Farmer Mårten Esbjörnsson has three adult sons who all want to find a wife to marry. However, all the young women of the neighborhood seem to be less than perfect.
Henrik Karlsson is accused of having stolen 5,000 SEK, even though he is innocent. But to protect the real thief, who is sick in hospital, Karlsson takes the full responsibility.
Baron Brusenhielm at castle Tröstehult in Skåne dislikes how his young son Karl Oscar is playing “mother and father” with the tenant’s daughter Ann-Marie, as he anticipates the beginning of a future misalliance. Years pass, and Karl Oscar is about to graduate high school. He pretends to study church history but reads in fact “The Seducer’s Diary” and thinks of Ann-Marie, who is now grown up into a woman.