Hans Arnold, 1925-2010.

The Swiss-Swedish artist and illustrator Hans Arnold has passed away. Known in particular for his illustrations of books — like the 1973 re-issue of Astrid Lindgren's Allrakäraste syster (Most Beloved Sister), Gunnel Linde's Jag är en varulvsunge (I am a Werewolf Cub), and Bland tomtar och troll ("Among Gnomes and Trolls", a popular folklore and fairy tale annual) — animated films like Matulda och megasen, and the Gothic horror sleeve of ABBA's Greatest Hits, Arnold's unique blend of erotic and mildly horrific themes ensured him a status as "cult" artist.

Born in Sursee, Switzerland, Arnold's first artistic endeavours included crafting caricatures of particularly draconian school teachers, which he'd peddle among his class mates. Having completed his artistic education at the Hochschule Luzern (the Lucerne School of Art and Design, Switerland's oldest arts school), Arnold spent a couple of years in Paris, before moving to Sweden in 1947. His intricate style, rich in detail, often referenced the text his illustrations complemented in such a way that they practically became puzzles in themselves.

Arnold's weekly visual contribution to the magazine VeckoRevyn ("Weekly Review"), which appeaered regularly between 1954 and 1979 under the heading "veckans chock" ("the weekly shock"), made him a household name in Sweden. Despite more recently fading from public view, his dense fusion of surrealism and underground art inspired a broad range of artists in a variety of fields. Examples of his work, as well as images from one of Arnold's last retrospectives, can be seen here.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

More than a year after its premiere in Sweden, the first film based on the late Stieg Larsson's tremendously successful Millennium Trilogy, has quietly snuck onto screens in western Canada. So quietly, fans practically needed the hacking skills of Lisbeth Salander — the protagonist turned titular character in the international versions of both the first novel and film — to find out the film they had been waiting for was being screened at all.

Roughly seven months after its January 2009 Swedish premiere, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the first of what is now a trilogy of films) had been seen by some six million people worldwide, making it the third most viewed non-English language film in the world at the time. So far, it has been seen by 1.2 million Swedes, 2.8 million Scandinavians in total, and practically as many Frenchmen (to whom it's known as Millénium — Le film) and Spaniards. It's been sold to and is being distributed in some 25 countries worldwide, including a number in which the novels haven't been received quite as enthusiastically.

A tremendous success for the 60 financiers, who'd invested nearly SEK 100 million (≈C$13.4 million) toward the films' production — something of a safe bet given that the three novels have sold more than two million copies in Sweden alone (a country of roughly 9.4 million inhabitants), with the first two becoming the third and fourth most bought books in the world during 2009, only slightly less popular than Stephenie Meyer's Twilight-series. (They've currently sold in excess of 27 million copies worldwide, 3.5 million in the USA alone.)

Being the first film in memory to win both the popular and the critics choice award for best film domestically, The Girl with ... also propelled Noomi Rapace, who portrays hacker Lisbeth Salander, to international stardom; her last international outing being her 1988 debut as a nine year-old extra in Hrafn Gunnlaugsson's Í skugga hrafnsins (Shadow of the Raven). But perhaps more importantly, The Girl with ... represents a tremendous success for contemporary Swedish cinema — a fact which will hopefully help usher in the premiers of other recent, fascinating Swedish films like Flickan (The Girl), Metropia, and Videocracy in North American theatres.

The film's plot is one fans of the series are already familiar with: Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist framed for libel, is employed by the industrial magnate Vanger to ostensibly write a family history. Though it soon transpires the true objective of Blomkvist's assignment is to examine for one last time the circumstances surrounding the mysterious disappearance of Vanger's niece Harriet in the summer of 1966. Blomkvist makes some headway in traditional journalistic fashion — scouring archives, conducting interviews, re-heating stale leads — but without the skills of the young, socially maladjusted hacker Lisbeth Salander, whom Blomkvist unexpectedly encounters in his path, he hardly would've got very far.

In a particularly interesting scene, which has Salander assembling data from hard copies stored in the Vanger family business archives, the connection between hers and Blomkvist's singular skills — as well as their similarly obsessive characters — is made perfectly explicit. Salander's skills at collecting information, like those of other hackers, are presented in their most basic form: stripped of the hip digital hardware, they're fundamentally a question of piecing together loose crumbs of information carelessly left behind, coaxing unity from seemingly disparate sources.

Superficially meaningless fragments of personal information, reflections of us all in accounts, transactions, logs, have for a long time — long before the advent of the digital era — made it practically impossible to live, to exist, to function on any level of our society without leaving traces behind. Traces an information specialist — a hacker, a skilled journalist, even your friendly neighbourhood librarian — can retrieve, compile, and amplify.

Brought together by their dogged persistence to stitch the "whole truth" together regardless of the cost, insisting "a truth" actually exists, Blomkvist and Salander — as portrayed in the film — manage to simultaneously both be and not be a couple. While the emotional tension between the two characters is maintained, both are allowed to indulge in the kind of freedom (no nagging wives, demanding family, insistent employers) usually reserved for crime-fighting duos made up of single males.

That the title of the film, and the novel it's based on, has been changed from the far more apt Män som hatar kvinnor (lit. "Men Who Hate Women") is perhaps an indication of the differences between Anglo-Saxon (especially North American) and European storytelling. Focusing on a central character may seem natural to an audience frequently exposed to tales in which in which the hapless mass (i.e. the majority of people) are delivered from the brink of oblivion by a "lone ranger", a man — for it is usually a man — guilty of massive fashion faux pas (such as leotards combined with cape), pumped full of some steroid or other, toting a supermassive ego, with a preference for solving problems by throwing his brawn rather than brains in gear.

But by singling out one of the main protagonists, the title draws attention away from the crucial notions Stieg Larsson appeared to advance in his writing; not only as a novelist, but especially as an investigative journalist. In fact, by centering on the individual — as most political discourse tends to do in North America, still enamoured with the inefficient and hollow notions of liberal individualism — it runs counter to the collective concerns Larsson, descended from a long line of real working class heroes, had advocated for his entire life. Expressly, the title change detracts from the complete lack of empathy for fellow human beings that Larsson sought to expose not just among Swedish elites, but among elites in every late-capitalist society.

Among Sweden's unremorseful (and unreformed) upper class Nazis, Larsson found the perfect culprits to illustrate his point. In the first book, and now film, they also happen to be distinctly despicable specimens who not only hate women, but do so with a passion, a zest, a taste for cruelty. Stemming, it seems Larsson argues, from the exaggerated sense of entitlement their powerful positions and — more specifically — their anti-humanist ideologies equipped them with. Which isn't to detract from the import violence against women assumes in Larsson's stories: his villains' barbarism isn't purely politically motivated. But on the whole, this type of violence — against the half of humanity most commonly disenfranchised, abused, and neglected — serves as the most obvious example of the self-serving cynicism of the world's monied elites.

Even more important is Larsson's attempt to address our societies' growing lack of what was once commonly known in Sweden as "civilkurage", literally "civil courage": the ability of the average citizen to actually demonstrate what they believe in by addressing, through their actions, perceived injustices and wrongs regardless of the consequences for themselves. Something as simple as stepping in between the couple fighting next door, or preventing a complete stranger from getting beaten up and mugged on a city bus. Things that shouldn't merely come naturally to engaged, educated, but above all idealistic Communists like Stieg Larsson, but every human being claiming to possess a streak of decency and a minimum of empathy for others.

The civil courage displayed by Larsson's other protagonist, his alter ego Mikael Blomkvist, contrasts with the notion of "neutrality", employed in a manner that helps expose the very notion of "neutrality" as a sham. The verb "hate", so commonly strewn around carelessly nowadays ("I just HATE when they do that!") is not only a very strong but also an active one, suggesting action, an open invitation for the fist that now always seems to hang ready in the air to land on whomever, or whatever, has raised our ire. "Neutrality", on the other hand, suggests a cynical, self-serving indifference. Which, though indisputably saves one from personally ending up in trouble, also by default — by virtue of its innate passivity — places one in the same camp as whoever is the strongest, whoever is winning. See someone being beaten up, avoid stepping in, and you may as well have contributed to the beating.

