Jarkko, a 46 years old Finnish man, collects translations of Tove Jansson’s original Moomin books. At the moment, Jarkko has Moomin books in 49 different languages, and the next goal is to get the Bosnian, Mari, and Montenegrin translations into his collection. Comet in Moominland in Mari, “Комета толеш”, has already been published, but only 200 copies have been made, so it might not be the easiest to get.
Jarkko has read Moomin books in Finnish, and Swedish as well as in Russian and Polish, but Jarkko also likes to browse books in other languages. For example, Karelian and Slovene languages Jarkko understands with the help of his other language skills. In his Master’s thesis Jarkko compared the formation and use of prepositional cases in Russian and Polish, and he had the example sentences from the Russian and Polish Moomin books as well.
Jarkko is very eager to seek collectibles from all over. Besides Moomin books, Jarkko also collects records from certain artists but finding Moomin books have been more difficult. Even if international online shops make purchasing easier.
– The most difficult books to get have been Moomin books in Georgian, Persian and Belarusian. Fortunately, I have had colleagues around the world and they have helped me to get the Persian and Belarusian Moomin books into my collection. It is almost impossible to order anything from these countries and their webstores, Jarkko says.
Here is the complete list of translations of Moomin books Jarkko has. Only books in the Bosnian, Mari and Montenegrin are missing.
Afrikaans, Arabic, Belarussian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (complex), Chinese (simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English UK, English US, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galicien language, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Karelian, Korean, Kroatian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Sami, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Slovakian language, Slovene language, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh.