Talk:The Groke/Archive 1

Animated series

This section needs to specify which animated series is being discussed. --JBellis 16:59, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

MÖRKÖ

Mörkö is the best Moomin character for me. I have a cup, a plate, a bowl and a soft toy with his/her picture. I am looking now for a Mörkö pijamas. I like the mystery around Mörkö when we cannot define his/her gender or if he/she is a friend or a villain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.114.79.195 (talk) 17:06, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, she's a she, and wants to get friends but everything she comes near freezes and dies.--Ifrit 16:10, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Scary

The Groke did sure scare the heck of me when I was a small child. This was prior to the animated series, but her apperance in the books was enough to scare me.

But before I read the Wikipedia articles, I'd always thought of the Groke as male. This is because Finnish does not have gender-separated pronouns, and because of the Groke's scary appearance, I thought she had to be male. JIP | Talk 19:46, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I skimmed through my Swedish editions of "Trollvinter" and "Pappan och havet", and she is clearly decribed as a "she" in the original Swedish. 惑乱 分からん 17:58, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Curiously, however, in Tove's very first short-lived Moomin comic series from 1947 (reprinted in Swedish, but, to my knowledge, not translated) the Groke is presented as a male, with male pronouns. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 01:21, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Trauma :D

I saw the first episode where the groke appears... and never watched the moomins again... guess that means i missed the one where it turns out to be a nice evil freak monster thing... still scared the bugger out of me for years.

I think I saw that one. I remember Moominpapa talking about how she was just loney and in need of friendship, but all I could think was that maybe if she'd stop being so damned creepy and ominous all the time she'd get some friends. 144.124.16.28 20:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I am still scared of her to this very day, I think I may have screamed when I first saw her years ago. Definetly the scariest thing I have and probobly ever will see for the rest of my life.--TailsClock (talk) 23:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Clarification?

I think Groke living in cavern and leaving a trail of ice (opposite of freezing only when she sits down) is only added in cartoon. BTW, Groke is archetype of fear, just as other Moomin characters are archetypes of alienness, femine, independence etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.83.241.4 (talk) 21:27, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

One of the original drawnings (I guess) portrays him/her in a cavern like place, and in one of those big books (it's a collection, I'm very sure) the Groke is portrayed at top of a hill. Honestly, the Groke looks more traumatizing and scary in the books. Troodonraptor (talk) 15:30, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

NPOV?

It could just be me, but "something tremendously scary" sounds like a point of view. Should it be removed? (even though the groke was incredibly scary when I was small(er) :P)

Find someone who doesn't have the POV that the groke (or hufsa as i know her) isn't the scariest thing ever, and then we can discuss it. It might be POV, but when it's everyones POV it should be there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.167.96.195 (talk) 19:45, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that the Groke is the scariest thing ever to exist. I think the Groke is the scariest thing that ever *could* exist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.178.114.138 (talk) 15:26, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Curse word

I think that it's noteworthy, that her name is occasionally used by the characters as a curse word, which likens her to a devil character. Also, I never before even thought she could be of any gender. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.28.85.61 (talk) 23:10, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

The original author, Tove Jansson, was a Swedish-speaking native of Finland. The Swedish term she uses for the character, Mårran, might be feminine? The Finnish name, Mörkö, is a general term for a scary monster. Tumacama (talk) 22:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Mårran is the definite tense of Mårra (i.e. the Mårra) and nouns and names ending in -a are often feminine in Swedish. The curse word is probably inspired by the multitude of Swedish curse words referring to the Devil and Hell. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:28, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Picture?

The Moomin article contains a picture from the show. Anyone know if there's a chance to get a picture of The Groke up here, too? Much of the context is related to her appearance, after all. --84.133.198.60 12:17, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Done. Enjoy! :) --user:Qviri 23:52, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I hate to be grouchy, but is there anywhere we could get a picture of the Groke from the books? The animated version is too cute and un-Groke-like :-) --Bonadea 12:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

https://research.wsulibs.wsu.edu:8443/jspui/html/2376/1535/groke.gif

is the picture of the Groke from _Finn Family Moomintroll_, when she appears on the doorstep (her most terrifying moment, at least to me!) but I don't know if we'd be allowed to use it on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.178.114.138 (talk) 15:28, 23 January 2010 (UTC) I agree - this picture is not really representative of the true nature of the groke. Any of the images actually drawn by Tove Jannsen would be more suitable. Is there any way we can legally use another picture?Evil taxidermied sloth (talk) 07:40, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Hufsa

I always knew this thing as Hufsa. I think it was referred to as this by the moomintrolls in an episode I watched as a kid. If you type Hufsa into search engines, this wiki page is one of the first things to come up, yet I can see no mention of the name "Hufsa" on the page - how come search engines bring up this page if there is no mention of the name? Is it worth adding Hufsa as an alternative name in the article? 2.124.193.114 (talk) 15:54, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I believe that Hufsa returns this article in searches because the engines find the Norwegian Wikipedia articles (Norsk bokmål no:Hufsa & Norsk nynorsk nn:Hufsa) and ‘convert‘ them to the corresponding article in English by means of our interwiki links (see the “Languages” sidebar). I don’t know where or if it’s been discussed before, but it appears the character has several different names in various languages, which might well deserve mention—ideally, rather than merely listing them, citing any available critical discussion of their translations; the Moomin characters, like Tolkien’s, present interesting challenges to translators trying to capture both phonetic and semantic nuances of invented names. I wouldn’t put it in the lead paragraph, though, on the ‘slippery-slope‘ principle that including one secondary term tends to invite more, cluttering the introduction with trivia.—Odysseus1479 07:16, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Moomin wiki

The text of the Groke article in the Moomin fan wiki is nearly identical to this article. I have no idea which is copied from the other. --Thnidu (talk) 01:29, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Name in translations

Does anyone know why the name is translated so variously? Besides #Hufsa, we have

• svenska | Mårran
  • íslenska | Morrinn
  • русский | Морра [Morra]
  • Japanese | モラン Moran
  • ? suomi | Mörkö (Muumit)
• eesti | Urr
• norsk (both) | Hufsa
• polski | Buka (Muminki)
• English | The Groke
• עברית | הגרוק [ivrit | hagrōk (ha- = the)]

- Thnidu (talk) 15:38, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Groke?

I am Swedish and I have never hear of the word groke before. If that is her name, then why "THE Groke" instead of "Groke"? If it is a word, then what does it mean? Why is she called that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.249.112.114 (talk) 08:06, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

I am also Swedish, and I had never heard of the word "Mårra(n)" before I read about her... It's a made-up name in the original too, but one that doesn't work in English, what with the 'å' and all, so they had to make up a new one. As for "why THE?": Well, why "MårraN" in Swedish, in stead of just "Mårra"? Jansson (Tove or Lars? I'm not sure) obviously wanted a definite article (that's what the 'n' at the end is, just like 'the' before the name in English) there, so the translators were obliging and used one in English too. In sum: This is a perfectly correct way of putting her name in English. --CRConrad (talk) 12:36, 9 April 2019 (UTC)