I... actually really liked these. And yes, sure, they aren't completely obedient to Tolkien's descriptions of the characters, but the atmosphere feels right.
The Hobbit is also a whimsical children's book, and doesn't have anything to do with saving the world (a world that Tolkien had not developed anywhere near the state in we see in LoTR when he wrote The Hobbit almost 20 years earlier).
The world was pretty well developed, but The Hobbit isn't really set in it. The Hobbit was retconned into his broader Middle-earth as the sequel grew in the telling. He'd been re-writing the material that became The Silmarillion for decades. (And he offered it to the publisher instead of a Hobbit sequel, and they said "what else ya got?)
This despite the fact that some names and elements were re-used. He often cycled the same names around until he found where they fit. Which also makes reading early drafts of the Hobbit fun when Thorin was named Gandalf.
Was its license rescinded by the International Society of Children's Books? Thanks for letting me know, I'll be sure to tell my child to stop enjoying it.
Somewhat whimsical, yet somewhat grappling with dark undertones, possibly due to the trauma of the war.
The moomins starts with a great flood that washes them all away to live in a new place (I think this is a parallel to the Finns moving out of Karelia after the war. I believe this was the largest migration of people that had occured at the time, and it has been described as causing generational trauma to the Finnish).
In addition I believe MoominPappa deals with issues of depression or something?
Fantastic creatures diving to retrieve their pantry supplies or the head of a family grappling with a mild midlife crisis is not exactly on the same scale with a band of warriors reclaiming their homeland and in passing dealing with the eternal evil.
I love that you use "fantastic creatures" to describe the world of Jansson, but "warriors" to describe Tolkien. Last time I checked, it had hobbits, dwarves, elves, talking trees... but none of that fantasy nonsense of Moomintrolls, right?
There are some seriously dark themes in there - and unlike in Tolkien, the protagonists are completely helpless when facing them. No epic battle in which magical eagles and a magical bear show up to save the day.
Just for the record, I don't at all think they're similar. I just don't think it's correct to call the moomins entirely whimsical (though they are a bit I guess.)
Mostly just trying to contextualise the moomins with some info I found interesting and unexpected given that it looks like a children's show about anthropomorphic hippos.
Those are wonderful! It's really interesting to see Jansson's take on the characters and settings. When I read _The Hobbit_ in the early 1970s, there was already a well established tradition of how to portray Tolkien's world. Jansson's seems very fresh to me.
Also of interest, and probably just as upsetting to some, is Gene Deitch's version of _The Hobbit_ which was made in the mid 1960s in an attempt to retain the movie rights. Made in 30 days!
The Hobbit is today usually viewed through the lens of The Lord of the Rings, and The Lord of the Rings is viewed with the baggage of 70 years of post-Tolkien epic fantasy culture.
Being deeply embedded in that culture myself, I must admit that these illustrations don’t appeal to me at all, and don’t match my mental imagery of the story. But I can see how they might have looked like a perfect fit to someone who read The Hobbit with a fresh eye when it was still fresh. I wish I could have read it like that.
> As presented, Gollum is badly off, I reckon - missing the books textual description. The flowers are out of line.
This is addressed in the article. "Paul Gravett writes in his new book about Tove Jansson: ‘Her Gollum towered monstrously large, to the surprise of Tolkien himself, who realized that he had never clarified Gollum’s size and so amended the second edition to describe him as ‘a small, slimy creature’."
We have Jansson to thank for the clarification, it seems!
Tolkien made significant changes to the Gollum chapter. In the first edition Gollum gives up the ring willingly. The ring was not yet the Ring, and Gollum was not yet a Hobbit.
The man took retcons as an intellectual challenge. Sometimes the retcon itself spun off a whole new story. But it makes The Hobbit really incompatible with its own sequel, even after his changes. (You have to read it as having a very unreliable narrator.)
We're these only used in Sweden? I know I've seen some of them before, but I'm not sure if it's from decades on the internet or my school having a specific thirty year old edition of The Hobbit.
I seem to recall thinking Gollum was big, but honestly could be remembering the Shelov scene. It was long time ago.
