The ferry from Bergen to Askoy was meant to be the easy bit. I'd done the hard part: navigated the airport, collected the hire car, even managed to pronounce "Askoy" correctly to the woman at the petrol station without her wincing. But then I got on the wrong boat. Completely wrong. Ended up heading towards some island with a name I couldn't even attempt, surrounded by locals who looked at me with the sort of pity usually reserved for small dogs in raincoats. Twenty minutes of silent panic before I worked up the courage to ask the deckhand, who just laughed and pointed me back towards the right queue. By the time I actually arrived at the holiday home, I was starving, flustered, and had already eaten the emergency packet of oatcakes I'd packed for the week.

The property sat on a slope looking west over the water, all timber cladding and generous windows that made me feel slightly exposed, like I was on stage in a very Scandinavian production. The key was in the lockbox as promised, and I fumbled it open while my stomach made noises that surely carried to the neighbouring cabins. Inside smelled of pine and cleaning products and something else I couldn't place - woodsmoke, perhaps, from a previous guest's fire-lighting ambitions. The kitchen was immediately the centre of my attention. Not because it was grand, but because it was so obviously designed for people who actually cook. Proper knives, not the bendy sort you get in rental places. A frying pan with actual heft to it. I opened the fridge and found nothing but the previous guest's forgotten tub of something unidentifiable and a half-empty bottle of fizzy water. The shops, I remembered from my frantic googling on the wrong ferry, were back towards Kleppesto, a ten-minute drive.

I found the Meny supermarket just as it was closing, which in Norway means properly closing, not the British version where they let you wander guiltily while they stack chairs. The woman at the till was kind enough to let me grab essentials: eggs, butter, a lump of brunost that I kept seeing in every Norwegian fridge photo online, some smoked salmon that cost more than my airport sandwich had, and potatoes because I refuse to believe any northern European country doesn't do good potatoes. Back at the cabin, I made scrambled eggs on toast for supper at half past nine, standing at the counter because I'd not yet worked out which light switch did what. The brunost sat unopened, looking at me with its suspicious brown wax coating. I wasn't ready.

Morning brought rain and hunger in equal measure. I drove to the little harbour area I'd spotted the previous evening, hoping for a cafe, finding instead a honesty box stall with root vegetables and jars of something pickled. I bought carrots and a jar of pickled herring on impulse, then spent ten minutes trying to work out if I'd put the money in the right tin. Breakfast back at the cabin was smoked salmon on the dark bread I'd also grabbed, with coffee made in a cafetiere I'd had to hunt through three cupboards to locate. The salmon was absurdly good, oily and proper, nothing like the pink-tinged stuff from back home. I ate four slices standing at the window, watching a boat I assumed was probably heading somewhere I wasn't.

Lunch became the day's project. I'd found a recipe for fiskesuppe in a battered book on the property's shelf, and decided this was my moment. The fish counter at the Meny had cod and haddock and something the assistant called "sei" that I nodded enthusiastically about without understanding. I bought all three, plus cream, plus leeks that looked slightly different from British ones, plus a celeriac because it felt adventurous. Back in the kitchen, I chopped and sweated and simmered with the radio on, some Norwegian pop station I couldn't understand but found weirdly comforting. The soup took two hours. I burned the first lot of leeks because I was too busy trying to work out the induction hob's touch controls. The second attempt worked better, thick and pale and tasting of the sea in a way that made me feel briefly competent. I ate two bowlfuls on the deck, wrapped in a blanket against the wind, and felt genuinely pleased with myself until I remembered I'd forgotten to add the dill.

The brunost finally got opened on day three. I'd been building up to it, reading online about its caramel-sweetness, its place in Norwegian hearts. I shaved thin curls onto warm waffles I'd made using a batter that seemed wrong until it suddenly seemed right. The cheese was... not what I expected. Sweet, yes, but with a tang underneath, a faint sourness that made me keep eating to work out if I liked it. By the fourth waffle, I decided I did, though I couldn't say why. I ate them with strawberry jam from the same honesty box stall, watching the light change over the water, feeling very smug about my adaptability.

Dinner that evening was less successful. I'd bought lamb chops from the butcher's counter, reasoning that Norwegian lamb must be excellent given all the mountains. They were excellent, but I overcooked them into leather while trying to simultaneously roast the celeriac and make a sauce from the meat juices. The celeriac was underdone, crunchy in a way that wasn't intentional. I ate everything anyway, standing at the counter again, too tired to clear the proper table. The washing up took forty minutes because I'd used every pan. I opened a beer from the six-pack I'd bought and drank it looking at the dark water, feeling the particular loneliness of eating well badly in a beautiful place.

By the fourth day, I'd established a rhythm. Breakfast was always something on dark bread - smoked fish, or cheese, or the excellent butter that seemed worth the price. Lunch was soup leftovers or something assembled from the fridge without much thought. But dinner became my focus, my project, my way of marking time in a place without much evening entertainment. I made fish cakes from the leftover sei, bound with potato and fried until golden, served with the carrots boiled and buttered simply because I'd run out of culinary ambition. They fell apart slightly, but tasted honest. I made a stew with cheap beef shin and beer, simmered for hours while I read a paperback I'd found on the shelf, its pages swollen with damp. The meat became tender, the sauce dark and rich, and I ate it for two days running with more of those reliable potatoes, mashed with too much butter and a pinch of something from a jar labelled "kjottkrydder" that I assumed meant meat spice.

The local bakery, which I'd finally located in a small shopping area near the ferry terminal, provided my final morning's breakfast. I'd gone early, reasoning that fresh bread in Norway must be worth the effort. The woman behind the counter spoke enough English to sell me a loaf of something dark and seeded, plus a cinnamon bun that I ate in the car before I'd even started the engine, flakes of pastry falling down my jacket. Back at the cabin, I made proper coffee in the cafetiere I'd now mastered, toasted the dark bread, and ate it with the last of the brunost, shaved thinner than before because I'd learned that much at least.

I left the pickled herring unopened in the fridge, a small failure I decided to reframe as a gift for the next guest. The kitchen, when I finished wiping it down, looked as competent as it had when I arrived, though I knew better. I'd cooked badly and well, spent too much on ingredients I didn't understand, eaten standing up more often than sitting, and still felt something like pride in the whole messy business. The ferry back to Bergen was the right one this time, though I checked three times with the deckhand just to be certain.