When beautiful young Grace arrives in the isolated township of Dogville, the small community agrees to hide her from a gang of ruthless gangsters, and, in return, Grace agrees to do odd jobs for the townspeople.
Svein's best friend is a fancy rat named Halvorsen who goes missing during a pet contest, leading to chaos with newspapers reporting a rat invasion. To avoid losing both Halvorsen and the competition, Svein must work to keep his parents unaware of the situation.
A young writer named Espen Arnakke tells the story of his escape from the small Danish town of Jante. Espen boards a ship headed to Newfoundland, but the harsh conditions on board makes him jump ship, and he ends up in the little town of Misery Harbour. There he meets the girl of his dreams. But his passion shifts to jealousy when one of the men from the ship mysteriously appears in town, and sets out to make Espen's life a misery.