The film starts at the countryside, where station master Viirimäki is spending his summer holiday. He has gotten into the holiday mood to the extent that he wakes up from his stupor at the very moment he should already be getting back to work. Unfortunately the last ship from the island where he has been vacationing has already sailed, but as luck would have it, local residents Himanen and Kehkonen promise to help him out. Things turn out differently, however, and the attempt to help starts out an adventure filled with misunderstandings and plot twists.
In northern Finland in the fall of 1916, Saima Niva rescues a man drifting in the river, who turns out to be a German lieutenant Braun. Braun and his six comrades have managed to escape the prisoner of war at the Muurmann railway station, but the lieutenant has had to get rid of the lost group. While Braun is recovering, under the good care of Saima, Niva's neighbor and henchman of the gendarmes, the greedy policeman Simpura, gets a tip about the refugees camped in the desert.
“Tukkijoella” (Log River – 1928). Films of this genre gave the Finnish cinema and the viewing public one of its most popular characters – the lumberjack (tukkijatka, tukkipoika, tukkilainen) who at his most heroic hour becomes the log-roller or the shooter of rapids (koskenlaskija). The significance of this character in Finnish film is comparable to that of the Cowboy on American cinema. He is the pioneer, the wanderer, the adventurer. He negotiates the frontier, he is an embodiment of the conflict between wilderness and civilization.
