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.
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.
Teacher Rundqvist who works in a school in a small town in Scania is old fashioned but loved by his pupils. When a younger teacher with new ideas of teaching starts at the school Rundqvist's methods are questioned.