In 1860s Lapland, gold diggers Jakob Ervast and Nils Lepistö, who previously worked in California, embark on an arduous journey towards the north. The friends find gold at the first excavation site, which Kittilä's crown prince Konrad Planting and Edvard Manninen also start looking for.

Katri's husband has died in the Finnish Winter War. When the Continuation War begins, Katri volunteers to work in a Helsinki military hospital. She is courted by a patient, a poetry-reciting countryman bound to be released from service. In the same time, she dates old school friend Eero who even goes AWOL to be near her. As the war continues, Katri has to make difficult decisions about her life.

Martta and Otto are a pair of traveling tailors who claim to be bastard descendants of the Romanovs and wander from town to town in Finland seeking work, accompanied by their two half-witted adult sons, Hippo, Repe and equally silly son-in-law Ventti. The family occasionally turns to crime when they can't quite make ends meet, and the boys begin turning to violence with greater frequency when Otto weakens and Martta becomes the head of the family business. Their fortunes take an unexpected turn when the brothers assault and abduct a man they call Kaspar, who becomes the family's sidekick in their travels. Despite Kaspar's inability to speak, he attracts Martha's youngest daughter, an attractive young woman named Lara, but the family is in disarray when a long-lost half-brother, Laszlo, suddenly re-emerges and tries to wrest control of the clan away from his mother.