EUROPE’S LAST WILDERNESS

With escaped droplets of milk caught in the grey fuzz of his jaw and a fanatical look upon his face, Jack is hurtling in my direction. He stops at my feet and stares up at me with tawny brown eyes and rectangular pupils while delivering a series of quick kicks to my shin – his way of demanding more milk. A lovable rogue of mottled, chestnut brown wool that barely registers above my knees, Jack was orphaned as a lamb and taken in by young local couple Harriet Olafsdóttir av Gørðum and John av Gørðum, who found him cold and alone on a nearby mountaintop. Now he lives at their farm, Hanusarstova, in the village of AEðuvík (population 102), among 13 chickens, two dogs, a cat, and his tiny black-and-white stepsister, Domino.

Being brought to reckoning over a bottle of milk by a plucky ram at an isolated farm is not the trip highlight I had envisioned. But this European outpost is not a place that humours expectations. Here, conventions are proudly defied