The ferry from Bergen dropped us at the quayside in what I can only describe as horizontal rain, and I immediately discovered that my so-called waterproof jacket had been lying to me for three years. There I stood, watching the boat shrink back towards the city, with a dark patch spreading across my left shoulder that suggested I'd been hit by a paintball rather than a light June drizzle.

My other half, who had sensibly packed an actual Norwegian-style rain cover, found this hilarious. I did not. We had a hire car waiting, a little red thing with windscreen wipers that moved with the frantic energy of a dog wagging its tail, and we set off along the E39 with the heating blasting against my damp dignity.

The thing about Hordaland in early summer is that it refuses to commit. One moment the fjord beside the road turns that impossible milky turquoise, the next you're driving through cloud so thick you could lose a sock in it. We wound past Oystese, where cherry trees clung to their last blossoms in orchards that must look magnificent in full sun, and then turned inland toward Espe. The valley narrowed, the road became a single track with grass growing down the middle, and suddenly there were no other cars at all.

I had booked what the website called a "traditional Norwegian holiday home," which in my mind meant something rustic but fundamentally cosy. What I had not fully processed was that "traditional" in this context meant built to withstand winters that would make a polar bear reconsider its life choices. The house sat alone on a small rise above a lake, painted that deep red-brown that seems to belong specifically to Scandinavia, with white trim around windows that were comically small by modern standards. A thin wisp of smoke came from the chimney. Actual smoke. Someone had been there to light the wood burner in anticipation of our arrival, which I found both touching and slightly alarming, as though we were expected to need emergency warming in June.

The key was in a little metal box with a code, and I fumbled it twice because my fingers were still not fully functional after the ferry incident. When the door finally opened, the smell hit me first: wood smoke, something faintly of pine, and that particular scent of old timber that makes you think of stories told in low light. The interior was darker than I expected, with small windows designed more for keeping heat in than letting light flood through. In winter, I realised, this place would be a fortress against the dark and cold. In June, with the midnight sun just beginning to fade into something approaching actual night, it felt like stepping into a different timezone entirely.

I stood in the doorway for a moment, dripping slightly onto the mat, and understood something I had not before. The seasons here do not merely change; they dictate. This house was not a backdrop to our holiday but a participant, shaped by centuries of needing to survive when the world outside became impossible. The thick log walls, the tiny windows, the wood burner dominating the main room, even the steeply pitched roof outside, all spoke of a place that knew winter intimately and had made its peace with being needed most when nature was at its harshest.

My other half had already found the coffee and was figuring out the ancient hob. I changed into dry clothes and joined them, and we sat with mugs in the half-light of that strange northern evening, watching mist drift across the lake outside. The rain had stopped, though I suspected it was only gathering strength for another attempt. Somewhere a bird called, one of those sharp Nordic sounds that seems to carry further than it should.

I thought about the months to come, when this valley would be impassable and this house would be all that stood between its inhabitants and the weight of a Hordaland winter. I felt, in that moment, something like gratitude for arriving in the gentle season, when the house could relax a little, when we could leave the door open to the damp green world and not worry about the dark rushing in. We were borrowing it in its easier months, and it was lending itself to us with what I chose to interpret as generosity, though perhaps it was simply indifference, the patience of something that has stood long enough to find human concerns briefly amusing.

The wood burner crackled. I finished my coffee. Outside, the light shifted again, neither day nor night but that particular Norwegian in-between that makes you lose track of time entirely. I decided not to check my watch. The season had its own rhythm here, and for a few days at least, I would try to match my step to it.