Jesper Johansson is the lazy and spoiled son of a wealthy Postmaster General, who has enrolled Jesper into his postman training academy hoping that it will reform him. Jesper deliberately underperforms, forcing his father to finally send him to the distant island town of Smeerensburg with the task of posting six-thousand letters within a year. If Jesper fails, he will be cut off from the family estate. Upon arrival, it is explained to Jesper by sarcastic ferryman Mogens, and bitter teacher-turned-fishmonger Alva, that the town's perpetually warring families—the Ellingboes and the Krums—comprise nearly all of the populace and hardly exchange words, let alone letters.