The fact that you didn't personally land any blows is a ruse, wrought forth only to protect your own conscience. You didn't beat the victim up — but you didn't prevent them from being beaten up either, when you likely could've. Nor did you prevent the victim from coming to as much harm as they did, had you only mustered enough courage to step in. It doesn't matter if you strongly believe in a society were people have the right to not get beaten up, if you continually allow beatings to be administered around you. You may as well try to get in some blows yourself. This essential insight into a crucial facet of empathy, is what Larsson seemed to suggest had been bred out of entire generations of certain types of people. They're indifferent not only to women's suffering, but everyone's.

The Nazi past Larsson invokes is an actable target precisely because Sweden currently faces problems in part created by the nation never properly dealing with its "neutral" stance during the Second World War, its extensive dalliance with Nazism, and the fact that it was the cradle for the state-sponsored pseudo-science dubbed "racial biology". Not directly involved in the war, not officially backing any combatant, the Swedish state officially maintained its indifference, while it and some of its most prominent citizens made considerably amounts of money trading with — in particular — Germany. Making the distinction between "neutrality" and "collaboration" practically negligible in hindsight.

What makes a discussion of Sweden's wartime manoeuvring even more difficult, is the insight — even among the most idealistic humanists — that it was precisely this self-serving indifference that left Sweden practically unscathed when it could easily have been overrun, occupied, and obliterated by any of the conflict's major powers, and as a result better positioned to create an enviable welfare-state for all than most other European states. Its infrastructure largely intact, its industry running white-hot, having profited form catering to all sides of the conflict, poised to provide and develop whatever goods and services Europe needed to rebuild: the fruits of past indifference enjoyed by practically all Swedes since. And envied by many abroad.

Larsson specifically exposes "neutrality" through the collaboration among the various members of the Vanger family (who to those knowledgable in Swedish affairs, seem an only thinly disguised incarnation of the Wallenbergs), linking their political fascism with physical, sexualised brutality. Larsson raises a question similar to the one raised by Danish film director Lars von Trier in his 1991 drama Europa, if in fact the very act of non-intervention, of not taking sides, of indifference ultimately represents more reprehensible choice than choosing the "wrong" side. This, as well as other aspects of Larsson's story are detracted from by the title change, pandering to an audience used to focus solely on "the hero" rather than "the heroics". (Curiously, in Germany the title of the first book and film of the Millennium Trilogy was given as Verblendung, referring to a state of mind in which one's completely blinkered by a twisted belief system, fanaticism, or prejudice.)

It's of course entirely possible that non-Anglo audiences are simply more accustomed to writers holding up mirrors which allow their fellow citizens to examine themselves, and the societies they inhabit. To North Americans in particular, "evil" isn't merely a term for the capacity to perform unspeakable acts of cruelty we all possess as human beings, but a specific entity, a quality that more often than not is believed to reside outside their own, immediate society. An assumption easy to make, especially when any homegrown "evil" — be it in the individual home or the community at large — is yet to be accounted for.

Larsson's villains aren't cave men, quite the opposite: they're prosperous, educated, presumably rational individuals. Representatives of society's elite, not in the least unique to Sweden, so far removed from the lives of ordinary citizens that they hold nothing but contempt for them. A contempt derived from the lingering suspicion that that they're besieged; victimised by a "nanny state" established to pander to those who only seek "handouts", which aims to wrest control of the world's finances and politics. In other words, an elite suffering under the delusion that a conspiracy of "inferiors" is attempting to take the power and privileges they consider their birthright away from them.

However, as far as the film adaptation is concerned, the translation of the title in some parts of the world may be its only true problem. Granted, as is often the case with film adaptations of (particularly popular) books, the changes to plot, timelines, and characters may grate on the hardcore fans, no matter how minor. Yet Danish writers Nikolaj Arcel's and Rasmus Heisterberg's distillation of the 566-page novel into a two and a half hour film, which manages to sustain its pace throughout, is quite impressive — especially given the amount of overwrought dramas lately meandering along on cinema screens.

Some of the changes may stem from the initial decision to turn the first part of the trilogy into a theatrical feature, while turning the remaining two into television films. A decision which also impacted the budgets and production quality of the two remaining parts, directed by Daniel Alfredsson, who served as second unit director on The Girl with.... (Interestingly, Alfredsson's style isn't entirely dissimilar to that of his brother Tomas, who's also recently reaped international success with his adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist's 2004 debut novel Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In).) Ultimately the decision to let The Girl with ... be helmed by Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, experienced with several television thrillers and crime dramas, likely allowed the Swedish particulars of the story to be advantageously approached form an outsiders point of view.

