Atos Wirtanen

01

LIFE, THOUGHTS AND UTOPIAS

With Atos Wirtanen, Tove Jansson was free to work and love at the same time – an ideal combination for the young artist.

“Full of untamed zest for life, with a dazzlingly clear mind.” This is how Tove Jansson characterizes writer and politician Atos Wirtanen in a letter in the autumn of 1944. By then they had been a couple for over a year. The affectionate description in the letter latches onto features they have in common. Atos Wirtanen loves parties as much as she does herself and his smile is wide and generous – he is “brimming with life, thoughts and utopias”. Together with him she is free to work and love at the same time, an ideal combination for the young artist Tove Jansson. And through love, she is seeing her world from a new perspective. ‘It was like discovering Pellinge all over again,” she writes in a letter after a summer week with him and the family out on the islands.

They met at the start of 1943 and Tove Jansson was soon part of the cultural and political circles that gathered at Wirtanen’s house at Kauniainen, outside Helsinki. The group included Finland-Swedish authors such as Gunnar Björling, Elmer Diktonius, Eva Wichman, Olof Enckell, Ralf Parland and Tito Colliander. Tove Jansson was enlisted as bartender at a wild party in February 1943 and in a letter to Eva Konikoff she describes mixing “explosive Manhattans” and other “fabulous cocktails” for about sixty people – “literary types, musicians and actors”. At that point, she and Atos had yet to find one another, but by the early summer of that year, she is writing her new man into her diary: “Atos”, on 17 June 1943.

Atos Tove Faffan — Atos Wirtanen together with Tove and Viktor Jansson in the Finnish archipelago in the 1940s.

Atos Wirtanen together with Tove and Viktor Jansson in the Finnish archipelago in the 1940s.

With Atos Wirtanen, Tove Jansson was free to work and love at the same time – an ideal combination for the young artist.

“Full of untamed zest for life, with a dazzlingly clear mind.” This is how Tove Jansson characterizes writer and politician Atos Wirtanen in a letter in the autumn of 1944. By then they had been a couple for over a year. The affectionate description in the letter latches onto features they have in common. Atos Wirtanen loves parties as much as she does herself and his smile is wide and generous – he is “brimming with life, thoughts and utopias”. Together with him she is free to work and love at the same time, an ideal combination for the young artist Tove Jansson. And through love, she is seeing her world from a new perspective. ‘It was like discovering Pellinge all over again,” she writes in a letter after a summer week with him and the family out on the islands.

They met at the start of 1943 and Tove Jansson was soon part of the cultural and political circles that gathered at Wirtanen’s house at Kauniainen, outside Helsinki. The group included Finland-Swedish authors such as Gunnar Björling, Elmer Diktonius, Eva Wichman, Olof Enckell, Ralf Parland and Tito Colliander. Tove Jansson was enlisted as bartender at a wild party in February 1943 and in a letter to Eva Konikoff she describes mixing “explosive Manhattans” and other “fabulous cocktails” for about sixty people – “literary types, musicians and actors”. At that point, she and Atos had yet to find one another, but by the early summer of that year, she is writing her new man into her diary: “Atos”, on 17 June 1943.

02

POLITICALLY ACTIVE WRITER

As a journalist, writer, and member of parliament, Atos Wirtanen sought to make an active contribution to society.

Atos Wirtanen (1906-1979) was born at Saltvik on the Åland Islands in a family of nine children. His mother had been impressed by the Alexandre Dumas classic The Three Musketeers and named her son after one of them; he also took to using the pseudonym “The Musketeer” in his writing. His many brothers were given more ordinary names. The young Wirtanen first started work as a typographer and after a few years in Helsinki, where he moved in 1925, he embarked on his career in journalism at Arbetarbladet, where he became editor-in-chief in the 1940s. He later held the same position at the Popular Democrats’ newspaper Ny Tid, where he was the editor between 1947 and 1953. For almost twenty years (1936-54) he served as a Member of Parliament, initially for the Social Democrats and later for the Popular Democrats. He was also Chair of the Socialist Unity Party from 1948 to 1955. As an author, his publications included aphorisms, poetry, memoirs, and studies of Friedrich Nietzsche and August Strindberg. When Atos Wirtanen and Tove Jansson met, he was married to Maja Stenman, a short-lived marriage that ended the same year.

One of Tove’s early letters to Atos contains a drawing of a project they had dreamed up in the wartime winter of 1943: an attractive and practical colony for artists and writers, somewhere down south, around the Mediterranean. One location they considered was a villa in northern Morocco, near Tangier, which was owned by the Finnish philosopher and socialist Edvard Westermarck. In putting the dream into sketch form, she imagined a tower for Atos the writer and provided him with a hanging garden so he could write outdoors. She visualized herself presiding over a large studio, possibly with bunches of grapes around the window. They saved up money to start the colony over several years, but one day the cashbox in Tove’s studio was empty. On Atos’s initiative, the money had been donated to a strike fund in the north of Finland.

