Tale of a Forest portrays animals and plants found in Finnish forests and surveys how they figure in folk customs and mythology. There are two narrators, a young boy and a grown man. The narrators say that the ancient Finnish people believed in a world tree that holds up the sky and existed before all other trees. Forests were regarded as the domains of beings from folklore, and human visitors were expected to pay due respect to the owners. The narrators talk about how natural phenomena and features in the terrain have been associated with folkloric concepts, such as different types of beings and specific gods, and how Finnish people in the past have related to these. There is footage of forests from the four seasons, beginning in winter and ending in autumn.