These are lovely. I knew about the Moomins of course but I didn't know about the other stuff she did, some of which I really like. I wish the website had more of the illustrations but I guess there might be copyright issues.
I'd be particularly interested in seeing more of her illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark (the latter is a great poem if you haven't read it: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29888/29888-h/29888-h.htm)
First of, the illustrations are great. I love them.
Separate though, if they don't represent the original material then why not just make some new IP instead if effectively taking a piss on someone else's?
The "original material" was modified significantly - Tove's illustration of Gollum, e.g., was not inconsistent with the 1937 edition she was working from, before Tolkien rewrote the scene to bring it more in-line with the version of the character from the Lord of the Rings in the second edition.
I don't think it's pissing on the source material, it's adapting it.
Alastair Reynolds once expressed this sentiment in a nice way:
I didn’t want to be slavishly bound by the earlier story. So I made the decision that House of Suns would take its cue from the events and characters in the shorter piece, but it wouldn’t be afraid to contradict them if that made for a better story.
They do represent the original material, as interpreted by the illustrator. And Tove was hardly pissing on anything - she was commissioned to illustrate a version of the book by the publisher.
As someone who loved the Moomintroll illustrations I find this both familiar and hilarious. I suppose I might have a different opinion if I'd actually read any of Tolkien's works.
> "She even made some of the characters especially tiny to elevate the landscapes." wish there were more examples of this in the images shown in the article.
I... actually really liked these. And yes, sure, they aren't completely obedient to Tolkien's descriptions of the characters, but the atmosphere feels right.
But then again, I grew up with the Moomins.
Moomins don't depict anything like saving the world, it's a whimsical universe dealing with whimsical non-issues.
I can see why Tolkien lovers are upset at these even though I'm not really one of them.
The Hobbit is also a whimsical children's book, and doesn't have anything to do with saving the world (a world that Tolkien had not developed anywhere near the state in we see in LoTR when he wrote The Hobbit almost 20 years earlier).
The world was pretty well developed, but The Hobbit isn't really set in it. The Hobbit was retconned into his broader Middle-earth as the sequel grew in the telling. He'd been re-writing the material that became The Silmarillion for decades. (And he offered it to the publisher instead of a Hobbit sequel, and they said "what else ya got?)
This despite the fact that some names and elements were re-used. He often cycled the same names around until he found where they fit. Which also makes reading early drafts of the Hobbit fun when Thorin was named Gandalf.
It was a children's book and probably isn't anymore.
Was its license rescinded by the International Society of Children's Books? Thanks for letting me know, I'll be sure to tell my child to stop enjoying it.
How could that status ever chance? Being widely read by adults doesn't change if its an children's book or not.
Theoretically it could change via literacy rates and attention spans going down?
Somewhat whimsical, yet somewhat grappling with dark undertones, possibly due to the trauma of the war.
The moomins starts with a great flood that washes them all away to live in a new place (I think this is a parallel to the Finns moving out of Karelia after the war. I believe this was the largest migration of people that had occured at the time, and it has been described as causing generational trauma to the Finnish).
In addition I believe MoominPappa deals with issues of depression or something?
Fantastic creatures diving to retrieve their pantry supplies or the head of a family grappling with a mild midlife crisis is not exactly on the same scale with a band of warriors reclaiming their homeland and in passing dealing with the eternal evil.
I love that you use "fantastic creatures" to describe the world of Jansson, but "warriors" to describe Tolkien. Last time I checked, it had hobbits, dwarves, elves, talking trees... but none of that fantasy nonsense of Moomintrolls, right?
There are some seriously dark themes in there - and unlike in Tolkien, the protagonists are completely helpless when facing them. No epic battle in which magical eagles and a magical bear show up to save the day.
Just for the record, I don't at all think they're similar. I just don't think it's correct to call the moomins entirely whimsical (though they are a bit I guess.)
Mostly just trying to contextualise the moomins with some info I found interesting and unexpected given that it looks like a children's show about anthropomorphic hippos.
