Per is a newly qualified social worker entering professional life. Through Per, we are confronted with welfare Norway in 1970. Over the course of a couple of short summer months, we get to know Per. He is a fairly ordinary, intelligent person. He has his problems in relation to himself and the opposite sex. He is in the process of becoming an adult. He is testing his attitudes and perceptions. He must find answers to questions that could be crucial to his future place in society.

One autumn day, Ivar goes to the Botanical Garden in Oslo to visit Maria who is the mother of a little girl named Tilla. Ivar is a child psychologist and had Tilla observed a few months earlier. Treatment for her was agreed upon, but Maria has not returned with Tilla. Now Ivar finds her sleeping under a tree in the garden, and he meets Maria bent over a microscope in the laboratory. Maria has become even more nervous and unbalanced than the last time he met her, because nothing has been "corrected" as quickly as she had hoped -- Tilla has not spoken now for a year and a half. Maria herself is on her way to being as closed off as her own little girl. Ivar persuades Maria to come to the pediatric psychiatric clinic with Tilla so they can begin her treatment. There she meets Mimi Backer. But neither does Mimi get Maria to open up about her experiences with Tilla. In the clinic's observation room, however, the first little flicker of light falls on the mystery...

Hans Nielsen Hauge was a Norwegian reformer in the early 1800's both financially and spiritually.

Thorvald runs a local bus route, with a 1923-model bus nicknamed 'Gamla', in the Norwegian country side. Thorvald himself always takes time to make numerous stops along his route to help out with the smallest of problems. The old man is so caring he sometimes forgets to charge money from his travelers. But modern times are lurking on the doorstep - in the figure of a grumpy county official and an offer from an outside bus company.

Knut leads a record company, and when he meets the night club singer Anita Daae, his wife has to win him back.

One day, Laffen, a family man, homeowner, and watchmaker, overhears his 17-year-old son lecturing his younger siblings. He gives them a shocking analysis of their poor father. The father puts on his workout clothes and goes for a jog in the neighborhood, to the amusement of his neighbors and the despair of his family. After a lucky shot, he wins the gold medal in athletics.

Salve is a shepherd, and meets the young boy Kjell, when on his way to a show with a sheep he thinks will win the big prize.

We meet the young violinist Øyvind Dahl at a time when everything has weighed him down and he is completely desperate for alcohol. He has left his wife and children and has teamed up with emaciated artists and suspicious individuals, and obtains his daily liquor by mortgaging his last possessions, even the wedding ring, and by pitifully barring money.

The third installment in Arne Skouen's trilogy about mentally challenged children, in solidarity of the involved children and families.