Getting to Sjusjoen in Hedmark was meant to be straightforward, but I had already made a classic error before leaving Oslo airport. In my excitement about self-catering in a proper Norwegian cabin, I'd packed a bag full of what I thought were "essentials" - including a massive jar of Marmite, three types of cheddar, and a family pack of Yorkshire Tea. The funny bit? I had not checked the weight limit for the domestic flight to Elverum. Cue me at the check-in desk, frantically stuffing tea bags into my coat pockets while a very patient Norwegian woman watched with what I can only describe as polite concern. I arrived at the cabin clutching my dignity and approximately forty individual tea bags, which I later found had opened slightly in my pocket. My first impression of Sjusjoen involved picking dried tea leaves off my jumper while trying to locate the key safe.

The cabin itself, a traditional wooden hytte perched among birch and pine, immediately made the journey worthwhile. But my real focus was the kitchen. I had grand plans for self-catering Norwegian style, which I quickly discovered meant something rather different from my usual repertoire of beans on toast and Sunday roasts. The kitchen was well-equipped with a proper gas hob and decent oven, plus that essential Norwegian feature: a drying rack above it for ski gear, which I optimistically filled with my tea-stained coat.

My first morning, I attempted to cook like a local. I had brought eggs from a small farm shop near Elverum, and I tried making proper Norwegian eggedosis - essentially sweetened whipped egg yolks eaten raw with a spoon. The recipe looked simple enough in my translation app. What I produced was something closer to sad, slightly grainy soup. I ate it anyway, standing at the window watching mist lift off the nearby lake, and had one of those moments of gentle self-reflection. Here I was, a grown man who could manage a spreadsheet, defeated by eggs. Perhaps my relationship with food had been too transactional, too reliant on convenience. Perhaps I needed to slow down, to treat cooking as something meditative rather than merely functional. Then I remembered I had no bread for lunch and the nearest shop was a drive away, so I shovelled the rest of the eggedosis down and got in the car.

The local food scene around Sjusjoen is not about restaurants - it is about what you can source and what you can make. I found a brilliant little butcher in a nearby village who sold reindeer sausage and proper fenalar, that air-dried lamb leg that Norwegians have been making for centuries. The butcher spoke limited English, I spoke almost no Norwegian, and we communicated largely through pointing and appreciative noises. I came away with more meat than I had planned and a newfound respect for people who can dry meat in their sheds without killing anyone.

Back at the cabin, I attempted fenalar for supper. The slicing was my downfall. I had imagined thin, elegant sheets like you see in photographs. What I achieved was closer to ragged chunks, some thick enough to use as doorstops. I paired this with boiled potatoes, which I can manage reliably, and a packet of flatbrod I had found at a petrol station. The result was rustic, to put it kindly. But eaten at the wooden table with a candle burning and darkness pressing against the windows, it tasted absolutely right. The saltiness of the lamb, the earthy potatoes, the slight cardboard quality of my flatbrod - it all made sense together.

I became slightly obsessed with the local food economy. There was a small farmers' market on Saturday morning in a village hall, where I bought cloudberry jam from a woman who explained in elaborate gesture that her grandmother picked the berries. I nodded as if I understood, though I suspect I agreed to something I did not intend. I also acquired a wedge of brunost, that whey cheese which looks like caramel and tastes like concentrated dairy nostalgia. My first attempt at eating it was too generous - I had not understood how rich and singular the flavour is. My second attempt, thinly shaved onto warm waffles I made in the cabin's ancient waffle iron, was transformative. The waffles stuck slightly, as that iron had clearly seen decades of use, but the imperfections made them better.

My cooking improved marginally as the week progressed. I made a decent fish soup using local trout, though I overcooked the potatoes because I was busy watching a red squirrel raid the bird feeder. I baked bread once, using yeast I had found at a small supermarket, and produced something edible but dense. "Rustic," I told myself, which is what we call our failures when we are on holiday and feeling generous toward ourselves.

The self-catering experience became the holiday. Each meal required planning, sourcing, sometimes failing, always learning. I ate better than I do at home, not because the food was more sophisticated, but because I had engaged with it differently. On my final evening, I made a simple meal of the remaining fenalar, some good butter, new potatoes, and that cloudberry jam. I sat on the cabin's small deck as the light stretched long across the lake, and I thought about my tea-bag pockets and my eggedosis disaster and my ragged meat slices. I had come to Sjusjoen expecting outdoor adventure and instead found something quieter: the pleasure of feeding myself badly, then adequately, then with something approaching care. I left the remaining Marmite in the cabin for the next guests, a small offering from one self-caterer to another, and drove away already planning what I might cook when I returned.