brand name is Moomin) became a global phenomenon and are among the most popular animated characters of all time.

Tove was a wonderful eccentric. She encouraged me to be curious

Promoting the values of tolerance, friendship and finding pleasure in small things – a shell, a tomato or just lying in the sand – the Moomin books have been translated into 44 languages. A TV series, The Moomins, was aired internationally in the 70s and 80s, and now there’s even a theme park (Moomin World in Finland), not to mention a sea of merchandise, making Tove (and her family by proxy) a Finnish national treasure (and also rich – the company makes more than seven million pounds annually).

The Moomins reside in Moominvalley, a place where I – and I think I speak for many – would like to live, too. A remote idyll surrounded by mountains and sea, with a river running through, it is inspired by the dramatic Nordic landscapes of the Gulf of Finland, where the Jansson family, who are part of Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority, own two islands that they decamp to every summer. There is the Family Island and Tove’s Island, where Tove [pronounced To-Va] and her long-term female partner Tooti (who is the inspiration for practical Too-Ticky, one of the Moomin friends) lived a spartan existence with no utilities. Though a pervasive dread of winter looms, it is, happily, always summer in Moominvalley.

Sophia in 1968 with Tove’s mother Signe, who was the inspiration for Moominmamma

I have met Sophia to discuss Moomins on the Riviera, a new feature film set for release. While Sophia’s official title is ‘artistic director’ of the family company – Oy Moomin Characters Ltd – she sees her role as guardian of her aunt’s ‘cultural legacy’. Sophia’s late father Lars was Tove’s younger brother and, like all of the family, an artist. He was Tove’s right-hand man and did much of the Moomins illustrating to allow Tove time for her first love of painting. Lars – who raised Sophia as a single parent after her mother died when she was six – died in 2000, just a year before Tove. This left Sophia, who has no siblings, in charge of the brand.

The themes in the Moomins are eternal: family, adventure, loneliness…

‘The girls’, as Tove and Tooti were known, played a big part in Sophia’s childhood. ‘Tove was never a surrogate mother to me,’ Sophia says. ‘She wasn’t the mothering type. She was a wonderful eccentric aunt. I spent much time traipsing around after her as a child. I learned to give her space, but we were as close as you can be to someone so much older. She had this amazing way of talking, which made you feel that you were on the same level as her. She never put herself at the centre. She encouraged me to explore and be curious and never be afraid of the world. She was aware of her fame, but not affected by it. She had a very dry sense of humour and an amazing ability to laugh in the face of adversity, which was how she dreamt up this cartoon in the midst of the war. She wanted to create a world far away from people dying and disappearing.’

None of the Moomins are based on Sophia, because they were created before her time. Tove did, however, dedicate Tales from Moominvalley – the book she published in 1962, the year Sophia was born – to her niece. ‘It has a drawing of a girl with long straight hair that’s meant to be me. I always think, “But I was a baby – how did she know I would look exactly like that?” I suppose it’s what most little Scandinavian girls looked like,’ she laughs.

Sophia insists that she does not have a favourite Moomin. ‘I couldn’t possibly choose,’ she sighs. ‘I have lots of Moomin mugs [these are bestsellers, with almost cultish popularity] and depending on what mood I am in, I might choose a certain one with a certain character on it to drink my coffee from.’ She reveals that today she chose one with The Muddler, ‘the character that collects buttons and lives in a coffee tin. It’s a nice mug.’

It is clear that the Moomins are not just Sophia’s family business; they are her family. This is all the more true since she married, four years ago, Roleff Krakstrom, the Moomin MD, who had been a close friend of hers, working previously for the publishers of the Moomin books. ‘In principle, I think there should be a separation between private life and work,’ she laughs, ‘but with a business like this – a lifestyle brand revolving around a family – it’s not so easy. We need to believe in and live the brand wholeheartedly. It feels right to bring it home with us. It’s not as though we work in a bank.’

Tove with Moomin figures in 1956

Not so long ago, working with the Moomins was the farthest thing from Sophia’s mind. ‘Anything but! I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I went out in the world and had a look around. I thought, “I’ll jump off a cliff and see where I land…”’ For eight years, she lived in London with her English first husband, only joining the Moomin corp in 1997 after she divorced and returned to Helsinki so that her two sons could spend time with her father, who was by then very ill. ‘I was a single mother in need of a job and my father said, “Why don’t you work for the company for a bit?”’ And that was that. Of her sons, now 23 and 26, she says, ‘The Moomins are a big part of their life; they take an interest but at present they’re not involved.’

Sophia is full of anticipation about how the new film will be received. It was shot in 2D with a reduced colour scale, to retain a homespun feel and stay true to the old-fashioned quality of Tove’s original drawings – ‘like a comic strip on a moving screen’, says Sophia – and is a wonderful departure from the technologically advanced Pixar style of modern animation. And if the packed press screening I attended – in which a roomful of grown journalists was guffawing – is anything to go by, Sophia has nothing to fear.

