Linnéa, 18, moves from Ostrobothnia to her aunt in Helsinki to start studying journalism. She comes from a family where her father is alcoholic and moves away to focus on her studies. During the summer vacation, she gets to know Ellen, a cool feminist who writes for the feminist magazine Astra, and Viktor, a charming and confident guy from the wealthy Westend area. Linnéa and Viktor fall in love and Linnéa notices that she is wedged between two worlds, Vike's hedonistic upper class gang and Ellen's cultural friends.
In the midst of a worldwide energy crisis, a mysterious man exhibiting strange behavior and suffering from amnesia appears out of nowhere, causing turmoil in a small Swedish town.
The Defence Minister Sven Cedevall, a popular politician and happily married family father, isn't the kind of man who should risk what he got for a temporary relation. But when he by chance meets the Polish waitress Anja there is no turning back. Against his will and sense he's drawn to her. What begins with love develops later to a violent end.
The story takes place during the weeks before Christmas, in the small mining town of fictitious Granhyttan in Bergslagen, Sweden. One day a suspicious couple, Signe and Orvar, arrives in the small town and retires in an abandoned hut. Nobody knows what they up to; but strange things starts to happen as Staffan finds a gold nugget while playing in a disused mine at the Kråkberget Mountain during a skiing trip with his schoolmates. Staffan believes the nugget is a part of Skarp-Erik's gold, as his grandpa had told exciting stories about. The news about the gold discovery spread quickly and Staffan and his friends are soon pursued by curious schoolmates, school staff and also the mysterious strangers. All this happens as the students are rehearsing for the nativity play before Christmas break.