A village we know nothing about, a village covered by snow and forests, somewhere in the north. A family is living in an isolated house near a lake. Alexi, the brother, is a young man with a pure heart, a lumberjack. Subject to epileptic fits, ecstatics by nature, he is at one with the nature around him. Alexi is very fond of his younger sister, Hege. Their mother is blind while the father and younger brother watch this compulsive love. A foreigner arrives, a young man who is just a little older than Alexi...