Instead of concentrating on getting all the specific details just so, Oplev instead has focused on bringing out the essential elements of the story. Which isn't to say that the film lacks in specifically Swedish scenography or in some manner misrepresents its setting. (The fact that actual television journalists Alexandra Pascalidou and Lisbeth Åkerman appear as themselves, albeit uncredited, not only discloses how much of an "in house" production this really is, but also enhance the realism.)

As the action decamps Stockholm for decidedly more rural locales held in the solid grip of winter, the lighting of master cinematographer Jens Fischer turns a suitable hue of chilly blue, while the more opulent domiciles feature interiors cluttered with the mahogany and Josef Frank designs so beloved by the Swedish upper class. Many of the exteriors were shot around the locality of Gnesta, and Södertuna castle in particular, leaving some of the locals hoping the international success of the film will make their community as famous as the Twilight-series has made Tuscan Volterra.

Michael Nyqvist may not "own" the character of Mikael Blomkvist in the same manner that Noomi Rapace "is" Lisbeth Salander — the black-clad, tattooed, pierced heart of the Millennium Trilogy — but he nevertheless conjures forth what may well be the film's only placid, never mind sympathetic, male character. More surprising, to those who only recall him from his sprightly roles in international films of the late 1960s and the 1970s, Sven-Bertil Taube emerges as a nestor of Swedish drama, elegantly infusing life into his role as the aging, ailing (and, perhaps, just a tad queer) magnate. Peter Andersson also manages to turn the exquisitely despicable lawyer Nils Bjurman into a truly unpleasant character. (Coincidentally, Andersson also appeared in a 1996 adaptation of Astrid Lindgren's Kalle Blomkvist-stories, the boy detective from whom this film's Mikael Blomkvist derives his derisive nickname.)

But it's Peter Haber who turns out the a performance every bit as compelling as Rapace's, though his has largely gone unremarked upon by North American critics. Previously mostly known for portraying the sympathetic police inspector Beck, in a series of television films based on the renown novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (who established the template of the police procedural crime novel as a means of social commentary with their series), Haber's cold-blooded psychopath, with a remarkable penchant for deliberately applied suffering, is delivered without an ounce of overstatement and oodles of icy insensitivity. Though the film concentrates more on the violence and less on the romance than the novel it's based on, shedding some of the subplots (including much of Mikael Blomkvist's womanising), it retains enough of Stieg Larsson's own engaging voice (and idealism); crucially reviving a genre in which violence — especially towards women — is often equated with entertainment.

Additional research by Tim Nieguth.

Ingrid Segerstedt-Wiberg, 1911-2010.

The Swedish humanist, journalist, and politician Ingrid Segerstedt-Wiberg has passed away. She was the daughter of Torgny Segersted (1876-1945), editor-in-chief of Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning (a Gothenburg daily), and one of the most vocal opponents of Nazism and fascism prior to and during the Second World War — a time when those ideologies were quite popular in Sweden.

As early as 1934, Segerstedt-Wiberg helped organise a committee to aid Jewish refugee children who arrived in Sweden on their own, establishing an orphanage on Viktoriagatan in Göteborg. After the war she continued to work with refugees, chaired the Swedish section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, as well as UNA-Sweden, and was a member of the Swedish UNICEF National Committee.

Segerestedt-Wiberg also worked as an editor (1949-1953), and publisher (1968-1973), for the magazine Världshorisont, Göteborgs-Tidningen (a Gothenburg tabloid) between 1949 and 1955, and finally Göteborgs-Posten — where she served as assistant editor between 1969 and 1976. A indefatigable activist, Segerstedt-Wiberg was Sweden's first female editorialist, and authored some fifteen books.

As a representative for Folkpartiet (Liberal People's Party), Segerstedt-Wiberg was elected member of parliament between 1958 and 1970, leaving the party in 1999 following its decision to endorse Swedish NATO membership. Throughout her life, she remained a strident, vocal challenger of the xenophobia far too prevalent in Swedish society.

Lighting the darkness.

During December, the month with the shortest daylight hours of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, many households in North-West Europe are decorated with symbolic candlesticks to “banish” the darkness. It's a tradition rooted in the Christian Advent, reaching back to the Middle Ages, though the modern variants of wreaths or candlesticks, with four candles representing each of the Sundays preceding Christmas Day lit in succession, originated among German Lutherans in the mid-1850s.

