Moominvalley in November: 10 Nordic Pieces to Live With

Moominvalley in November: 10 Nordic Pieces to Live With

November is the month nobody photographs. The colour has gone out of the garden and the dark arrives before anyone has left work. It is also the month Tove Jansson wrote about last. Her final Moomin book is set in the valley in November, with the family away from home and a handful of visitors left in the empty house to light the fire, cook the porridge and get along with one another until the weather turns.

That is a fair description of a Nordic house this week. In Finland the Moomins are not a children's department; they are the mug the adult reaches for first, the enamel bowl that lives at the cabin, the brass ring around a napkin on a Sunday. What follows is ten of them, from the morning mug to the pair of bookends holding up the books themselves. All ten are in stock in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark, and every one can be compared on price on ScandiDeals.

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1. Arabia Snufkin Mug – The One Who Walks South

Snufkin leaves the valley every autumn and comes back in spring, which makes him the right face for a November mug: the friend who is somewhere else. The Arabia Snufkin Moomin mug puts him on a soft green ground with his tent pitched behind him and his pipe going. The shape is the one Arabia has used for these mugs for decades, straight-sided with a small round handle that suits a hand around it at six in the morning. It is porcelain made for daily use, not for a shelf.

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2. Arabia Groke Bowl – Cold Made Into Porcelain

The Groke is the one who freezes the ground where she sits, so a bowl in near-black blue is a joke with a straight face. The Arabia Groke Moomin bowl carries her around the outside against a snowstorm of white, with a clean white glaze inside so that whatever you put in it still looks like food. It holds a bowl of porridge, a soup at the desk, the last of the autumn berries with cream. Fifteen centimetres across: everyday size, not display size.

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3. Muurla Enamel Bowl – Enamel Survives the Cabin

Enamel over steel is the Nordic answer to the question of what to take somewhere there is no dishwasher. The Muurla Moomin enamel bowl holds 30 centilitres, which is a breakfast, a handful of nuts or a measure of flour, and it is drawn with Snufkin and Moomintroll walking through tall grass in green and white. It goes in the rucksack, lives at the summer house over the winter, and comes back chipped at the rim rather than broken. That chip is the point.

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4. Klippan Moomin Trivet – Somewhere to Put the Pot

Klippan has been spinning wool in southern Sweden since 1879, and the discipline shows in something as small as this. The Klippan Moomin trivet is a 21-centimetre circle of dense wool felt, split between pale and dark grey, with a white Moomintroll sitting on the join. It takes a hot casserole off a wooden table without the fuss of cork or the clatter of cast iron, and it folds into a drawer when the table is laid properly.

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5. Hackman Moomin Spoon – The Spoon Everyone Claims

Every drawer has one spoon that goes missing because somebody has taken it to their room. The Hackman Moomin spoon is polished stainless steel with a small Moomintroll standing at the end of the handle, so it reads as cutlery first and a character second. It has the weight of proper flatware rather than the tinny lightness of a souvenir, which is why it ends up in the tea and the jam rather than in a cabinet.

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6. Hilke X Moomin Pitcher – Water on the Table

This is the grown-up end of the list. The Hilke X Moomin pitcher holds 1.5 litres in mirror-polished stainless steel, with a belly that curves out and a thin handle arching high over the top. The Moomin reference is kept to a whisper, so it can stand on a table laid for guests without announcing anything. Steel also survives a catching sleeve, which glass does not.

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7. Hilke X Moomin Napkin Rings – Brass for Sunday

A linen napkin loose on a plate looks like laundry. Through a ring it looks like a decision. These Hilke X Moomin napkin rings come as a pair, cut from brass with Moominmamma in her apron standing in the opening, handbag and all. Brass warms up under the candles that are on the table from now until March, and two rings are enough for the small Sunday dinners that November is actually made of.

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8. Opto Design Moomin Tray – Small Enough for One Hand

Large trays end up on top of the fridge. Small ones get used every day. The Opto Design Moomin 80 tray measures 20 by 27 centimetres, which is two cups and a plate of biscuits, and it is printed with a crowded dinner party drawn in black line, with flashes of green, on a pink ground. Carry the coffee to the sofa on it, then leave it on the table as the thing that stops the afternoon spreading everywhere.

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9. Kupilka Moominmamma Mug – Takes a Knock on Granite

Kupilka make outdoor tableware from a tough composite rather than ceramic, and the difference tells on a cold walk. The Kupilka Moominmamma mug holds 3.7 decilitres in a dark, dusty red, shaped as a shallow bowl with a flat handle pierced for a cord, with Moominmamma standing on the side. It is light in a rucksack, warm against the fingers when the coffee comes out of the flask, and it survives being set down on rock. Hang it by the door with the boots.

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10. Pluto Design Moomin Bookends – Holding Up the Books

The books are the reason for all the rest of it, and November is when they get reread. These Pluto Design Moomin bookends come as a pair, cut from white-painted steel in the outline of Moomintroll, each standing on a flat foot that slides under the first and the last book in a row. They hold a shelf of paperbacks upright without gripping them, and they work as well on a kitchen shelf holding cookbooks as they do in a child's room.

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Final Thoughts

The temptation with a licensed character is to buy the whole valley at once, and the result is a kitchen that looks like a gift shop. The Nordic habit is slower and better: one mug that becomes yours, one bowl at the cabin, a trivet, a pair of rings brought out when people come. Jansson drew a household getting through a dark month by doing ordinary things carefully, which is also a reasonable instruction for furnishing one.

Buy the pieces that have a job. Porcelain and enamel outlive the fashion for them, brass improves, and steel is still steel in thirty years. If you are adding one of these to a shelf that already has others on it, compare what the UK, German, Norwegian and Danish shops are charging for the same piece on ScandiDeals first; the same mug can differ by more than the postage between one and the next.