The film is based on one of Tove’s original comic strips, inspired by a trip she took to the French Riviera with her artist mother. It tells the story of Moominmamma and Moominpappa – who are based on Tove’s bohemian parents – and their son Moomin (previously called Moomintroll, but the troll part has largely been dropped since the advent of internet ‘trolling’). They travel by boat with their family of friends to the Riviera – the antithesis of the pared-back, nature-loving Moominvalley – where Moominpappa becomes over-impressed by the grandeur, renaming the family the ‘De Moomins’. The humour is slapstick: there are cringe-making social gaffes; they flood the bathroom washing themselves with their snouts and get asked to leave the hotel; and Snorkmaiden, Moomin’s love interest, nearly runs off with a French playboy. Predictably, it ends with everyone safely back in Moominvalley. Moominpappa vows to be content to ‘live in peace, plant potatoes and dream’ – a line so wonderful I might just have to make it my new mantra.

The Nordic island where Tove lived with her partner Tooti

So what is it that makes the Moomins, now 70 years on from their creation, so enchanting, even for adults? ‘Especially for adults,’ corrects Sophia. ‘A lot of it goes over the heads of children.’ She points out, ‘Those expensive mugs flying off the shelves are not being bought by or for children! There are themes Tove expresses that are eternal – family versus loneliness, adventure, how to handle a hard time – all set against storms and mountains. People find a sense of belonging in the Moomins.’ She adds that the stories give children, even if they don’t quite grasp the moral nuance, a feeling of security and an outlet for self-discovery. ‘They allow them to pick up on feelings they maybe didn’t know they had – such as missing someone.’ This is a reference to Sophia losing her mother, which, she says, wasn’t really ‘talked about’ at the time.

And the Moomins may be having a moment – making the timing of the film bang on – precisely because the world is so fraught right now. ‘With terrorism and people so politically polarised, there is even more appreciation for stories that treat everyone equally, regardless of colour or creed,’ says Sophia. And regardless of sexual orientation? Many of the Moomin characters, like Too-Ticky, are androgynous, or not defined by gender, which is how Sophia remembers viewing Tove and Tooti, whose relationship was never explained, just slowly understood and accepted.

A scene from the upcoming Moomins on the Riviera movie

‘And with the concern for the environment that we have today,’ adds Sophia, ‘Moominvalley is a perfect example of sustainable living! It represents a simpler direction many people would like their lives to go in.’

Summers in the Finnish archipelago really are as unspoilt as the Moomins would have us believe, says Sophia. ‘I start each day by opening my garden doors and taking my Moomin mug of coffee outside. Scandinavian winters are so long and inhospitable, so in summer we try to get as much as we can from each day. For us, the way the Moomin live is natural: picnics, boats, sometimes storms and whole days spent outside. My current project is to plant my tomato seeds…’

And to my original question – what are these funny creatures? Sophia reveals that Tove initially envisaged the Moomin as trolls. ‘When she was a student, she lived with an uncle in Stockholm and used to go to the kitchen late at night to eat leftover food. The uncle didn’t like this, so he made up stories about scary “Moomintrolls” who lived behind the Nordic stones and would blow cold air on her neck and make her ill if she came down! Tove had such an imagination that she turned this into a drawing. The Moomins have developed away from the troll concept and look like hippos, but they have nothing in common with them, besides a big nose. It is impossible to pin down,’ she says. ‘Much literary analysis has been devoted to this question.’

It’s clear that Sophia is fiercely devoted to preserving her aunt’s legacy – while many others in her shoes would have gone modern, sold out for squillions and, frankly, moved to the Riviera. ‘It is a constant struggle to balance the commercial side with the cultural,’ Sophia admits. ‘I consider myself caretaker of Tove’s estate, so my focus is to keep the Moomins true to the original property. None of this,’ she says, with a sweeping gesture around her swish office in Moomin HQ on the Helsinki waterfront, ‘would exist if Tove’s artistic work were not so good. It has stood the test of time.’

Future Moomin projects include more films, environmental initiatives in schools and branding part of a new children’s hospital in Helsinki with the Moomins (who better to uplift and encourage wellness?). Tentative steps are being made into social media, and Moomin apps and enhanced e-books are in development. So modernity is being embraced – up to a point. ‘Well, we don’t want to make plastic objects that people just throw away, as that goes against the values of the brand, but we must move forward,’ Sophia says brightly.

And with that, our time is up – and I wonder if she is going to get to grips with her tomato seedlings, live in peace and dream. I may just do the same.

Moomins on the Riviera will be in cinemas from 22 May