In a small coastal village in northern Norway in the nineteenth century, little Dina inadvertently causes the painful death of her mother. Traumatised, and rejected by her father, the girl becomes increasingly marginalised as she grows older. Only the young teacher Lorch can get through to her: he introduces her to the world of music, through which she finds a way of expressing her pain and her feelings. On the brink of womanhood, her father marries her off to a much older man called Jacob. Though Jacob loves and respects her, he cannot cope with the profundity of her emotions. Jacob meets with a fatal accident, in which Dina is not entirely uninvolved. After his death, Dina runs the house and the farm, and gives birth to a child. But it is in the enigmatic Russian Leo that Dina finds her soulmate.
