Art professor Tore Stenwall is engaged to one of his young students, Anna-Lisa. He shows her a portrait and tells the story of how it came to be.

Gösta Berling is a young and attractive minister. Because of his alcoholism and his daring sermons, he is finally defrocked. He becomes a tutor of countess Marta's stepdaughter and they fall in love. But the countess has a plan of her own.

Celestin is the singing teacher in a monastery and Denis is one of her students. They both dream about the life outside. (It's a Swedish version of the famous vaudeville-opérette "Mam'zelle Nitouche").

While enjoying a glorious summer’s day at the beach, Pat and Patachon meet the beautiful Mona, whom they both fall in love with. However, they’re soon given something else to think about when they’re drafted into the armed forces and sent to a cantonment. The two friends struggle to find their place among the other soldiers, and they get into all sorts of escapades. One day, fate lends a helping hand when the company take up residence on a farm in North Zealand, where the two friends discover, to their delight, that this is where Mona lives. (stumfilm.dk)

Ranged across several generations, the story begins with a wealthy merchant, Lind, and his wife travelling in the coldest depths of winter to christen their baby daughter. Attacked by wolves, they lose the baby, which is found by the Lapp Jaampa (a dominating performance by Tryggve Larssen) and subsequently raised by a rich reindeer herder,

Jack Norton is a careless gambler, until his father turns his back on him. Dead drunk he winds up on a boat going far up North, where he leaves the boat, only to be saved by Eskimos, where he soon falls in love.

When his ancestors seem to appear in the clouds during a storm of biblical proportions, young Ingmar decides to give up his career as the village teacher and to reclaim the land and farm of his fathers. The same stormy night, the charismatic preacher Helgum arrives in the village to spread the word about the promises of the Holy Land, which turns parents and children, men and wives, brothers and sisters, against one another. Ingmar is torn between his love for the headmaster’s daughter Gertrud who is under the preacher’s spell, and the prospects of marrying the judge’s daughter Barbro in order to keep the farm.

A peddler visiting a small cottage in the winter. He tells some strange tales for the family living there.

The Nazis seize power and occupies a country. A celebrated pianist returns home from abroad during this time of national crisis and reconnects with Major von Ritter who leads the occupation and whom she had a passionate love affair in the past.

The hunter Olaf Ruud sits by his sick wife Anna and remembers the old times.