Erkki Karu's silent drama Fugitives From Murmansk is based on the novel by Kaarlo Hänninen. In the autumn of 1916 in northern Finland, Saima, the daughter of Niva's house, rescues a man drifting in a river, who turns out to be German Lieutenant Braun. Braun and his six comrades have managed to escape captivity at the Murman railway work site, but the lieutenant has been separated from the lost group. While Braun recovers in the good care of Saima, Niva's neighbor and gendarme henchman, the greedy policeman Simpura, gets wind of the refugees camped in the wilderness.