Moomins and the mystery of being

Bookcover
Jukka Laajarinne 2009: Muumit ja olemisen arvoitus

Some people are afraid of philosophy. Jukka Laajarinne wants to explain the Moomin philosophy on existence as simply as he can. Reading this book also gives nice glimpses to the thoughts of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre and Beauvoir. It is nice to read Moomin books just as stories, but this could help children (and adults too) understand and be curious about philosophical issues about how we see ourselves, what we expect from life and how we should react to others.

Jukka Laajarinne divides his thoughts into six different sections by subtitles.
1. Everything is strange now
2. Horribly difficult choices
3. Tendency to dizziness
4. Thousand miles
5. Sometime difficult families
6. I know who you are
7. Are you now acting?
8. Wooden queen
9. 9. I leave now and come back at springtime

Moominvalley looks different in the winter.
Everything is strange now 
Nothing is more certain than uncertainty. Even winter and snow are uncertain. How do you describe snow? Snow is white, but it reflects something else. Snow can be soft or it can be hard. Usually we are stuck on conventions and behavior models, but what would happen, if we would see things from a different perspective: like Moominvalley in winter. Nothing is at is seems. Sartre feels that freedom means possibilities.



Too many dresses causes Snorkmaiden anxiety
Horribly difficult choice
Life is like a forest. By every tree we have to choose, which way to go next. The comical conflict arises when we are choosing our future, we do not know, what exactly we are choosing.

In Moominsummer madness a volcano floods Muuminvalley and creates chaos in the kitchen. Moominmamma finds this amusing: luckily she didn’t have time to clean before and now she does not have to. She is freed from her duties such as washing dishes. And she hadn’t realized that before. Maybe she agrees with Simone de Beauvoir, who writes that housewives’ job is a losing battle, it never ends in victory. What would happen if Moominmamma stopped doing the dishes?




Moomintroll releases the forefather
Laajarinne also discusses falling in love. In Comet in Moominvally Snufkin tells Moomitroll about Snorkmaiden and Moomintroll falls in love with her even though he has never even seen her. According to Laajarinne falling in love starts from within. Moomintroll loves loving not Snorkmaiden. The target for loving is meaningless and is only important to the one who loves. Laajarinne writes that by choosing one’s passion, one is primarily defining one self and if Snorkmaiden hadn’t existed, Moomintroll would have made her up himself.

When Moomintroll releases the forefather, it starts to run wild. Laajarinne writes that the forefather represents our instincts and primitive drives. Should we fulfill these needs and desire without any thought?


Filyjonk is afraid she'll fall.

Tendency to dizziness

Laajarinne refers to Kierkegaard, who writes that the possibility to do someth
ing triggers feelings of fear and anxiety. This happens in Moominsummer
Madnes, when Snorkmaiden is distressed by the dresses in the theater wardrobe. Hemulen is distressed by his stamp collection in Finn family moomintroll and Fillyjonk is living a life she thinks everyone expects from her.






Thousand miles away from home
Laajarinne brings up the theme of home sickness. The moomins seldom leave Moominvalley and it seems that Moominvalley is the archtype of domesticity, but there always is some homeless wandering in. And at least to Moominpappa the valley is not enough. The open ocean allows Moominpappa to choose direction freely.

While others run away from repetition as Moominpappa, others seek for it. Fillyjonk leaves home only to clean somewhere else and Hemulen sells tickets at the fair to feel the repetition. At some level individuals are not ready to move up to a higher level. Hemulen has completed his collection and there for the collection has lost all its meaning.

According to Sartre: freedom means opportunities. Getting stuck on accustomed roles, conventions and behavior patterns is present in Moominvalley as well. Laajarinne writes that the answers vanish in front of us and we never get to our destination. According to Kierkegaard, getting to our destination would be a sure sign of not getting there.

Snufkin takes care of others
Sometimes difficult families 
Kierkegaard feels that being with others means taking care of them. Little My refuses to obey her sister, which Laajarinne sees as a form of taking care of her sister. Siblings tend to make each other worry about themselves.
On the other hand, Sartre writes Hell is other people. There is never a balance of how we see ourselves and how others see us. The main theme in Moomin books is to take care of others and doing so you surrender part of you a little bit. We constantly have to adjust our needs to the needs of others.

The others also broke Hemulens dream, when he told them about it and laughed and Ninny was invisible, because of others. Then again she gained visibility because of the Moomins. The others are also needed for being alone. Snufkin cannot be alone without others.

