Ove Rolandsen (Bjørn Floberg) is preoccupied with getting ahead in the world, and having a bit of fun while he does that. It's 1903, and he works as a telegraph operator in a town on the northern coast of Norway. He'd also like to marry Elise (Marie Richardson), the daughter of a local factory owner. She's very nice looking, and she's also interested in him, but there are two obstacles to their getting married. In the first place, she is the fiancee of a ship-owner whose connections are useful to her father's business. In the second place, he's not very well off. He applies himself to his second vocation, inventing, in the hopes of discovering something which will rectify his poverty, and in the meantime, doesn't mind going to bed with the town pastor's pretty wife.