Trolling cute

So my husband went to Helsinki and brought me a tandem of trolls! Except, Moomintrolls are sorta the Mickey Mouse of Finland. They are everywhere: on airplanes and aprons and eggcups. Moomins are cute, in a fluffy-white lurching hippo kind of way. Except they’re not all fluff. At least not in a bookshop. Because lovable Moominpapa, Moominmama, Moomin (our eponymous everytroll), Snorkmaiden, helpful Sniff and contentious Snufkin can sugarcoat quite an acerbic series of social comments. On consumer culture and middle-class aspirations. On boys’ toys and girlish vanities. Tove Jansson first created them in the 1940s. The comic strips she drew in the 1950s (later continued by her brother Lars) have now been republished in bound collections — of which I now own the first two volumes (€16.90 each). The Janssons are dead. Long live the Moomintrolls.