Halvar Björk

- Now I will read some poetry for you all. The conditions are as follows: If during my reading I notice the least sign of disinterest, a yawn or a cough or a gesture of impatience, I will immediately terminate the reading. Poetry, like all deeper human activities, requires concentration.

A recently separated ladies' magazine reporter, a young couple who are in love, an unfaithful but jealous crane driver, a longing father and his unknowing daughter, the home coming fisherman's son who seeks reconciliation with his parents, the farmer who thirsts for tenderness. We meet them all in Svenska hjältar, a modern saga about the chipped heroes of everyday life.

Christer lives in a small town, he is a recently divorced taxi driver and church-yard attendant. He leads a dull small-town existence. But then a young couple arrives, Marie and Erik, and Christer starts a new life. He finds the mysterious Marie totally bewitching. She is a paralysed beauty, a double nature who is only able to talk and move her head. With an insurance fraud in the background the story turns into an erotic triangle drama.

One of the students in a school, a young girl, is found strangled. Everything indicates that the gym teacher is guilty.

Little Pu spends a summer in Norrland with all his relatives. He and his brother get to hear the story about the watchmaker who hung himself, learns to shoot with a bow and follow his father on a bicycle trip.

Summer of 1959. 11-year old Osvald spend his summer holiday with his parents in the countryside of Södermanland. His father has promised to play soccer with him and get some exercise. He also promised the locals to teach the church choir an Argentine mass. The father has a slight alcohol problem, so will he be able to do it?

A forty something man, Bosse, perpetually down on his luck but always optimistic, hopes to impress his new girlfriend by accepting a job as headwaiter at a remote boardinghouse.

Larry Pedersen, professor of psychology of religion, has just divorced when a student named Elisabeth student must take the exam before him. Later in the evening the same day, she is beaten by her boyfriend and then Pedersen offers her a bed for the night.

Roger and Lars are family men who live a life as a traveling construction workers on large sites worldwide. They are offered a very generous contract they can't turn down. One-years work for a ten year salary. All they have to do is sign and honor the contract. But they don't know where they are going or what they are supposed to build. Blindfolded they are brought to a place with summer the year round. At this strange place they meet fellow workers. Together, they realize that there is something very wrong in this paradise.

Esarparen is a man who a long time wished death of his wife and suddenly is accused of murdering her. He protests his innocence. Does he speak the true or is he the man who could kill his own wife? Either that or is it a third possibility that bypassed both the court and the press?