Juuso, Late, and Pyry return from military service to their small village in the Finnish countryside. Finding work is difficult there, so Juuso decides to take a job on a Norwegian oil-drilling platform. Late could start working on his family's chicken farm, but he wants to break free from his father, who has a new wife. Looking for work in Gothenburg, Sweden, he only runs into more problems and is deported back to Finland. Pyry would like to take over his late father's farm, but family quarrels over the estate make him quit his agricultural studies, and he and drifter Late take jobs in a steel mill in southern Finland.—Markku Kuoppamäki