The tradition of lighting Advent candles (or wreaths) didn't arrive in Sweden until the 1870s, and didn't become widespread until the 1920s, though candles had been integral to seasonal celebrations for centuries. Today electric Advent candlesticks with seven candles in a pyramid shape dominate, and seem to change the entire country's appearance overnight, displayed in practically every home, institution, and workplace from the beginning of December (occasionally earlier) to St. Knut's Day.

Originally referred to as julljusstakar, "Yule candlesticks", to avoid confusion with the live candle variety, they are a fairly recent addition to the season's decorations. The very first electric Advent candlestick was constructed (but not patented) in 1934 by Oscar Andersson (1909-1996), an employee at the Göteborg warehouse of the Dutch electronics firm Philips.

Towards the end of 1929, Philips introduced electric Christmas tree lamps in Sweden. Many of these lamp-sets, designed for 120 V common in urban centres at the time, were returned 'defective' to the Philips warehouse, having been subjected to 220 V in rural areas. Tasked at the warehouse with salvaging the functioning lamps from these sets, Mr Andersson - a technical gymnasium graduate – had the idea to mount electric Christmas tree lamps on an ordinary wooden candlestick (purchased at Grand Bazar for 2 Swedish krona, or roughly 53 cents – the equivalent of C$ 8.80 today).

Displayed in the window of his parent's apartment on Karl Gustav Street in the quarter of Landala, the approval Mr Andersson's invention garnered among passers-by encouraged him to present the electric Advent candlestick to his supervisor. Savvy to its potential, the supervisor brought the contraption to Philips' Stockholm headquarters, where initial scepticism eventually turned into an agreement to manufacture a trial run of 2000 electric candlesticks for the 1939 Christmas season.

Marketed as a “fireproof,” safer alternative to live candlesticks, the Philips Candlesticks were completely sold out (at 13 krona apiece, or roughly C$ 3.38 – equal to C$ 44.39 today) before Christmas Day that year. Mass-production commenced once WWII ended, and the material shortages caused by it were rectified. By the mid-1990s, around a million electric Advent candlesticks were sold in Sweden annually and could be found in just over 90% of Swedish households.

Intriguingly, the advent of the electric Advent candlestick largely altered its function from a symbolic, religious one, to a practically secular, illuminating one – pleasantly dispelling the darkness for believers and non-believers alike over the past 70 years.

Note: this article originally posted on November 29, 2008.

You, the Living.

Since 1991's Härlig är jorden (World of Glory), Roy Andersson's films have been populated by ashen-faced citizens fighting to preserve their dignity in a spartan, Kafkaesque urban landscape. Their stylised expressions reminiscent of circus clowns, representing everyone of us, inspired as much by Fellini as by Japanese Noh performers. His films' loosely connected visual tableaux, utilising spartan, retrograde scenography, intentionally break with the predominant Anglo-Saxon film dramaturgy - yet still manage to relate a captivating story.

It's an aesthetic that revels in the abstract and grotesque in order to allow the most important things surface, reflecting on an era in which even those among us lucky enough to inhabit the so called "developed" world merely attempt to "get through" another day, simply "surviving". But while Andersson's 2000 feature Sånger från andra våningen (Songs From the Second Floor) dealt with a Mammon-worshipping society, its dark and frequently obscured history, and with individual as well as collective guilt, Du, levande (You, the Living) focuses on the longing and dreams of its inhabitants.

Andersson's quest for perfection is infamous - he notoriously demanded 118 retakes when shooting a ketchup commercial - yet he consistently avoids employing professional actors. Not because of some aversion to trained thespians, but because he believes the particular presence he seeks is more readily found among the over nine million others who populate Sweden. Also, the roles Andersson writes are frequently quite small, leading him to feel embarrassed about asking established actors to appear on screen for less than a minute with - at best - a couple lines of dialogue.

In Du, levande, Bengt C. W. Carlsson is the sole exception, a professional actor in the company of amateurs, roaming exquisitely constructed sets depicting a Sweden permanently stuck in the mid-1980s - a single cellphone the sole contemporary addition. It's a prefab, flat-packed vision of Sweden, where IKEA's assortment only comes in drab, with each of the film's 57 scenes shot on a sound stage, every piece built from scratch. Explaining not only the protracted production time, but the C$6 million budget, and the involvement of eighteen different film production organisations as well.

