I have never been brilliant at reading maps, which is how I ended up driving past the turning for our koppang three times before finally spotting the little wooden sign half-hidden by birch trees. My partner sat in the passenger seat doing that patient breathing thing they do, while I muttered about Norwegian road signage being "deliberately cryptic." The truth, of course, was that I had been too busy admiring the pine forests rolling past to notice the Sat Nav had given up on us entirely.

We were staying in a proper timber koppang near Koppang village in Hedmark, the sort of place built from dark-stained logs with a grass-tufted roof that makes you feel like you have wandered into a folk tale. The owners had left the key under a painted stone by the woodshed, which felt thrillingly illicit until I dropped it down a gap between the deck planks and spent ten minutes fishing it out with a stick. Holiday magic, I told myself. Pure holiday magic.

The koppang itself smelled of resin and old fires, and the first thing I did was walk straight into a low beam near the sleeping loft. I am still sporting the bruise as a souvenir. But the windows looked out onto nothing but spruce and sky, and when I finally stopped rubbing my forehead, I felt that particular calm that only comes from being properly removed from everything.

We had arrived in late June, armed with ambitious plans for walking. The weather app had promised a week of golden Norwegian summer, and I had packed accordingly: one pair of walking boots, three T-shirts, and a misplaced confidence that we would be striding through sun-drenched meadows like characters in a tourism brochure. The first morning delivered on this fantasy. We set off on a trail from the edge of the village, following a marked path through birch woodland that opened suddenly onto the banks of the Glomma river. The water moved brown and unhurried, and we walked for hours along the shore, stopping to watch a heron stand motionless in the reeds. I took approximately forty photographs of the same heron, convinced each one was artistically distinct.

By afternoon the sky had begun to bruise. The temperature dropped ten degrees in what felt like ten minutes, and what had been a pleasant riverside stroll became a brisk march back through spitting rain. We arrived at the koppang damp and slightly chastened, me in my optimistic T-shirt, my partner giving me the look that said "I did suggest a jacket" without actually saying it.

The weather had apparently not finished with us. The next three days brought what the locals cheerfully called "changeable conditions," which translated to sudden downpours, bursts of fierce sunshine, and one memorable afternoon of hail that sounded like someone emptying a bucket of gravel onto the grass roof. Our walking plans adapted accordingly. We learned to set out early, to pack layers with Scandinavian thoroughness, and to treat every promising blue patch in the sky as potentially temporary.

There was something rather wonderful about this enforced flexibility. One morning we abandoned a longer hike entirely when the clouds lowered, and instead spent hours wandering the immediate woodland around the koppang, finding a small lake we would never have discovered otherwise. The water was freezing, obviously, but I waded in up to my knees because it seemed important to commit to the experience. My feet went numb in approximately ninety seconds. I emerged feeling idiotically pleased with myself.

The river walks remained our favourite, even when the weather turned. There is something about the Glomma's wide, steady presence that suits dramatic skies, and we grew to enjoy the moments when sunshine broke through suddenly, illuminating patches of forest on the far bank like stage lighting. We saw moose tracks in the mud, though never the moose itself, which my partner decided was "probably for the best" after I admitted I had no idea how to behave around one.

By our final day I had become almost competent at predicting the weather, or at least at packing sufficient clothing to survive my wrong predictions. We did one last long walk along the river, the sun actually holding steady for once, and I found myself strangely grateful for the rainy days. They had forced a slower pace, a closer attention to what was immediately around us rather than striding purposefully toward some distant viewpoint.

Back at the koppang that evening, I built a fire in the wood stove with the confidence of someone who had now done it six times without setting anything unintended alight. The timber walls creaked gently as they cooled. Outside, the light faded slowly through shades of grey and rose, the Norwegian summer evening stretching long past anything reasonable.

I thought about my map-reading failure on arrival, the key down the planks, the heron photographs I would never actually sort through. The bruise on my forehead had yellowed to something almost decorative. This was the shape of the holiday, I realised: not the efficient execution of plans, but the slightly bumbling accommodation of whatever actually happened. The weather had not cooperated, and I had not packed brilliantly, and none of it had mattered as much as I would have expected.

We left early the next morning, me checking the Sat Nav three times before pulling onto the main road. The koppang disappeared behind the trees, and I felt that small familiar ache of leaving somewhere that has briefly become yours. I also felt, though I did not mention this to my partner, a certain pride in having finally learned where the turning was.