Thure Lindhardt plays Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928), one of Norway's greatest painters. The son of a Pietist priest, young Nikolai rebels against his father, and his mentor, the communist Anton Fond, sends him to Europe in search of knowledge. In Paris he scorns his fashionable colleagues and sets out to invent a style of his own. Returning to Jølster in 1902, he draws on local tradition, folk belief and pagan ritual: midsummer bonfires, dancing, drink and eroticism, images his father can barely tolerate. When he marries the fifteen-year-old Engel, the village talks. The couple decide not to listen. Thure Lindhardt plays Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928), one of Norway's greatest painters. The son of a Pietist priest, young Nikolai rebels against his father, and his mentor, the communist Anton Fond, sends him to Europe in search of knowledge. In Paris he scorns his fashionable colleagues and sets out to invent a style of his own. Returning to Jølster in 1902, he draws on local tradition, folk belief and pagan ritual: midsummer bonfires, dancing, drink and eroticism, images his father can barely tolerate. When he marries the fifteen-year-old Engel, the village talks. The couple decide not to listen.