I have never been so relieved to see a wooden cabin in my life as I was when we finally pulled up to Birkenasen in Rena, Hedmark. The journey from Oslo had been straightforward enough, a couple of hours up the E6 through forests that grew thicker and more pine-scented with every kilometre. But then, in my infinite wisdom, I decided we needed "authentic local provisions" before arrival. Cue twenty minutes of me frantically gesturing at a bemused petrol station attendant in Elverum, attempting to ask where one might find reindeer sausage using only charades and misplaced confidence in my GCSE German. He pointed me toward a supermarket. I bought what I thought was cloudberry jam. It was pickled herring. We had no fridge yet. The car smelled interesting for the rest of the drive.

The cabin itself, when we found it, was everything the blurry booking photos had promised and then some. Proper timber construction, that particular hush you only get when surrounded by proper Norwegian woodland, and a kitchen that made me immediately want to cook something ambitious. This was, I should note, a dangerously optimistic instinct given my recent herring-based miscalculation.

We unpacked in that slightly manic way you do after a long drive, me still clutching my jar of fish like a trophy. The kitchen at Birkenasen is genuinely well-equipped, which is fortunate because Rena is not exactly bursting with late-night takeaway options. We were self-catering or we were starving. Given my track record that day, my partner suggested they handle the first evening meal while I "familiarised myself with the local area." I took the hint and walked to the village centre, which is about ten minutes of pleasant strolling through streets that feel genuinely lived-in rather than tourist-polished.

Rena's small but perfectly formed grocery scene became my salvation over the coming days. There's a Meny supermarket that stocks everything from basics to rather excellent local cheeses, plus a smaller convenience store where I eventually found actual cloudberry jam and felt disproportionately triumphant. The first morning, I attempted proper Norwegian breakfast: brown cheese on crispbread, boiled eggs, coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in. The brown cheese (brunost, if you're being correct) was an acquired taste that I acquired approximately halfway through my second slice, that sweet-caramel-savoury thing it does being weirdly moreish. My partner remained unconvinced and retreated to muesli.

Lunch became our most successful meal, typically cobbled together from whatever we'd gathered. Local sour cream porridge (rommegrot) from a packet I found at Meny, which I doctor with extra butter and cinnamon because I am not a purist and life is short. Smoked salmon on rye bread with dill from the little herb pot we'd optimistically purchased. The cabin's deck became our dining room, weather permitting, and Hedmark's September weather permitted more than I'd expected, that crisp golden light making even my slightly burnt attempts at Norwegian pancakes look almost appetising.

Dinners were where I properly stretched myself. The cabin has a proper oven and hob, no microwave reliance required. I attempted farikal, that traditional lamb and cabbage stew, using a recipe I'd screenshot in panic at Oslo airport. The cabbage smelled strongly of cabbage. The lamb, from the butcher counter at Meny, was genuinely beautiful, pale and lean and nothing like the over-trimmed supermarket stuff at home. It simmered for hours, filling the cabin with a smell that made us both ravenous and nostalgic for something we'd never actually eaten before. The result was hearty, unfussy, exactly right for the temperature dropping outside. I felt disproportionately proud, as though I'd personally raised the sheep and grown the cabbage rather than just chopped and simmered.

One evening we walked to a local pizzeria, breaking our self-catering streak, and it was perfectly decent in that universal Norwegian-pizza way. But I found myself missing our little cabin kitchen, the ritual of planning and preparing, the satisfaction of making something from what we'd gathered locally. This surprised me. I am not, by nature, a domestic goddess. My usual relationship with cooking is functional at best. Something about the cabin's calm, the absence of usual distractions, the genuine pleasure of local ingredients that tasted of where they came from, had shifted something.

By our final morning, I was making proper coffee without measuring, throwing together breakfasts with casual confidence, chatting with the woman at the bakery counter in Rena about which bread kept longest. I'd even found a use for that pickled herring, finely chopped through potato salad with fresh dill, my partner admitting grudgingly that it was "actually not horrible." High praise.

We left with fuller stomachs and, I think, slightly fuller hearts than we'd arrived with. The herring came home with us, a ridiculous souvenir. I still catch its faint whiff in the car sometimes, and smile.