Tove Jansson was not politically active like Atos Wirtanen but in the 1940s they both stood on the same side. He was oppositional, part of the radical left, and was obliged to go underground several times. There are a few brief references to his political activities in Tove Jansson’s diaries. On one occasion it was a question of finding refuge in the event of a “right-wing coup” and her studio, which at that time was on Vänrikki Stoolin katu in Helsinki, was on the list of potential hiding places. Another time, she was the bearer of a “secret document”. Its contents and recipient are not revealed.

Atos Wirtanen happy — Atos Wirtanen had a contagious smile.

Atos_Wirtanen Winter — A hilarious snowball fight between friends.

A hilarious snowball fight between friends.

As a journalist, writer, and member of parliament, Atos Wirtanen sought to make an active contribution to society.

Atos Wirtanen (1906-1979) was born at Saltvik on the Åland Islands in a family of nine children. His mother had been impressed by the Alexandre Dumas classic The Three Musketeers and named her son after one of them; he also took to using the pseudonym “The Musketeer” in his writing. His many brothers were given more ordinary names. The young Wirtanen first started work as a typographer and after a few years in Helsinki, where he moved in 1925, he embarked on his career in journalism at Arbetarbladet, where he became editor-in-chief in the 1940s. He later held the same position at the Popular Democrats’ newspaper Ny Tid, where he was the editor between 1947 and 1953. For almost twenty years (1936-54) he served as a Member of Parliament, initially for the Social Democrats and later for the Popular Democrats. He was also Chair of the Socialist Unity Party from 1948 to 1955. As an author, his publications included aphorisms, poetry, memoirs, and studies of Friedrich Nietzsche and August Strindberg. When Atos Wirtanen and Tove Jansson met, he was married to Maja Stenman, a short-lived marriage that ended the same year.

One of Tove’s early letters to Atos contains a drawing of a project they had dreamed up in the wartime winter of 1943: an attractive and practical colony for artists and writers, somewhere down south, around the Mediterranean. One location they considered was a villa in northern Morocco, near Tangier, which was owned by the Finnish philosopher and socialist Edvard Westermarck. In putting the dream into sketch form, she imagined a tower for Atos the writer and provided him with a hanging garden so he could write outdoors. She visualized herself presiding over a large studio, possibly with bunches of grapes around the window. They saved up money to start the colony over several years, but one day the cashbox in Tove’s studio was empty. On Atos’s initiative, the money had been donated to a strike fund in the north of Finland.

Tove Jansson was not politically active like Atos Wirtanen but in the 1940s they both stood on the same side. He was oppositional, part of the radical left, and was obliged to go underground several times. There are a few brief references to his political activities in Tove Jansson’s diaries. On one occasion it was a question of finding refuge in the event of a “right-wing coup” and her studio, which at that time was on Vänrikki Stoolin katu in Helsinki, was on the list of potential hiding places. Another time, she was the bearer of a “secret document”. Its contents and recipient are not revealed.

03

ATOS WIRTANEN'S INFLUENCE ON TOVE JANSSON'S PRODUCTION

Snufkin has been associated with Atos Wirtanen because of his characteristic attire and his habit of roaming free, with no desire for physical possessions. But Tove Jansson’s literary characters were rarely based on any one individual.

The intellectual meeting place for Tove and Atos was primarily the written word. He was busy writing a book about his favourite philosopher, Nietzsche – published in 1945 under the title Nietzsche den otidsenlige (The Unfashionable Nietzsche) – and she was working on her first Moomin books. In the 1940s, Tove Jansson cultivated her interest in philosophy, partly as a result of keeping company with Atos Wirtanen and his circles. She had already read Arthur Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and particularly Henri Bergson, and philosophy also has its part to play in the initial shaping of the Moomin world, particularly in the second book, Kometjakten (Comet in Moominland), published in 1946.

That summer Tove Jansson travelled to Wirtanen’s home territory north of Mariehamn on Åland to meet his family – they intended to make the trip together – and explore the local scenery. But Atos’s arrival was delayed and Tove cycled round on her own. In her time on Åland she was engrossed in writing Comet in Moominland – still known at manuscript stage as “Moomintroll and the Uncanny Comet” – and the setting makes its presence felt in the story. Rolling pebbles down steep cliffs, as Moomintroll and Snufkin do in the book, was something that Wirtanen had taught her. Snufkin, who makes his first appearance in Comet in Moominland, has been linked to Atos Wirtanen because of his characteristic attire and his habit of roaming free, with no desire for physical possessions. But Tove Jansson’s literary characters are rarely based on any one individual or specific prototype.