For nearly three decades Roy Andersson's films have been created in his own "film factory" on Sibyllegatan (literally, "The Street of the Sybil") in Stockholm - at the very centre of Swedish liquidity - a self-contained world harking back to the days of pioneering director Georg af Klercker, who set up a similar facility in Andrsson's hometown Gothenburg in the late 1910s. Andersson's studio employed some 40 people over a three-year period, relying on their skills to construct sets and models rather than utilising computer generated imagery. The result is a film that doesn't take place anywhere in particular - that is, not anywhere that actually exists in Sweden.

There's a scene with what could pass for a Gothenburg streetcar enveloped in the mist that passes for rain on the west coast, but most of the action could take place practically everywhere in Sweden - such is the extent of that country's urban homogeneity. Even the actors accents do not hint at any region in particular. Andersson's Sweden is a surreal, lugubrious, phantasmagorical place. The music employed adds to the unsettling tone, inspired by the almost unbelievably naive European marching band fad that preceded the Second World War, with the Swedish 1936 hit En liten vit kanin (A Little White Rabbit) in particular demonstrating the ease with which serene waltzes can metamorphose into martial anthems.

The film lacks particular protagonists, but certain characters reappear throughout; the girl hopelessly in love with a rock musician, a middle-aged female alcoholic, members of a marching band. One man suffers nightmares of bombers sweeping in over the city, another about being sent to the electric chair for breaking a priceless set of china. Sixty-eight minutes in, the director lets a woman kneeling in a chapel deliver his assessment of our era: "Please Lord, forgive those who only think of themselves, forgive those who are greedy and petty, those who cheat and deceive, and grow wealthy by paying paltry wages," she mumbles.

"Forgive those who humiliate and defile, who bomb and devastate cities and villages, governments that withhold the truth from people, courts that hand out too harsh verdicts and condemn the innocent, newspapers and TV-channels that mislead, that delude, and lead attention away from that which is important". In another scene, a burnt-out psychiatrist explains that he presently simply prescribes his patients the strongest pills available. Because there's no point trying to make selfish people happy. "I'm not having such a great time either," he explains.

Though his manner is absurd and humourous, exposing society's lack of generosity and solidarity is what matters to director Andersson. Examining the neo-liberal belief that greed and egotism will make us happy, he strives to remind his audience that while creating a solidary society is difficult, at least once we entertained the idea that it was possible. Andersson dismisses the chimera that it can be achieved by an unregulated free market. Money, he points out, has no morals. Yet Du, levande is an optimistic film, never wavering in its conviction that compassion and empathy can be great forces of change.

Like a depressed Tati, Andersson presents his views not so much as a series of postcards than carefully arranged editorial cartoons. Empathetic towards his characters (and his audience), he's created a film about the art of being human; about being seen, being loved, and being humiliated. However, it does end on a particularly frightening note - vaguely echoing Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. As if to indelibly remind us, the living, that there is a life before death.

Moomin.

To the delight of Anglophone Moomin fans everywhere, Montréal's Drawn and Quarterly have published the fourth volume of the classic Moomin comic strip. Originally created by artist and writer Tove Jansson (1914 — 2001) at the request of the British Associated Newspapers comic strip syndicate in 1953, the strips have since appeared in some 120 publications in 40 countries, reaching over 20 million readers daily worldwide: likely the most successful Finnish comic ever published. The D&Q reprint, published in yearly instalments since 2006, provides readers with no knowledge of Swedish with an excellent introduction to the world of the Moomin trolls, having been created specifically for an international audience.

The quarto hardcover volume, largely resembling the classic Scandinavian ones, is quite beautiful in itself; printed on thick paper subtly tinted light yellow with pictorial cloth grain paper covers. Unnumbered, distinguished (as the previous three) mainly by the colour of its spine, and slightly different jacket bands, it features the same introductory essay by art professor Alisia Grace Chase as do its companions, as well as an impressed quote on the back board, unique for each volume. The sole complaint would be the utter lack of bibliographical information; particularly pertinent to the fourth volume which collects the first stories written by Tove's younger brother Lars Jansson between 1957 and 1958. Nevertheless, the thoughtfulness and philosophical slant of the Jansson's stories will likely be enough to keep parents awake long after the little ones have gone to sleep.

