Flight Sergeant Gösta Nilsson visits his parents' home in Norrland for the first time in over a year. Over the farm, there rules a heavy atmosphere of a handed-down-from-father-to-son heritage. His father is worn out by the war years and wants Gösta to take over. On the Midsummer's Eve's outdoor dance floor, surrounded by branches of foliage from birch trees, Gösta meets Lilian and falls deeply in love, not knowing then that she is in the beginning of a pregnancy.