After being admitted to a residential home starts the retired bricklayer Johan to dream back to his childhood - the safe upbringing with his parents, the first love, and how he with a broken heart ran away from home, and was forced to fend for himself. How he got married, had a son, barely managed to scrape together enough money for food and shelter, the son ran away from home and his wife died.

An itinerant sailor meets a beautiful girl on the road and takes a job with her father, the Skipper of an Arctic sealer. He must prove himself stronger than his rival among the glaciers and ice floes.

Erik Andersson marries Brita Blomstedt. During the wedding party he drinks alcohol which he is not used to. Later that evening Erik is involved in a brawl that end with a policeman getting a knife in the back.

The innkeeper Schultze and his wife are broke and don't know how to pay their rent when a shipwrecked sailor shows up with a chest full of money. In despair the Schultze couple murders the sailor.