I have never been so grateful to see a frozen puddle in my entire life. After driving three hours from Oslo Airport, convinced my sat nav had developed a personal vendetta against me, I finally spotted the wooden sign for Sjusjoen and promptly skidded into what I initially thought was a small lake. It was not. It was ice. I sat there for a good thirty seconds, gripping the steering wheel, wondering if this was how my Norwegian holiday would end before it had even begun. The cabin, when I finally located it, looked impossibly picturesque through the pine trees, like something from a Christmas card I would normally mock for being unrealistic.

The key was in a lockbox, which sounds straightforward until you realise your fingers have lost all sensation. I fumbled with the code for what felt like an eternity, muttering apologies to no one in particular, before the door swung open and the smell hit me. Woodsmoke, mostly, from the stove someone had thoughtfully prepared, but underneath it something else. Promise, perhaps. The promise of a kitchen where I would absolutely, definitely, without question become the sort of person who cooks wholesome meals from local ingredients.

I dumped my bags and immediately investigated the kitchen. Proper gas hob, decent knives, a fridge that hummed with ambition. I had brought three recipe books, which now seems excessive. On the counter sat a welcome basket from the letting agency containing coffee, some rather intimidating brown cheese, and a leaflet about the local area. I ate the brown cheese standing up, straight from the packet, because I am an animal and also because I had not eaten since Gatwick.

The following morning I drove the five minutes to the nearest Spar, which turned out to be a revelation. Norwegian supermarkets operate on a different frequency to British ones. Everything is cleaner, more expensive, and somehow more earnest. I spent twenty minutes contemplating different varieties of smoked salmon before selecting one that cost approximately the same as a small car. Back at the cabin I constructed what I can only describe as a breakfast of delusional confidence. Scrambled eggs with dill, the smoked salmon arranged with artistic intention, brown cheese on crispbread. I photographed it from three angles. It tasted, I must confess, absolutely magnificent, though I suspect this had more to do with the view from the kitchen window than my culinary abilities.

Lunch became my specialty, mostly because it required minimal commitment. I discovered a local bakery, if you can call a counter at the petrol station a bakery, selling something called skolebrod. Custard-filled buns with coconut, essentially, which I ate in the car like a fugitive. The woman behind the counter began recognising me, her expression shifting from professional warmth to something approaching concern. Four days in, she asked if I was staying nearby. I said yes, a cabin. She nodded slowly, as if this explained everything.

The real disaster, because there must always be one, came with my attempt at proper Norwegian meatballs. I had found a recipe online, bought minced meat and various spices, and approached the task with the misplaced confidence of someone who once successfully made a lasagne. The meatballs fell apart. Not gradually, not salvageably, but completely, into what resembled a rather sad bolognese. I stood over the pan, wooden spoon in hand, and felt something shift. Not despair, exactly. More like the recognition that I am not, nor will I ever be, the sort of person who makes perfect meatballs in a Norwegian cabin. I ate the meat-sauce-adjacent substance over boiled potatoes and it was, against all odds, rather comforting.

Dinners became simpler after that. Reindeer stew from a vacuum packet, which feels like cheating but tastes like forgiveness. Fresh trout from a man who sold them from his garage, payment via an honesty box that I overfilled considerably because I could not work out the exchange rate under pressure. One evening I simply ate bread and butter and a tub of something pickled, sitting on the deck as the light stretched impossibly across the lake.

On my final morning I made pancakes with the last of the milk, slightly burnt, eaten straight from the pan. The kitchen smelled of butter and woodsmoke and something else I could not name. I had not become a different person. My meatballs had failed, my breakfast photographs had been embarrassingly earnest, I had eaten too many petrol station buns. But I had also cooked slowly, eaten deliberately, watched the light change over the water while something simmered on the hob. That felt like enough. More than enough, actually. It felt like something I might try to remember, next time I am standing in my kitchen at home, eating cereal over the sink, wondering where the time went.