During the 1200s, the catholic priest Peder has to divorce his wife when the church votes for celibacy.

The farmer Knut Husaby has a daughter, Aslaug, who is the most beautiful girl in the village. Many boys are after her, but Knut and his two sons drive them away, if they come too close to the farm. Aslaug is secretly in love with Tore Naesset. But he is only a smallholder's son, and when he asks for Aslaug's hand, her father just laughs at him. Instead her father wants Aslaug to marry Ola Thormundson, a gawky boy, who is the son of the wealthiest farmer in the village. Aslaug brings her family's cattle to the Husaby summer farm up in the mountain. Only one road leads to the summer farm, and it passes right by the main farm. When Tore returns from a visit to Aslaug in the mountains, Knut and his sons beat him black and blue. As it's impossible for him to use the road anymore, Tore has to figure out another way to go to Aslaug. Next Saturday he crosses the fiord in a rowing-boat. He stops at a fifty meter high wall of rock, and starts climbing it, hoping to reach Aslaug at the top.