Finland's most lovable literary cartoon family, The Moomins, are celebrating their 80th birthday this year.

The white, hippopotamus-like characters have captivated readers and viewers worldwide since author and illustrator Tove Jansson published “The Moomins and the Great Flood” in 1945.

Beloved across generations, the children's book, “The Moomins and the Great Flood” is still captivating hearts today.

It's set in the fictional Moominvalley and features the loveable characters, Moomintroll and Moominmamma in their search for missing Moominpappa.

Jansson, a Swedish-speaking Finn who died in 2001, went on to write eight more books, five picture books and a comic strip about the Moomins in Swedish.

 

The series has been translated into more than 60 languages and has sparked movie and TV adaptations, children's plays, art gallery exhibitions and an eponymous museum — plus theme parks in Finland and Japan.

Finnair, the national carrier, has even put Moomins on its airplanes.

In Tampere, Finland — home of the Moomin Museum — fans have been celebrating the 80th anniversary of the 1945 publication as well as Jansson's Aug. 9, 1914, birthday.

For Rosa Senn, from the United Kingdom, the festivities remind her of her childhood. Her Norwegian mother, a fan since her own youth, read all of the tales to Senn and her sister growing up.

“Moomins have been such a special thing in my life, my whole life," Senn says.

"I just carried that love for Moomin, for Tove Jansson, with me into my adult life.”

Stefanie Geutebrück says she remembers falling in love with the Moomins while watching their animations during her childhood in East Germany. She also brought the Moomins into her husband's life, to the point where they have travelled to Tampere to celebrate the anniversary.

“I am a total fan and now he’s a total fan and our apartment looks like a Moomin shop,” says Geutebrück.

Moominvalley was borne of a need to find beauty at a time when Jansson's existence, along with everyone else in Finland, felt frail.

The first book, “The Moomins and the Great Flood,” features the displaced Moomin family and was published in the final months of World War II.

The conflict had ruined Finland, even though it had remained independent, and one of the author's brothers went missing during part of his time at the front.

There's a massive market for Moomintroll, Moominmamma and Moominpappa souvenirs across the globe, and secondary characters like their friends Stinky, Sniff, Snufkin, Snork Maiden and Hattifatteners are also well-loved.

The Moomin stories honour the idea of a chosen family. Diverse gender roles and homosexual themes also come across in Moominvalley, as well as in Jansson's other works, reflecting her LGBTQ+ life. 

Her partner of more than 45 years, engraver and artist Tuulikki Pietilä, was memorialized as the character Too-ticky in “Moominland Midwinter.”

The couple lived in Helsinki and spent their summers on the small rocky island of Klovharu in the Gulf of Finland until the 1990s.