The Guardian view on the Moomins at 80: in search of a home | Editorial

All Moomin fans volition recognise the turreted bluish house that is location to the household of gentle, upright‑hippo‑like creatures. The stove-shaped operation is simply a awesome of comfortableness and invited passim the 9 Moomin novels by the celebrated Nordic writer and creator Tove Jansson. Now the location is the inspiration for a bid of creation installations successful UK cities, successful collaboration with Refugee Week, to observe the 80th day of the instauration of the Moomins.

Taking the motto “The doorway is ever open”, gathering volition statesman adjacent week connected a 12ft bluish house extracurricular London’s Southbank Centre, conscionable a stone’s propulsion from Westminster. All of the installations, by artists from countries including Afghanistan, Syria and Romania, woody with displacement: successful Bradford, the Palestinian creator Basel Zaraa has created a refugee tent successful which to ideate beingness aft concern and war; successful Gateshead, earthy materials are being foraged to physique To Own Both Nothing and the Whole World (a punctuation from Jansson’s philosophical quality Snufkin); and a Moomin raft volition motorboat from Gloucester Docks.

Begun successful the wintertime of 1939 and published successful 1945, the archetypal book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, was a “fairytale”, arsenic Jansson called it, calved retired of the acheronian of war. A parent and her lad acceptable disconnected crossed an unfamiliar onshore – overcoming dangers, earthy disasters and hostile creatures – successful hunt of their missing household and a spot to physique a caller home. It was the communicative of millions of refugees aft the 2nd satellite war, and an all-too acquainted 1 crossed the satellite today.

In their themes of loneliness, a hunt for individuality and freedom, the Moomin books talk to anyone who feels that they don’t belong. In Finn Family Moomintroll, the inseparable Thingumy and Bob (reflecting the nicknames of Jansson and her lover, the theatre manager Vivica Bandler) get successful Moominland speaking a unusual connection and carrying a suitcase containing a ruby, a metaphor for their concealed emotion – homosexuality was amerciable successful Finland until 1971. Growing up connected a lodging property extracurricular Liverpool, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the children’s laureate, was astounded that “a book written by a bohemian Finnish lesbian” seemed to beryllium speaking straight to him. According to Philip Pullman, Jansson should person won the Nobel prize successful literature.

All the inhabitants of Moominvalley travel successful wildly antithetic shapes and sizes. Tiny, furious Little My is adopted by the Moomin household because “no 1 other dared”. The Groke, a awesome of gloom who turns everything she touches into ice, is simply looking for warmth and is not to beryllium feared. Unlike Paddington, that different postwar refugee, this is the newcomer communicative arsenic acceptance alternatively than assimilation.

Today, the Moomins person go a brand, valued much for being cute than kind. Jansson would doubtless beryllium thrilled that her bequest is being utilized arsenic portion of Refugee Week to foster knowing alternatively than to flog pencil cases and oven mitts.

Moominland is simply a fairytale, acold from our 21st-century exile crisis. But this magical satellite provides a softly extremist connection of tolerance, inclusivity and hope. Moominvalley mightiness beryllium described arsenic “an land of strangers”, to get the premier minister’s unfortunate phrase, and is each the amended for it: it is simply a spot wherever you don’t person to acceptable successful to belong. As Jansson writes successful the preface to The Moomins and the Great Flood: “Here was my precise archetypal blessed ending!”