Nicke loves practical jokes. When his best friend Pelle is getting married, Nicke is hosting the bachelor party. It will start with the kidnapping of Pelle. Everything goes wrong when Pelle is kidnapped for real by a terrorist group.

The year is 1891. The director of MoDo, Frans Kempe, is about to build the largest and most modern sawmill in Europe and a complete ideal society after his own mind. The place he chooses is Norrbyskär, some skerries in the Baltic Sea outside the cost of Västerbotten in northern Sweden. The experimental society with it's 1500 inhabitants and the large sawmill will live for almost 60 years.