The story of Kummavalo

Even after Saga had organised the notes, gaps remained between them. Their brief lines assumed that the reader knew what a colour, gesture or family expression meant. Not everything had needed to be written down, because it had travelled from one person to another through speech and practice.

That was when Aino sat beside Saga. She recognised sayings she had heard from her own mother and remembered how a particular deck was handled or how a question was asked before a card was drawn. At the kitchen table, mother and daughter compared notebooks, decks and memories. A single sentence Aino recalled could unlock the meaning of an entire page.

Aino also insisted that the tradition should not remain unchanged simply because it was old. Some words belonged to another time, and some interpretations needed a gentler and freer direction. Saga and Aino preserved the heart of the ideas while rewriting them in language that neither frightens people nor dictates their fate.

Kummavalo’s content did not emerge from old papers alone. It grew from a conversation between mother and daughter — where living memory met Saga’s careful research.