#klovharu

US author and artist Steve Richter wrote to Tove Jansson in 1977. In the letter Tove describes her experiences on her beloved island Klovharun, where she spent most of her summers.

Dated September 1977

Dear Stephen,

Thank you for your letter! I am so very glad to know that you really like my stories! Here is the island where I live five months a year, it looks rather forbidding but is full of wild flowers. You should see the storms out there in the middle of the Finnish Gulf – Splendid. The signal mast blew down last spring. Now I am in town again and miss the loneliness. I do wish you a fine autumn!

Yesterday, I was doing some last minute searching for information about Tove Jansson's island Klovharu/Haru and I found some contact details for someone who organises it and asked when it is open to the public. For anyone who doesn't know, Tove and Lars (her brother) built a house on the island of Klovharu which is off the coast of Porvoo in the Pellinki archipelago. She and Tuulikki Pietilä lived there for almost thirty years. For Finnish and Swedish readers, information is available in Tove's book Anteckningar från en ö (Notes From an Island), published in 1996. The Summer Book (Sommarboken) gives us more information about what it is like to live on an island, and is definitely worth the read (as are all of Jansson's pieces).

For more information, visit http://www.moomin.com/tove/eng/saari.html. Furthermore, you can buy the DVD Haru: Island of the Solitary from Lumifilm - I would recommend getting the pack with two DVDs in, as you can also see Tove and Tooti's trip around the world - and yes, there are English subtitles! Here is a video that has been uploaded to YouTube of the island:

Tove Jansson spent almost 30 summers on the very small island of Klovharu in Pellinki. She describes the little island in detail, “reflecting the way in which it represents all the aspects of Finnish nature in microcosm: the miniature forest with paths, the exposed rock face, the central lake or lagoon, the seagulls and other birds, which the author portrays as being unhappy about the invasion of their living space by two human individuals.”