Karl Oskar's daydreaming and bookish younger brother, Robert, tired of being overworked and regularly beaten as an indentured farmhand at Aron's farm, reads about how wonderful life is in America and decides he is going to emigrate.

However, when Anna dies after gorging herself on uncooked porridge, which expands and damages her stomach, Kristina, devastated by the loss, agrees to Karl Oskar's plan and they begin making preparations to leave Sweden.

Meanwhile, Danjel Andreasson, Kristina's uncle, is being persecuted by Brusander, the local provost, for rejecting the official religion and holding fundamentalist religious services in his home.

Ulrika of Västergöhl, a former prostitute who is one of Danjel's followers, and her illegitimate sixteen-year-old daughter, Elin, also decide to come along, and Jonas Petter, a friend and neighbor of Karl Oskar, expresses an interest in making the trip to escape his unhappy marriage.

On board, Karl Oskar and Kristina meet Måns and Fina-Kajsa Andersson, an elderly couple heading for the Minnesota Territory, where they plan to settle on their son Anders' farm near a town called Taylor's Falls.

After finally arriving at the town of Stillwater, the party, with the help of Pastor Jackson, a friendly Baptist minister, finds their way to Anders' farm in what is now known as the Chisago Lakes area.

He just lives in a wooden shack, but the land is fertile, and Danjel and Jonas Petter choose fine tracts of farmland nearby.

Karl Oskar, however, heads deep into the woods to explore the lands along the shore of Lake Ki Chi Saga that he hears are even better.

Upon his arrival, he finds the topsoil to be of excellent quality and stakes a claim to the land for himself and Kristina and their family by carving his name into a tree overlooking the lake.

[1] Troell and Forslund went location scouting in the United States in September 1968, but found many of the lands were too developed or could not accommodate film equipment.

[10] Roger Ebert gave it four stars, praising it as a "masterpiece", "infinitely absorbing and moving", and likely more accurate than traditional stories about immigration to the United States.

[8] Immigration historian Roger Daniels has called the film "outstanding," as well as "arguably the finest social history in a commercial movie.

[27] In Sweden, the musical Kristina från Duvemåla by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, formerly of ABBA fame, was designed partly in reaction to Troell's films, particularly in differences in the set.

[31] They led to his receiving, and accepting, an offer from Warner Bros. to make Zandy's Bride, one of the first times a prominent Swedish director moved to Hollywood since the 1920s.