Tove Jansson's niece Sophia on the island with her grandmother (Tove's mother) in 1968
This post is for MMMC, who loves the Moomins.
I tidied up my 'office' at the weekend and found an article I'd saved from the newspaper about Tove Jansson's real Summer Island, Klovaharum, where she spent three months every summer. The island is far out in the Gulf of Finland and is so beautiful I can hardly bear it.
Klovaharum is circled, bottom left
I found this video of it on YouTube:
Tove's connection with the island is complicated -- there are actually two different islands (near each other) that she went to and two different houses on the larger, earlier island (which is where I think most of the stories in the Summer Book were first experienced for real):
The first, bigger island
Inside the little house on Klovaharum
You can go and stay on Klovaharum in Tove's house (the only house on what is little more than a rock). I can't find any info about booking it, though.
This is now the destination I'll imagine when I can't sleep.
Here's a longish biographical piece on Tove Jansson.
