The ferry from Bergen dropped me off in what felt like the middle of a particularly wet Tuesday, though I'd been reliably informed it was actually late May. I'd spent the crossing practicing my Norwegian pronunciation of "Nappane" in the toilet mirror, which turned out to be time completely wasted since the taxi driver simply called it "the cabin past the Co-op" and that was that.

My first mishap arrived before I did. In my enthusiasm for the fjord-country aesthetic, I'd packed what I now recognise as entirely the wrong sort of footwear. Suede desert boots, if you can believe it. The sort you'd wear to a Shoreditch coffee shop, not a Hordaland spring. Within forty seconds of stepping onto the gravel track leading down to the cabin, I discovered that late May in this part of Norway translates to "everything is still actively thawing." My left boot filled with something between water and optimism, and I spent the remaining hundred metres doing a sort of lopsided hop that the taxi driver watched with what I can only describe as deeply Scandinavian concern.

The Nappane itself revealed itself gradually through silver birch still clutching last year's leaves and the fresh green of new growth just beginning to assert itself. It's a traditional wooden place, red paint fading to that particular pinkish shade that Scandinavian buildings seem to settle into after enough winters. The grass around it lay flattened in patterns that told of snow only recently departed, and patches of bare earth showed where the ground was still waking up.

What struck me immediately was the light. Or rather, the quantity of it. I'd forgotten, in my London-conditioned brain, that this latitude in late spring doesn't really do proper darkness. At half past ten the sky still held that luminous grey-blue quality, like someone had left a dimmer switch on low. It made the whole landscape feel provisional, as though night was merely considering its options rather than committing. I kept finding myself checking my watch, convinced it must be much earlier, then wandering outside again into that strange half-day that made everything feel slightly unreal.

The seasonal damp had its own character too. Not the miserable drizzle I'm accustomed to, but something more purposeful, more committed to its work. It hung in the fjord as low mist, softening the mountains opposite until they looked like watercolours left out in rain. Every wooden surface had that swollen, saturated quality of wood that's been wet for months and hasn't quite dried. The deck boards gave slightly underfoot, releasing that distinctive scent of creosote and pine and something else I couldn't identify, something that smelled of cold water and distance.

I spent my first evening doing what I suspect most people do at a Nappane in late May: sitting by the window with a cup of something hot, watching the light refuse to leave, and feeling vaguely fraudulent about my inadequate boots drying by the wood burner. The heating was still on, which felt telling. This wasn't summer, not properly. It was that in-between season where the world has technically turned but the land is still catching up, still releasing its winter stores of cold and wet.

A robin appeared at one point, looking frankly confused by the perpetual twilight, and I felt an immediate kinship. We were both slightly out of our depth, both adjusting to rhythms we hadn't expected. I'd come expecting the Norway of brochures, all midnight sun and wildflowers, and found something more honest instead: a place still shaking off its coat, still deciding whether to fully commit to warmth.

By the time I finally slept, around midnight in a body that insisted it was earlier, I'd already accepted that this trip would be shaped by compromise between what I'd imagined and what the season actually offered. The Nappane in late May doesn't perform for visitors. It simply exists in its particular moment, damp and light-strange and quietly stubborn, and you either adjust your expectations or you spend your time disappointed. I was still working on the adjustment, but the wood burner was warm, the boots were drying, and somewhere outside the endless grey-blue evening continued its slow fade towards something almost like night.