À la mort de son père, le jeune Gunnar, passionné de musique, tente de sauver le manoir familial de la faillite en reprenant un élevage de rennes en Laponie.
In a remote place of Sweden, men working on the digging of a canal to dry up a marsh are housed in the nearby farms. In one of them live Johan and his mother together with a young girl, Marit. One of the workers tries unsuccessfully to kiss her. Some time later, while Johan is out floating timber on the other side of the river, he falls and crushes his leg. He lights a fire that Marit sees from the house. She crosses the river on a rowing boat and carries him back home and takes care of him. On his sick-bed, he asks her to be his wife. She accepts it quite unresponsively. Johan's mother is determined to avoid what she sees as a misalliance. He reminds her how 18 years before they had found her on the side of the road next to her dying mother. The mother orders Marit to leave the house but Johan, seeing the scene from his sick-bed orders her to stay and eventually marries her against his mother's will.
On New Year's Eve, dying Salvation Army Sister Edit has one last wish: to speak with David Holm. David, a drunkard, is sitting in a graveyard, telling his two drinking buddies about his old friend Georges, who told him about the legend that the last person to die each year has to drive Death's carriage and collect the souls of everybody who dies the following year. Georges himself died on New Year's Eve the previous year.
The main part of the film is told in a flashback by a monk to two visiting noblemen on their way to Warsaw in the 17th century. He tells them how a mighty count named Starschensky once ruled Sendomir (Sandomierz), but after an intrigue in which his wife was unfaithful with her own cousin he had to use all his resources to build the monastery where they are now staying. At the end it is revealed that the monk is in fact Starschensky himself.
Brita, une jeune paysanne, terrorisée à l'idée de porter un enfant illégitime, s'enfuit afin de se donner la mort. Mais, au moment de se précipiter du haut d'une falaise, une femme intervient et la sauve. Plus tard, elle se retrouve emprisonnée pour avoir tué l'enfant mis au monde. Son fiancé, Lill Ingmar, un humble laboureur, demande conseil à ses ancêtres : il gravit une échelle géante pour atteindre les voies célestes. On lui conseille de pardonner la faute de la jeune femme et de l'épouser ensuite. À l'expiration de sa peine, Lill Ingmar vient chercher Britt à la maison d'arrêt et entame une nouvelle vie à ses côtés.