I have never been so relieved to see a caravan in my entire life. Three hours of driving from Aarhus, two wrong turns past fields that all looked identical, and one spectacular argument with a sat nav that insisted "Fuglso Strand" was somehow pronounced "Foo-gulls-oh," and there I was, standing in a gravel car park with my suitcase handle broken and my dignity in tatters. I'd managed to snap the thing clean off while trying to wrestle it from the boot, which meant I had to carry the whole thing like an oversized toddler all the way to reception. The woman behind the desk, Birgit, watched this performance with the patient expression of someone who had seen far worse. "First time in Djursland?" she asked, though it clearly was not a question that needed answering.

Birgit became my unexpected guide to the peculiar social ecosystem of Fuglso Strand. She introduced me to Preben, the groundskeeper, who was wrestling with a hedge trimmer that sounded like an angry wasp in a tin can. "German couple last week," he shouted over the noise, not bothering with preamble, "tried to barbecue on their balcony. Balcony! I said to them, I said, this is Denmark, not Barcelona." He turned the trimmer off and looked at me with sudden seriousness. "You're not German, are you?" I assured him I was not. "Good," he said, and the trimmer roared back to life, apparently concluding our interview.

My cottage was one of a cluster painted in that particular Scandinavian yellow that looks cheerful in sunshine and slightly apologetic in cloud. The weather, naturally, was doing both simultaneously. I was fumbling with my key when my neighbour emerged, a man called Henning who was wearing sandals with socks in what I initially assumed was irony. It was not. "You're the English," he announced, which again was not a question. "I knew an English once. Terrible at cards. You play cards?" I admitted I did not. "Probably for the best," he said, and shuffled back inside, though not before telling me that the hot water needed "coaxing" and that if I heard strange noises at night, it was probably just the pipes, "or the ghost, but mostly the pipes."

The ghost, it turned out, was local legend number three. I met Ingrid at the shared laundry facility, which was housed in a small building that smelled comfortingly of detergent and damp wood. She was folding towels with the precision of someone who had once been in the military, or perhaps still was. "Henning told you about the ghost," she said, again that certainty. "Henning tells everyone. There is no ghost. There is a badger. Very large badger. Henning cannot tell the difference between badger and ghost, which tells you something about Henning." She handed me a perfectly folded tea towel, though I had not asked for one. "You seem tired," she observed. "The English always seem tired. Or drunk. You are not drunk?" I confirmed I was merely tired. "Good. Drunk English cannot operate the washing machines. It is a rule."

That evening I sat on my small terrace with a cup of tea that I had made with the coaxable hot water, watching the light fade over the Kattegat. The badger, or possibly the ghost, rustled somewhere in the undergrowth. I thought about Birgit's thousand-yard stare, Preben's xenophobic gardening, Henning's sartorial certainty, and Ingrid's unexpected kindness beneath the briskness. I had come to Djursland expecting quiet and found something better: a small, self-contained world of people who had decided long ago exactly who they were and saw no reason to change for visitors. There is something deeply comforting about that, about being accepted not despite your oddities but simply alongside everyone else's. My suitcase still had no handle. I did not particularly mind.