On a sunlit Finnish coast, Forester Sepe Heikki Kinnunen and branch manager Valtteri Leo Lastumäki kick off their summer vacation at a Kalajoki beach hotel, celebrating with hearty meals and another bottle of cognac as they hatch a plan they call Operation Sheep Eaters. The mood is light, but the seeds of a far darker scheme are sown as they relish good food, drink, and a sense of mischief that overshadows the days ahead.
The next morning, they head north through Oulu and spend the night in a travel home, waking up at four to the innkeeper’s knock and bracing themselves to carry out their plan as dawn breaks. Sepe swaps the car’s license plates, they spot a grazing flock, and Valtteri shoots one of the sheep. Blood is drained, the legs are chopped with an axe, and the rest is left for the owner by the fence. In a bid to cover their tracks, they mail a post office address for 150 marks, filling out the form with a typewriter to avoid leaving fingerprints.
With the evidence planted, the two men sail a motorboat to a lakeside island to camp, their mutton simmering in a cauldron as they trade politics and toasts. In a blur of inebriation, Valtteri staggers into the lake and refuses to dry off, leaving Sepe to nurse their hangovers with more brews. By morning, they press on, braising the lamb and planning their next moves.
Tired of island life, they drift toward the “paint village,” catching a glimpse of local cinema and arcades before returning to Suomutunturi for more downtime at the hotel. Yet the urge for another raid pulls them forward, and Valtteri shoots a second sheep. This time they dismantle the carcass and prepare an “Outer Mongolian robber’s roast”: the entrails are removed, the cavity stuffed with rice, potatoes, onions, and spices, and the lamb is sealed in a clay crust and cooked in a stone-lined pit with a steady campfire on top. While the roast simmers, the two drink and drift into crude musings about women, letting their philosophy drift between sarcasm and bravado.
When the roast is ready and the meat proves delicious, their appetites waver as they fantasize about trout and the pristine waters of Lapland’s mountain streams. A group of scantily clad German women canoeing on the opposite shore briefly interrupts their revelry; two of the visitors approach to buy food, and the men offer the roast, only for the women to recoil in horror at the butchered remains. The men redirect the moment, arguing that it somehow spared them from the clutches of “bad women.”
Their journey pushes north again, stopping at a liquor store and revisiting the gravel pit they’ve used as a sort of ritual space, where they reflect and argue about life’s basics. They decide to press on to Norway to glimpse the Arctic Ocean, a detour that seems to promise something larger than their earlier exploits. On the return trip, they run over a sheep and, fearing the fallout—particularly given Norway’s NATO ties and the risk of customs trouble—cast the carcass into a river and move on.
In the end, the two men—still thick with drink and a sense of reckless camaraderie—settle back in their gravel-pit campsite, a tent pitched, and feel as if life has returned to its old, familiar rhythm, even as their misadventures linger in memory and weather the edge of consequence.
