I had been travelling for the better part of sixteen hours by the time I finally laid eyes on Seiland, and my first thought was: "Blimey, I have absolutely no idea where my left wellie has gone."

The mishap, you see, had occurred at Alta airport. In my jet-lagged stupor, whilst wrestling a rucksack the size of a small caravan from the luggage belt, I had managed to deposit one green wellington boot into the bin beside the carousel. I only realised this three hours later, halfway along the E6, when I went to change into something sensible for the Arctic terrain and found myself staring at one boot and one very sorry-looking trainer. My travelling companion found this hilarious for approximately four minutes, then remembered we had another two hours of driving ahead.

The road to Hammerfest is the sort that makes you understand why Norwegians are so famously stoic. Mountains rise on either side like great grey shoulders hunched against the wind, and the occasional reindeer regards your passing with the weary indifference of someone who has seen far too many lost tourists. We stopped once at a petrol station that sold nothing but hot dogs, coffee, and an almost supernatural quantity of woollen socks. I bought two pairs and a chocolate bar that froze solid before I could finish it.

The ferry to Seiland is small and matter-of-fact, the kind that does not bother with announcements but simply deposits you on the other side with a gentle bump and the expectation that you know what you are doing. I did not, particularly. We bumped along a gravel track that my phone map optimistically labelled as a road, past clusters of red wooden houses that looked as though they had been painted in more optimistic weather, and finally arrived at a low white building perched at the edge of something vast and grey and breathing.

The sea, I mean. Though for a moment, in the half-light of a Finnmark afternoon in late autumn, it did seem almost alive.

The key was in a lockbox, which I fumbled with for an embarrassingly long time, my fingers already stiffening in the cold despite it only being September. The door opened onto warmth and the faint smell of woodsmoke, and I stood there in my mismatched footwear like a complete fool, suddenly and rather unexpectedly moved.

The cabin is simple in that particularly Scandinavian way that manages to be both modest and somehow exactly right. Wooden walls that have darkened with age and salt air. A kitchen window that frames the water as deliberately as a painting. I put the kettle on, more from British instinct than actual thirst, and stood watching a fishing boat cut slowly across the fjord, leaving a wake that seemed too white against all that grey.

My companion had wandered outside and returned reporting that the air smelled of "cold and fish, but in a good way," which I suppose is as accurate a description of northern Norway as any. We unpacked badly, leaving bags half-open in corners, too tired to be organised, too exhilarated to care.

That first evening, we did almost nothing. Ate bread and cheese from the Hammerfest co-op. Drank tea. Watched the light fade in that strange Arctic manner where it does not so much set as simply give up and wander off. I kept checking for my missing wellie in the way one does with lost things, half-convinced it would turn up in an unexpected place, though of course it never did.

I fell asleep to the sound of water against rocks, that particular rhythm that seems to belong to northern coasts everywhere, and woke once in the night to find the sky doing something complicated and greenish that I later learned was probably the earliest whisper of aurora season.

The left wellie, I should mention, never did make a reappearance, though I like to imagine it having adventures somewhere in Finnmark, perhaps repurposed as an emergency flowerpot or a very small boat for mice. I bought replacement boots in Hammerfest the next morning, proper Arctic ones with thick soles and no sense of humour whatsoever.

But standing there in that first hour, one foot in a trainer that was already damp from the grass, the other in a wellie that suddenly felt rather smug about its continued existence, I felt something shift. The particular relief of arrival after long journeying. The quiet pride of having got yourself somewhere genuinely remote through nothing but stubbornness and poor footwear choices.

Seiland does not welcome you with fanfare. It simply lets you in, offers you a view of the Barents Sea, and assumes you will figure out the rest. I am still figuring it out, to be honest. But I am doing so with warm feet, at last, and the growing suspicion that one lost wellie was a fair price for all of this.