Tove Jansson's brilliant Moomin novels — from which the settings and characters of the comic are drawn — are considered classics for readers of all ages, though unfortunately many adult readers entirely miss the references to the adult world, the parody and satire of its culture. They helped usher in a golden age of Swedish children's literature, with the first being published in 1945, the same year the other two giants of Swedish kid-lit, Lennart Hellsing (Krakel Spektakel) and Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking), published their first works. The popularity of the Moomin trolls and their escapades have made Tove Jansson the most read Swedish-speaking Finnish writer, translated into 34 languages, with the comic strip introducing readers far beyond Scandinavian shores to the happy-go-lucky troll family.

The Moomin valley is a paradisiacal utopia with touches of both enchanted exoticism and familiar - from a Scandinavian perspective - coastal archipelago. The stories, in the novels as well as the comic, are characterised by their dynamic alternation between the sheltered life in Moominmamma's aegis and various threatening perils and catastrophes, the plot only lightly obscuring various existential queries. It's perhaps their anarchy that captivates in particular; the Moomin trolls continuously challenge and break with convention. Like a Winnie-the-Pooh with brains, they appear completely devoid of that particular gene that encourages practically everyone else to cower before authority.

In this volume, the Moomin family's adventures commence when Moominpappa decides to simultaneously repair Moominmamma's sewing machine and the family clock. Neither need repairing, but Moominpappa feels that as the man about the house, repairing them is precisely the kind of thing he should be doing. In the process he manages to inadvertently construct a time machine. And as there's few things the Moomin family like better than an outing — complete with a picnic basket prepared by Moominmamma — they're soon off on adventure. First they travel to the Wild West, which isn't quite as they expect it to be. Its settlers are less concerned with adventure than getting the time-travelling trolls off their property and keeping them away from the cattle, while its natives seem entirely preoccupied with commerce. Eighteenth century Moominvalley proves equally unromantic, its inhabitants so persistently preoccupied with either reason or etiquette they actually accomplish very little of essence.

"I'm off to the shore.

Think of all the seashells

we haven't found yet."

Though the Moomins set off with good intentions, they can't help but alter the past, the most important lessons learned being that bygone days are rarely what one imagines them to be, and that the Moomins can scarcely inhabit a past era when they are considered too liberal and emancipated even in their own. As if aware of this constant (and obvious) criticism aimed a their creation, the Janssons address the Moomins perceived lack of responsibility in the episode on conscientiousness. The family of bohemian trolls try hard, though not successfully, to conform with societal norms - and it's Snufkin (Moominvalley's proto-slacker) to the rescue. The most apprehensive, and perhaps therefore most rewritten story, is Moomin and the Comet, the comic strip version of the second Moomin novel, Kometjakten (Comet in Moominland).

Originally published in 1946, and finally rewritten in 1968 as Kometen kommer, it was in fact the basis for the very first Moomin comic strip, which ran in Folktidningen Ny Tid (at the time a publication belonging to what practically was the Finnish Communist Party) between October 1947 and April 1948 (collected in a book as Jorden går under! (Moomintroll and the End of the World) in 2007). The comic version included in this volume, originally published in 1958, shares the premise of a comet apparently heading for the Moomin valley, though the details of the plot are quite different. However, at its core it remains an allegory of nuclear warfare, constructed in a manner similar to the very first Moomin novel, Småtrollen och den stora översvämmningen (The Moomins and the Great Flood), which sought to provide an outlet for the anxiety war and invasion causes in the minds of those not quite yet grown-up enough to grapple with the complexities of such conflict.

Though the Moomins can currently be found on sneakers, towels, mugs, jewellery, t-shirts, pens, stationary, beverages, as a variety of toys, in their very own Moomin World near Naantali (drawing some 220,000 visitors yearly during the two summer months it's open), a museum in Tampere - and besides the novels and comics even in a cook book - they're not quite as common currency as other children's favourites from around the world. Moomin Characters, chaired by Lars Jansson's daughter Sophia, is charged with protecting the Moomin legacy and tends to be quite strict with how the characters can be applied. Not that continuing in Tove's spirit has hindered the company from becoming one of Finland's most successful businesses, with a yearly turnover of nearly C$ 3 million. Disney did offer to buy at one point, but was turned down. The Moomin trolls aren't an expansive venture, after all. The interest in them may be international but far from global, the core audience residing mainly in Scandinavia, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and to a somewhat smaller extent in Germany, Great Britain, and Poland.