Also making his debut in Comet in Moominland is the Muskrat, another character who has been linked to Wirtanen. But the mournful Muskrat, who likes nothing better than to spend his days in a hammock with the works of Oswald Spengler, prophet of doom, has nothing in common with the spirited Atos beyond an interest in philosophy. But the combination of muskrat and philosophy does have associations with him, nonetheless. Near the house in Kauniainen there was a patch of marshy ground frequented by a muskrat, and Atos would often go there to ruminate on Nietzsche, according to Tove’s notes from the 1940s. They would also take walks together to the “muskrat marsh”. The Muskrat of the Moomin universe basically embodies philosophy as a concept.

The Spengler-reading Muskrat also features prominently in the cartoon strip that Tove Jansson drew for Atos’s newpaper Ny Tid – Mumintrollet och jordens undergång (“Moomintroll and the End of the World”) – which was published in 26 parts in the paper ‘s so-called Children’s Corner between October 1947 and April 1948. The very first Moomin comic strip, which is based on the plot of Comet in Moominland, came about after an offer from Atos that Tove could not resist. He also had plans to launch Moomin in the USA, but they came to nothing. He was also an early reader of the manuscript of Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen (later translated as The Moomins and the Great Flood) and his succinct verdict, according to one of Tove Jansson’s letters, was that it was “good”.

Atos Wirtanen book — Atos Wirtanen concentrating on his book.

Atos Wirtanen concentrating on his book.

Tove Jansson Ny Tid — Tove Jansson's selfportrait in the Ny Tid newspaper in 1947.

Tove Jansson's selfportrait in the Ny Tid newspaper in 1947.

Snufkin has been associated with Atos Wirtanen because of his characteristic attire and his habit of roaming free, with no desire for physical possessions. But Tove Jansson’s literary characters were rarely based on any one individual.

The intellectual meeting place for Tove and Atos was primarily the written word. He was busy writing a book about his favourite philosopher, Nietzsche – published in 1945 under the title Nietzsche den otidsenlige (The Unfashionable Nietzsche) – and she was working on her first Moomin books. In the 1940s, Tove Jansson cultivated her interest in philosophy, partly as a result of keeping company with Atos Wirtanen and his circles. She had already read Arthur Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and particularly Henri Bergson, and philosophy also has its part to play in the initial shaping of the Moomin world, particularly in the second book Kometjakten (Comet in Moominland), published in 1946. That summer Tove Jansson travelled to Wirtanen’s home territory north of Mariehamn on Åland to meet his family – they intended to make the trip together – and explore the local scenery. But Atos’s arrival was delayed and Tove cycled round on her own. In her time on Åland she was engrossed in writing Comet in Moominland – still known at manuscript stage as “Moomintroll and the Uncanny Comet” – and the setting makes its presence felt in the story. Rolling pebbles down steep cliffs, as Moomintroll and Snufkin do in the book, was something that Wirtanen had taught her. Snufkin, who makes his first appearance in Comet in Moominland, has been linked to Atos Wirtanen because of his characteristic attire and his habit of roaming free, with no desire for physical possessions. But Tove Jansson’s literary characters are rarely based on any one individual or specific prototype.

Also making his debut in Comet in Moominland is the Muskrat, another character who has been linked to Wirtanen. But the mournful Muskrat, who likes nothing better than to spend his days in a hammock with the works of Oswald Spengler, prophet of doom, has nothing in common with the spirited Atos beyond an interest in philosophy. But the combination of muskrat and philosophy does have associations with him, nonetheless. Near the house in Kauniainen there was a patch of marshy ground frequented by a muskrat, and Atos would often go there to ruminate on Nietzsche, according to Tove’s notes from the 1940s. They would also take walks together to the “muskrat marsh”. The Muskrat of the Moomin universe basically embodies philosophy as a concept.

The Spengler-reading Muskrat also features prominently in the cartoon strip that Tove Jansson drew for Atos’s newpaper Ny Tid –Mumintrollet och jordens undergång (“Moomintroll and the End of the World”) – which was published in 26 parts in the paper ‘s so-called Children’s Corner between October 1947 and April 1948. The very first Moomin comic strip, which is based on the plot of Comet in Moominland, came about after an offer from Atos that Tove could not resist. He also had plans to launch Moomin in the USA, but they came to nothing. He was also an early reader of the manuscript of Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen (later translated as The Moomins and the Great Flood) and his succinct verdict, according to one of Tove Jansson’s letters, was that it was “good”.

04

A DEEPLY MEANINGFUL LOVE STORY

There were various interruptions in the relationship and both Atos and Tove formed other attachments. But the bond between them was strong.

The relationship between Tove Jansson and Atos Wirtanen continued into the early 1950s, not always with the same degree of intensity. The politician and the writer both travelled a great deal but the trip to Åland was the only one they made together. Being with Atos involved a lot of waiting on Tove’s part. Their relationship changed after Tove fell wildly in love with the director Vivica Bandler, whom she met in December 1946. There were various interruptions in the relationship and both Atos and Tove formed other attachments. But the bond between them was strong. They talked intermittently about getting married and each proposed to the other more than once, but they never exchanged rings. Atos Wirtanen subsequently married the dancer Irja Hagfors (1954). By then, Tove Jansson had been in a relationship with the young goldsmith Britt-Sofie Fock for several years.

Tove Jansson and Atos Wirtanen remained friends but contact between them tailed off over time as they no longer moved in the same circles. Yet the love they shared had clearly been important to both of them. When Atos asked Tove in the early 1970s to do the illustrations for an edition of his aphorisms, she declined, but went on: “You’ve written to me so beautifully that I want to take you in my arms. I find it quite wonderful that we both feel such joyful gratitude towards each other – not a sense of obligation! – it is very important for me, too.” In Atos Wirtanen’s memoirs, Tove Jansson is only referred to in passing. In Politiska minnen (Political Reminiscences) she is briefly mentioned as a colleague at Ny Tid who contributed a picture story (the Moomin series). But in the lovely letter he wrote a few years earlier, when Tove Jansson sent him Bildhuggarens dotter (1968, Sculptor’s Daughter), he pays her the greatest tribute one could ever give to a human being and artist:

I hope you will continue this story of your life. I am now well on the way to 100 but felt more like 10 when I was reading you. You are yourself at every age, youngest and eldest and perpetually at the start of your life, which you have already lived many times over. There is a short and precise word for that: genius.

Text: Boel Westin

Tove family Atos — Tove’s parents, Faffan and Ham (behind Faffan), together with Tove, Tove’s brother’s wife Saga, and Atos Wirtanen in the archipelago in the 1940s. Photo taken by Tove’s brother Per Olov.

Tove’s parents, Faffan and Ham (behind Faffan), together with Tove, Tove’s brother’s wife Saga, and Atos Wirtanen in the archipelago in the 1940s. Photo taken by Tove’s brother Per Olov.

There were various interruptions in the relationship and both Atos and Tove formed other attachments. But the bond between them was strong.

The relationship between Tove Jansson and Atos Wirtanen continued into the early 1950s, not always with the same degree of intensity. The politician and the writer both travelled a great deal but the trip to Åland was the only one they made together. Being with Atos involved a lot of waiting on Tove’s part. Their relationship changed after Tove fell wildly in love with the director Vivica Bandler, whom she met in December 1946. There were various interruptions in the relationship and both Atos and Tove formed other attachments. But the bond between them was strong. They talked intermittently about getting married and each proposed to the other more than once, but they never exchanged rings. Atos Wirtanen subsequently married the dancer Irja Hagfors (1954). By then, Tove Jansson had been in a relationship with the young goldsmith Britt-Sofie Fock for several years.

Tove Jansson and Atos Wirtanen remained friends but contact between them tailed off over time as they no longer moved in the same circles. Yet the love they shared had clearly been important to both of them. When Atos asked Tove in the early 1970s to do the illustrations for an edition of his aphorisms, she declined, but went on: “You’ve written to me so beautifully that I want to take you in my arms. I find it quite wonderful that we both feel such joyful gratitude towards each other – not a sense of obligation! – it is very important for me, too.” In Atos Wirtanen’s memoirs, Tove Jansson is only referred to in passing. In Politiska minnen (Political Reminiscences) she is briefly mentioned as a colleague at Ny Tid who contributed a picture story (the Moomin series). But in the lovely letter he wrote a few years earlier, when Tove Jansson sent him Bildhuggarens dotter (1968, Sculptor’s Daughter), he pays her the greatest tribute one could ever give to a human being and artist:

I hope you will continue this story of your life. I am now well on the way to 100 but felt more like 10 when I was reading you. You are yourself at every age, youngest and eldest and perpetually at the start of your life, which you have already lived many times over. There is a short and precise word for that: genius.

Text: Boel Westin

LIFE, THOUGHTS AND UTOPIAS

POLITICALLY ACTIVE WRITER

ATOS WIRTANEN'S INFLUENCE ON TOVE JANSSON'S PRODUCTION

A DEEPLY MEANINGFUL LOVE STORY

Signe Hammarsten Jansson

Viktor Jansson

Tuulikki Pietilä