The Love Letters of Tove Jansson

Everything I do, everything new that I see – there’s a parallel reflection: I shall show this to Tuulikki. Waiting is a sheer pleasure when it’s for you – and the calm awareness that all I have to do is add together a number of days, and we’ll see each other again. (Tove Jansson in a 1956 letter to Tuulikki Pietilä)

In 1957, Jansson published one of her darker Moomin stories, Moominland Midwinter. The novel handles the themes of isolation and loneliness through the eyes of a child – a great departure from the familiar eccentric characters flying on clouds, and enjoying picnics on the terrace in the summertime. With Moomintroll waking up early from his winter hibernation, and without the comfort of family or friends, he has to navigate the harsh landscape of Moominvalley alone. Whilst venturing in frightened solitude, Moomintroll meets the calming presence Too-Ticky, who helps him cope with the unfamiliar ways of the world, “All things are so very uncertain, and that’s exactly what makes me feel reassured”. This warm-hearted character, acting as a beacon of light for Moomintroll during the harsh winter, was based on Tove’s own guiding presence, the artist and engraver Tuulikki Pietilä (Tooti). 

 Tuulikki Pietilä (left) with Tove Jansson (right). Wikimedia Commons (photo credit).

The pair met beside a gramophone, both assigned with the task of looking after the music during an Artists’ Guild Christmas Party in Helsinki in 1955. After hitting it off at the party, the pair began to develop a romance which would last a lifetime. Their relationship blossomed during the course of the following spring, with Tove writing in one of her first letters in 1956 to Tooti, “I’m so unused to being happy that I haven’t really come to terms with what it involves. Suddenly my arms are heaped full of new opportunities, new harmony, new expectations. I feel like a garden that’s finally been watered, so my flowers can bloom.” 

During a time in which homosexuality was illegal in Finland until 1971, reading Tove’s letters to Tuulikki is incredibly moving to read, “You see, I love you as if bewitched, yet at the same time with profound calm, and I’m not afraid of anything life has in store for us.” Tuulikki and Tove moved into connected apartments, and their love had to remain hidden in their letters and behind closed doors. 

Many of Tooti and Tove’s summers were spent on their remote tiny island, Klovharun. Described as “a rock in the middle of nowhere” by Jansson’s niece, Klovharun had no running water or electricity and was roughly 6,000 square metres. Yet for Jansson and Pietilä, it was their paradise, away from the prying eyes of society. Almost 30 long summers were spent in the small cottage they had built on the rocky island, with Tove and Tooti writing, painting and fishing from May to September in complete artistic harmony. The frequented summers and adventures at Klovharun were something straight out Jansson’s Moomin series. Tuulikki and Tove lived together for forty-five years until Tove’s death in 2001. 

Although both now gone, the beauty of their love remains both in Moomintroll’s reassurance from Too-Ticky during the harsh winter, and in Tove’s letters bursting with complete adoration for her beloved Tooti.