The SatNav had other ideas about how to reach Lejre Vig, which is how I found myself wedged between two hedgerows on a farm track somewhere northwest of Roskilde, wondering if the nice man in the hire car office had secretly fitted me with a comedy GPS. Three-point turns in a Ford Focus are not my forte at the best of times, but in late October, with dusk arriving at half past four and a fine drizzle making everything faintly luminous, it felt like performance art.

By the time I actually found the turning, I was half-convinced I would be sleeping in a turnip field. Then the track opened up and there it was: a low wooden house with that particular Scandinavian glow in the windows, the kind that makes you think everyone inside must be drinking glogg and having meaningful conversations about hygge. I was not having either of these things. I was having a mild sweat and a strong desire for the loo.

The key was in a lockbox, which I fumbled with until my fingers went numb. The door opened onto warmth and that particular silence you only get in holiday lets in autumn - the heating ticking, the fridge humming, the absolute stillness of a place that has been waiting. I stood in the hallway with my ridiculous wheelie case and just breathed. The air smelled of pine and something faintly marine, which made sense once I clocked the fjord through the kitchen window, grey and flat and somehow more present for being so subdued.

I had worried, booking a Danish holiday home in late autumn, that I was making a category error. Everyone I knew had gone to Portugal or the Canaries or anywhere with a fighting chance of ultraviolet. But there was something about the light here that felt earned. The windows were enormous, clearly designed for maximum absorption of whatever sun might bother to appear. At this hour, with the sky doing that particular Danish thing of fading from pearl to lavender without ever quite committing to proper darkness, the whole room seemed to float.

I made tea with the supplies I had wisely packed, having learned from previous Nordic adventures that Danish supermarkets have unpredictable opening hours and a frankly superior attitude about Sunday trading. The mug warmed my hands. Through the glass, I could see the wooden terrace glistening, the garden sloping down towards reeds and water. A heron stood in the shallows like a disappointed referee.

What struck me, and what I kept returning to over the next days, was how completely the season had shaped this place. In summer, I imagined, it would be all barbecues and kayaks and children shrieking in Danish. Now it was muffled, contemplative, slightly melancholy in the best possible way. The house demanded a different rhythm. You did not rush to the beach; you walked there with proper boots and observed the mud. You did not eat salad on the terrace; you made dense rye bread sandwiches and ate them looking at the weather. The sauna, which I had initially thought a charming extra, became essential - not luxury but survival, a daily ritual of heating and cooling and watching steam rise into cold air.

I caught myself on the second evening, standing in the garden in my coat at six in the evening, doing absolutely nothing, and realised this was the point. The October dark had forced a slowness I would never have chosen but badly needed. The heron, I noticed, had not moved significantly in forty minutes. We understood each other.

The mishap with the SatNav felt less like frustration now and more like necessary disorientation. You cannot arrive properly if you know exactly where you are going. The season had made sure of that too, stripping everything back to essentials: wood, water, warmth, waiting. I went inside and put another log on the fire.