Moominmamma has been considered to be the textbook example of mothers and surely she loves to take care of her family, yet she likes to get up early in the spring, when no one else is awake so she can have peace and quiet and do what she wants. That wouldn’t be as enjoyable, if there weren’t the others.

Sharing thoughts.
We learn from Too-ticky that sometimes it is wise to be silent instead of using empty words. Snufkin knows this as well. He memorizes all he sees, but does not share this with others. What would be the right words for describing what he has seen in his travels?

This is exactly what Heidegger and Kierkegaard recommend several times for silence and speechlessness. By being silent you might say meaningful things, much more than by chatting. Unnecessary talk is not attached to anything, it is just words for words or repetition of cohesion. In Moominvalley we see that even if the language and world are the same and shared, words mean different things to different people.


Moomintroll looks different to the others.
I know who you are
Other themes that Laajarinne brings up are loneliness and nonexistence. The key example being Gronke. Gronke has been judged to be a mean outsider only based on a feeling. She is judged based on what she is or what she appears to be. Gronke hasn’t actually done anything.

In Finn family Moomintroll, everyone thinks Moomintroll is skinny, big eared geek and only mother’s love recognizes him and only Moominmamma recognizes him. Moomintroll knows who he is, but the others don’t. This brings us back to theme of others: there is always a gap between how we see ourselves and how the others see us.

Too-ticky wonders, why no one ever writes books about those who warm the heroes afterwards, which is following the lines of de Beauvoir, who writes that history is written by men and in history women are just invisible mice. Even Moominpappa wants to promote himself by writing memoirs.

Are you acting for us?
Gils beautifying
The comet, flood and waking up in the middle of hibernation make the moomins constantly evaluate the meaning of being. Who am I? What is my place here? What are my expectations?

Moomin stories are trying to define what beauty is. Moominmamma feels that no matter how beautiful you are, you always want to be a little bit more beautiful.

 We learn from Too-ticky that sometimes it is wise to be silent instead of using empty words. Snufkin knows this as well. He memorizes all he sees, but does not share this with others. What would be the right words for describing what he has seen in his travels?

In Moominsumme Madness, the others wonder about Miska’s hairiness. Miska gets upset and starts to mock Snorkmaiden’s nakedness. This then makes Snorkmaiden wonder, if she should be wearing clothes. Again the others makes us question ourselves. At the same time the Moomins find the theater boat and it is obvious that in theater you can be something else than yourself.

The comet, flood and waking up in the middle of hibernation make the Moomins constantly evaluate the meaning of being. Who am I? What is my place here? What are my expectations? The Moomins are mirrors, of which we can see characteristics of ourselves.

Moomin stories are trying to define what beauty is. Moominmamma feels that no matter how beautiful you are, you always want to be a little bit more beautiful.

Snorkmaiden wanted to have
wooden queen's eyes
Wooden queen
One way to escape and externalizing freedom is to give it someone else as did Sniff in Comet in Moominvalley as he was climbing the mountain with Moomintroll and Snufkin. Also trying to be like
your idol means to be freed from freedom. But we only want to be like our idols externally. In Finnfamily Moomintroll, Snorkmaiden wanted to have same eyes as the wooden queen, which Moomintroll admired. But when she gets them, she and the others are horrified and she wants her own eyes back.
 
Moomins are also on vacation all the time: their lives are missing the will, the determination that would make their lives meaningful: Moominpappa tries very hard to make himself meaningful, whereas Moominmamma does not have that problem. In Moominmamma’s mind her purpose is to help Moominpappa with his quest for being meaningful.

Heidegger writes that understanding and comprehending are mathematical takeover of things, where result is defined beforehand. Laajarinne writes that the etymology of the Swedish word förstå are much more entertaining than the etymology of the Finnish words käsittää and ymmärtää.

Snufkin leaves
I leave now and will come back in the spring
The themes in Moomin stories are not light: eternal incompleteness, constant complaining, anxiety, facing nonexistence and homelessness. Still the stories are meant for children. Laajarinne writes that in the Moomin stories show that there are other ways to think than the calculated, goal oriented way. And maybe running in circles is not a bad thing after all, it doesn’t mean that you are standing still. You can also react to others in other ways than by using them as medium to other things. In determination one can find himself, which is lost outside.


Finns are famous for being silent and silence is predicted to be the next big Finnish export. Maybe we could start exporting the other Moomin philosophy themes as well: taking care of others and seeing though other’s appearance.

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