Frau Bessie, once a madcap, aristocratic and modern Swedish fraulein, has become now a whimsical and conservative Swedish burgess after her marriage to Herr Thomas Graal. The destabilization of the marriage begins right at the wedding (which contains some hilarious incidents) when Frau Bessie announces the first Graal child must be a girl, creating a terrible conflict with her husband who is hoping for a boy. It takes a scandal to finally end the war between man and wife.

Two smugglers meet two customs officers at sea, and happen to kill them. The story continues fifteen years later when a son of one of the officers and a smuggler's daughter fall in love with each other.

A stranger comes to work at widow Halla's farm. Halla and the stranger fall in love, but when he is revealed as Eyvind, an escaped thief forced into crime by his family's starvation, they flee and become two of the many outlaws of Iceland's mountains.