Comet in moominland is about them learning about a comet heading towards earth that they believe is going to kill them all.
Those are wonderful! It's really interesting to see Jansson's take on the characters and settings. When I read _The Hobbit_ in the early 1970s, there was already a well established tradition of how to portray Tolkien's world. Jansson's seems very fresh to me.
Also of interest, and probably just as upsetting to some, is Gene Deitch's version of _The Hobbit_ which was made in the mid 1960s in an attempt to retain the movie rights. Made in 30 days!
https://youtu.be/UBnVL1Y2src?si=rpd-dOk-t4BYFP_Q
The Hobbit is today usually viewed through the lens of The Lord of the Rings, and The Lord of the Rings is viewed with the baggage of 70 years of post-Tolkien epic fantasy culture.
Being deeply embedded in that culture myself, I must admit that these illustrations don’t appeal to me at all, and don’t match my mental imagery of the story. But I can see how they might have looked like a perfect fit to someone who read The Hobbit with a fresh eye when it was still fresh. I wish I could have read it like that.
I'd have to see more to have a final thought.
As presented, Gollum is badly off, I reckon - missing the books textual description. The flowers are out of line.
The dragon scene is wonderful and captures the situation.
The dwarves are a bit dopy looking but I think could cohere with the early introduction in the Hobbit.
> As presented, Gollum is badly off, I reckon - missing the books textual description. The flowers are out of line.
This is addressed in the article. "Paul Gravett writes in his new book about Tove Jansson: ‘Her Gollum towered monstrously large, to the surprise of Tolkien himself, who realized that he had never clarified Gollum’s size and so amended the second edition to describe him as ‘a small, slimy creature’."
We have Jansson to thank for the clarification, it seems!
Tolkien made significant changes to the Gollum chapter. In the first edition Gollum gives up the ring willingly. The ring was not yet the Ring, and Gollum was not yet a Hobbit.
The man took retcons as an intellectual challenge. Sometimes the retcon itself spun off a whole new story. But it makes The Hobbit really incompatible with its own sequel, even after his changes. (You have to read it as having a very unreliable narrator.)
We're these only used in Sweden? I know I've seen some of them before, but I'm not sure if it's from decades on the internet or my school having a specific thirty year old edition of The Hobbit.
I seem to recall thinking Gollum was big, but honestly could be remembering the Shelov scene. It was long time ago.
This gets posted every few months, so you probably got it from the internet
These are lovely. I knew about the Moomins of course but I didn't know about the other stuff she did, some of which I really like. I wish the website had more of the illustrations but I guess there might be copyright issues.
I'd be particularly interested in seeing more of her illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark (the latter is a great poem if you haven't read it: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29888/29888-h/29888-h.htm)
The dragon is just great. These are so charming.
I'm always of two minds about this kind of stuff.
First of, the illustrations are great. I love them.
Separate though, if they don't represent the original material then why not just make some new IP instead if effectively taking a piss on someone else's?
The "original material" was modified significantly - Tove's illustration of Gollum, e.g., was not inconsistent with the 1937 edition she was working from, before Tolkien rewrote the scene to bring it more in-line with the version of the character from the Lord of the Rings in the second edition.
I don't think it's pissing on the source material, it's adapting it.
Alastair Reynolds once expressed this sentiment in a nice way:
[0] https://www.alastairreynolds.com/release/house-of-suns-2008/They do represent the original material, as interpreted by the illustrator. And Tove was hardly pissing on anything - she was commissioned to illustrate a version of the book by the publisher.
As someone who loved the Moomintroll illustrations I find this both familiar and hilarious. I suppose I might have a different opinion if I'd actually read any of Tolkien's works.
> "She even made some of the characters especially tiny to elevate the landscapes." wish there were more examples of this in the images shown in the article.
The article seems to be more of a review of the new book than any attempt to actually discuss the topic.
Dreadful and painfully Nordic.
Poor sods never know if they are getting devoured by a polar bear or not, and it shows.
somewhat comforting to know that this kind of reflexive fan bitching about departures from canon has been around forever