"It's sometimes better to

look at things than own them.

Owning means anxiety and

lots of bags to carry around."

Tove Jansson delighted in scaring those even smaller and more frightened than she was herself. She didn't enjoy being an idol, and imagined inhabiting a gilded pedestal rather dull. Like most of the greatest children's writers she wasn't one for sitting around telling stories to litters of little kids. Her father, sculptor Viktor Jansson, was a bohemian artist who desired to create freely, without much concern for the economics of family survival. It was Jansson's mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, who put food on the family's table through her commercial work as an illustrator and cartoonist (she designed 173 Finnish postage stamps, as well as bank notes and bonds). Young Tove too, though encouraged to indulge her talent and imagination, felt pressure to contribute.

Which may perhaps explain why she turned her family environment into the playful fantasy that is Moominvalley, a place where work and responsibilities have a remarkably small presence. With the exception of Moominmamma of course, constantly attending to the welfare of her family, their various relatives, friends, guests, and acquaintances. Quietly working in the background, she's always prepared to lend an ear or extend a comforting embrace, a measured voice of reason in their midst. Though Tove made the Moomins' indifference to material possessions a key part of their charm, she also steered clear of idealising their bohemian lifestyle. Making the Moomins not only ideal observers of modern capitalist society, but also of the "alternatives" that regularly populate its fringes.

Despite publishing thirteen books that had nothing to with Moomin trolls, they remain Tove's most famous creation. Throughout her artistic life she'd remain torn between trolls and paintings, between duty and the desire to create something new. As the Moomins grew (clearly discernible to those who compare the trolls' waistline in the 1940s to that of the late 1960s) they sapped more of their creator's energy, their success smothering her. Trollvinter (Moominland in Midwinter), the sixth novel published in 1957, is generally viewed as a pivotal moment. Suddenly, there were serious problems in Moominvalley, there was more fear, more brooding, and more introspection, as Moomintroll, having woken up from hibernation in the middle of winter, was forced to deal with his loneliness and make his own way until spring with his family still deep in sleep all around him.

Though Jansson occasionally referred to the trolls as an "artistic straightjacket," the reality of her relationship with them wasn't as black and white, just as things never are in Moominvalley. Though she sought the kind of privacy popular artists can rarely have, she was involved in the commercialisation of her creation right from the very beginning: as early as the 1950s there were Moomin toys, bed sheets, curtains, wallpaper, wrapping paper, neckties, candles, mugs and plates. The Moomin comic strip began its regular run in London's Evening News on September 20, 1954. Tove enjoyed the assignment at first, as it entailed a steady income, euphorically confiding to her brother Lars that the paper only demanded six strips per week. But with time, the work became a chore of constantly looming deadlines, and after struggling alone for five years Tove enlisted the help of Lars.

For the most part her travails aren't easily discerned in the comics themselves, except in the final episode included in this volume, which deals with sudden celebrity. It's the volume's most personal story, the last written by Tove before her brother took over — though she illustrated another seven stories Lars wrote — but it's by no means gloomier than the rest. Tove genially satirised her own life, family, and career, as well as everything around her in the guise of the softly rounded Moomin world. Though regardless of how many cuddly toys the carefree family of trolls have inspired, Tove's images always contained a little darkness. Black crags surround the flower filled meadows (a truly Scandinavian image), looming shadows fall on a blooming corner of the garden.

Overall, Tove's and Lars' comic strips remained cheerful, simple, and elegant, with as many references to ancient myths as to contemporary pulp fiction. Even without delving into the underlying significance of the stories, the drawings themselves are rewarding to study - despite methodically sticking to three frames per panel. Their playful framing breaking the fourth wall, the simple lines of the Moomins' noses and eyes, their ability to express a wide range of emotions with a simple cocking of a hat, a concerned eyebrow, a curious ear, or two happy eyes being some of the many reasons generations of children and adults alike have cherished immersing themselves in the tales of Moominvalley: a world so different yet so similar to our own.