This the story of a wizard elk - Rauten, as people called him. He was a human being in animal guise. The story begins in Ré Valley, which lies like a yawning gap between mountains, long and flat with borders of forests so dark that they look as though part of the blackness of night lingered in them. A river moves sluggishly along the bottom of the valley, making its way slowly and carefully between stretches of light-red sand. It runs northwards, a rare thing in Norway.

Based on the Norwegian fairytale.

Øjvind, a smallholder's boy, is a close friend with Marit, a farmer's girl, throughout their entire childhood. As an adolescent he one day recognizes that she has become a maiden, and that he has fallen in love with her. When he sees Marit dancing with Jon Halten, a farmer's son, he gets sad, and notices that when you start loving someone, you are not cheerful any more. He senses the social distance between himself and Marit, and tries to compensate this by becoming the best pupil in the village. Øjvind wants to study at an agricultural college, and the old schoolmaster helps him to arrange this. When he some years later returns to the village as an agronomist, he and Marit resume their romance. Because of their different social status Marit's grandfather, Ola Nordistua, tries to stop the liaison. With new agricultural methods Øjvind helps his father to get better harvests. At the same time the old Ola Nordistua sees his farm going downhill as no one really cares for it.

Tore, son of a poor farmer, loves Berit, daughter of a rich one, but she's promised to another man whom she does not love and thus refuses to marry.