In medieval Sweden, a prosperous Christian patriarch named Töre Max von Sydow tasks his daughter Karin Birgitta Pettersson with a day-long trek to carry candles to a distant church. She travels with her servant Ingeri Gunnel Lindblom, a pregnant woman who secretly worships the Norse deity Odin, adding a quiet tension to the journey.
As the two women ride through the forest, Ingeri grows fearful when they reach a stream-side mill. She urges Karin to turn back, but Karin presses onward alone, leaving Ingeri behind at the mill. At the mill, Ingeri encounters a one-eyed man who speaks of things beyond ordinary sight and sound. When Ingeri asks his name, he enigmatically replies that he has none “in these days.” He claims he can perceive truths others cannot, and when he makes sexual advances and promises her power, she flees in terror. > "in these days"
Meanwhile, Karin meets three herdsmen—two older men and a younger boy—and invites them to share her midday meal. The encounter soon turns violent and tragic: the two older men rape and murder Karin. Ingeri, having caught up with the group, witnesses the atrocity from a distance. The younger boy is left with Karin’s clothing, and his guilt weighs heavily on him; he even attempts to bury the body with dirt but abandons the effort and runs off with the others.
The three men unknowingly seek shelter at Töre’s home, where the tension rises as Karin’s mother, Märeta Birgitta Valberg, becomes suspicious when a goat herder offers to sell Karin’s clothes to her. That night, Töre confronts the unsettling truth, and Ingeri—returning and breaking down—tells him what happened. In a fit of rage, Töre resolves to punish the murderers at dawn. He fatally stabs one of the older men with a butcher knife, hurls the other into the fire, and kills the boy as well, while his wife watches in horror.
Töre and his household then join a search party to recover Karin’s body, led by Ingeri. Töre, overwhelmed by grief, breaks down and prays to God, even as he admits he cannot understand why such a thing would happen. He vows to build a church on the site of his daughter’s death. As Karin’s body is finally lifted from the ground, a spring mysteriously erupts from the spot where her head rested. Ingeri uses the water to cleanse herself, and Karin’s mother carefully washes the dirt from her daughter’s face, a quiet, haunting ritual that marks the end of the immediate tragedy while leaving the moral weight of the events to linger.
