‘Yes, please,’ she answers his wordless question. ‘But seriously, what’s that smell?’ she asks and watches as he opens the tap to the cask of Spitfire without answering.

As usual, Odd Marklund’s heart is the first to soften.

‘He has bought an air purifier,’ he says. ‘It’s coming from the bog.’

Egil Jenssen, Jaap Kloes, and Odd Marklund, all three born in the village, all three once active in the fishing industry, Jenssen and Kloes as cod fishermen while Marklund was the foreman at the Loke factory, where he was in charge of shrimp peeling and packaging before ‘they moved the whole thing to Latvia and this guy had to start walking around, hat in hand’, which he points out to the long-suffering people around him at least once a day.

Retired now, the three of them provide the lion’s share of the Hare and Crow’s revenue, according to their own assertions. That may not be entirely wide of the mark, but the fact is that Langevik’s last remaining pub is full almost every night. The village, which just ten years ago was considered a remote, godforsaken backwater, has since been attracting more and more people to what estate agents today like to describe as authentic and close to the sea. There are still retired – and even a handful of active – fishermen, customs agents, and pilots living there, but an increasing share of their neighbours are IT technicians, market developers, economists, and engineers.

House prices have skyrocketed, and Karen knows she would be able to get more money than she could ever have dreamed of for her sandstone house with its slate roof and sea shed, if she ever felt like selling. The undisturbed location, as the last house on Langeviksvej, has made several estate agents drop hopeful solicitation letters in her postbox down by the turning area.

But the thought of selling has never crossed her mind. The long commute to and from work is amply compensated by the fact that the last thing Karen Eiken Hornby sees every night before she pulls down the blind in her bedroom is the unbroken horizon where the sky meets the North Sea. Besides, she can always stay over at Marike’s studio in town if it’s late. Or there’s been too much wine.

‘Oh no, Arild, please,’ she says now. ‘It smells worse than that time you served rakfisk.’

Another chorus of raucous laughter at the memory of the time when the pub had to be evacuated while Arild Rasmussen cleaned out every last trace of his failed attempt to honour his Norwegian roots with the famous salted – and pungent – fish dish.

‘I’m taking this outside,’ Karen says, picks up her pint and walks through the door to the right of the bar.