The Groke

The Groke
Moomins character
The Groke, as depicted in the Japanese–Dutch television animation Tanoshii Mūmin Ikka.
First appearance	Finn Family Moomintroll
Last appearance	Moominpappa at Sea
Created by	Tove Jansson
In-universe information
Gender	Female

The Groke (Swedish name: Mårran, roughly “The Growlerette”, Finnish name: Mörkö) is a fictional character in the Moomin stories created by Tove Jansson.^[1] She appears as a ghost-like, hill-shaped body with two cold staring eyes and a wide row of white shiny teeth beneath a large and wide triangular nose. In the book Who Will Comfort Toffle?, it is mentioned that she has a tail, but it has never been seen. Wherever she stands, the ground below her freezes, plants and grass die and if she stands in place too long the soil itself will die and nothing will ever grow there again. She leaves a trace of ice and snow when she walks the ground. Anything that she touches will freeze. On one occasion, she froze a campfire by sitting down on it. She seeks friendship and warmth, but she is declined by everyone and everything, leaving her in her cold cavern on top of the Lonely Mountains.

On one occasion in a comic, however, she was hailed as a heroine when she, in her constant search for warmth, extinguished a forest wildfire by sitting on it. In another comic, Sniff has made a magical potion with seemingly random effects. In curiosity, he drips a few drops on an ant which then transforms into the Groke. It is never made clear if this is how the Groke came to be, or if the ant transformed to another creature of the same type.

The Groke is a melancholic and lonely character.^[2] Agneta Rehal-Johansson has argued that various other characters, such as Moomintroll or Moominmamma, identify with or are represented by her loneliness.^[3]