The Podgoblin’s Hat

This guest episode is all about the Moomins in Poland!

 

Our guest Tomasz talks us through some of the great wealth of history the Moomins have with Poland, the interesting musical benefits of a planned economy and his own terror of the fuzzy felt Groke as a child. We also talk about translation and the different adaptations of the Moomin stories.

 

Tomasz recommends Krtek the Mole and he also suggests you listen to our other Polish guest Hanna's episode to get a younger person's perspective. His own podcast, You Are Not So Great, Britain, can be found here.

Valentina has a unique pathway into the Moomins. She experienced just one story: The Moomins and the Great Flood, as an audiobook as a child. She never knew there were any other Moomin stories, or even any illustrations. She only found the books as an adult, after years of treasuring the one weird little fable that most of the rest of the fandom didn't even know existed.

We talk about the absence of Moominpappa in the Flood, and the unequal ways in which the parents in these stories are treated. Also, some little gems from the German translation regarding Sniff, or, as he is known in this story, the Little Creature. Valentina makes her own Moomin merch, like previous guest Mary did, and we've put pictures of all that on the social media for this episode.

She recommends The Wind in the Willows, especially if you're a German speaker and can get your hands on the audiobook read by Harry Rowohlt; Down to A Sunless Sea; and she would like to point you all in the direction of her friend's art instagram.

In a podcast first, we are interviewing a Moomin fan who is still a teenager and discovered the Moomins through Pinterest!

Mary talks us through the cottagecore appeal of the Moomins and the popular but non-mainstream place they occupy in the USA.  There's a fair bit of chat about the Japanese animated cartoon adaptations. We talk about the way we love queer-coded things but wish that the queerness could be explicit in these beloved texts. Mary gives out excellent advice as Little My.

Check out our instagram to see pictures of Mary's shrinkydink keychain and her mom's Little My embroidery. We're all for making your own merch around here!

Mary recommends Ivy and Bean, the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place and Katie the Ordinary Witch.

This episode's special guest is Mendel Skulski, a podcaster, mushroom-enthusiast and musician who wore an excellent Snufkin costume to a fancy dress party.

We chat about climate collapse as depicted in Comet in Moominland, and the different characters' attitudes to it. We also chat about the different mushrooms Little My picks in The Invisible Child, and how one might go about identifying and preparing them for eating. Mendel is wonderfully enthusiastic about free food growing all around is and recommends the Falling Fruit maps to find foraging opportunities near you. Nina has added the fig trees she mentioned in Ouseburn, if you're a local!

Be sure to check out our instagram to see Mendel and their partner's Snufkin and Little My cosplays.

Mendel recommends Bee and PuppyCat and Butt Out Baby, Their podcast is Future Ecologies, it is beautiful and thoughtful.

For this Christmas-adjascent bonus, we're welcoming Helen Zaltzman, a podcaster and thinker about words.

Helen came to the Moomins as a young child while she was devouring the entire contents of her local library and volunteered to re-read Moominland Midwinter for us. We talk about how lovely the writing is, the art of translation, and what a relief it is when you revisit a beloved childhood story and find that it's still good. So many good quotes are pulled up and lovingly read aloud. The praises of Too-Ticky are lavishly sung.

We also asked Helen to read the Fir Tree, which was new to her. We're still delighted with how much of a stone cold classic this story is. Helen notices the particular pagan and pre-Christian notes, and we're all appalled at Moominpappa's cavalier attitude to his neighbour's trees.

Helen recommends Field Recordings by Eleanor McDowall and Twice upon a Time, with Janet Ellis. Helen's own very good podcast is The Allusionist. We particuarly recommend the Christmas episodes, if you want to think about how weird Christmas is!