This didn’t please the ship’s captain, who responded with an irritated volley of cannon fire, before the terrified islanders sent a priest to apologise.”
A couple of local farmers, full of bravado (and probably beer) decided to take a potshot at it with their guns. “Once upon a time, during the English Wars, a British battleship anchored off the shore near here. “I’ll tell you another story,” begins Jørgen. In front, the water rolls and rolls from the horizon. Behind them, the oaks are stunted and gnarled, bullied by the sea winds so they stoop inland like a line of wizened witches. We reach the coast and follow a curve of beach fringed with smartly painted summer cabins. “In 1975, the Ministry of Nature sent a message to the Ministry of War to inform them the trees were ready. “You Brits took most of our fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen, so our king ordered the villagers to plant oaks for new ships.” Jørgen takes up the tale with a loud guffaw. “Those oaks on the left were planted during the English Wars,” Nette says, referring to a period of conflict between Britain and Denmark in the early 1800s. We pass a pair of teeming anthills and I’m ambushed by a low-hanging branch whose twigs whip across my riding hat. The track narrows, brambles catching at my trousers, and farmland gives way to a Hansel and Gretel forest of oak, silver birch and dark green pine. “And I like to eat them,” adds Jørgen, a detail you won’t find mentioned in the tourist brochures. “People have come to realise we need tourism as well as farming, and the tourists think the rabbits are sweet,” says Nette. “He released them in disgust and, well, here we are.” For a long time, they were seen as a major pest but then someone recognised their marketing potential and established a 13-mile hiking route dedicated to the rabbits. “An islander ordered some chickens from the mainland, but rabbits were sent by accident,” Jørgen tells me. But the island is best known for its rabbits, which lollop more casually from the trail before us. Read more: Meet the maker: the oyster king of DenmarkĪ hare with dark ears freezes at our approach before tearing over the brow of a field. An old thatched cottage sits at the edge of a wood, a hydrangea blooming purple and pink outside and a wolf perhaps waiting within. Crows flap across big skies above fields of wheat and mixed wild flowers. The landscape is fertile ground for such imaginative flourishes. It’s the stuff of fairytales in the country of Hans Christian Andersen, a piece of local history with a twist to delight and scare the children. Three of them were shot, but the fourth was never caught. One day, a neighbour was milking his cow when he looked up to see a lion stalking him! The animals had escaped, you see. “See that house? In the 1940s, a lion tamer lived there with four lions. “There are so many stories,” Jørgen observes with satisfaction, as we ride a circular route through the south east of the island, our horses’ hooves clipping against pieces of flint. What really shapes this community is the colourful narrative of the island itself, the sense of identity forged in the fire of its legends and history, its rumours, anecdotes and incidents. But it’s quickly clear that life here is about something more than mastering the harbour and repairing the roads. This small island off the east coast of Denmark’s Jutland peninsula is home to an ageing population of just 150 people, which means the fit and able are kept busy putting on the many hats that need wearing to keep the community alive. There’s no room for idle types on Endelave. “I’m the island’s chief fire officer and policeman, too,” Jørgen tells me, as if worried I might judge him to be one of those idle types with time on their hands. When I first meet him, he’s astride a shabby red tractor, chugging across his farm’s stable yard to saddle up the horses he keeps for the riding tours he runs with his wife, Nette. He also repairs the roads and can turn his hand to a bit of roof thatching.