The young ones assemble for a trip to the hill of St. John (Sankthanshaugen), to take part in the revels of rural festivity.
As the night wears on, elves dance in the forest, and Anne finds a flower, in Norwegian called "Keys of St. Mary".
The day after, the "right" couples decide to engage, which disrupts Mrs. Berg's plans of ruling the farm through Birk.
The flower Anne found has turned into a real key, and with this, her grandfather opens a box containing her father's will, long lost.
The comical figure of Julian Paulsen was at the time a satirical comment on the regular urban romantic, such as Johan Sebastian Welhaven.
Ibsen, through some of the protagonists, seems to think Julian is far from the truth of both folklore and rural life, and as the play goes on, we learn that he is unable to tolerate the farmers at all.
On the one side, represented by Julian, there is the naive and unrealistic idea of "nature" and "originality", or even "primitive life", seen from a safe urban setting.
Some of the themes are inspired by similar plays written by Henrik Wergeland and are used again fully in Peer Gynt.
Ibsen takes a lot of plot devices from Shakespeare's play: Puck (the nisse), the flower, the confusion of couples, the elves, and even the summer night itself.