I should have known the holiday was going to be characterful when I got my first taste of Norwegian hospitality before even reaching the cabin. There I was, pootling along the E39 in my hire car, thoroughly pleased with myself for navigating Bergen airport without incident, when I realised with a cold sweat that I had absolutely no idea which side of the fjord I was supposed to be on. My phone had cheerfully died somewhere near Stord, and I found myself in a petrol station in Skanevik proper, gesticulating wildly at a map printed on a napkin while a very patient woman named Ingrid explained, for the third time, that I needed to go back the way I came and take the little road down past the church.

"You English," she said, not unkindly, shaking her head. "Always in such a hurry to be somewhere that you end up everywhere else."

This became something of a theme.

The cabin itself, when I finally found it, was tucked into the hillside above Skanevikstrand with that particular Scandinavian understatement that makes you feel simultaneously inadequate and deeply, inexplicably calm. Red paint, white trim, a view of the Hardangerfjord that made me actually say "blimey" out loud to absolutely no one. I was still standing there with my mouth open when a chap emerged from the neighbouring property, carrying what I initially thought was a small dog but turned out to be an extremely large and heavily oiled piece of driftwood.

"American?" he called out, which I have decided to take as a comment on my general bewilderment rather than my dental work.

"English," I corrected, and he nodded with the satisfaction of someone who had won a private bet.

This was Torbjorn, though he insisted I call him Tor, and he had lived in the house next door since 1978, which he mentioned approximately every four minutes. The driftwood, it transpired, was for his wife's garden project, though he confided with theatrical despair that she changed her mind about these things "like the weather in Etne, which is to say constantly and without warning."

Over the next few days, I found myself adopted into something between a neighbourhood watch and an informal therapy group. There was no escaping it, really. The cabin's terrace faced directly onto the little cluster of holiday homes, and privacy seemed to be regarded as a charming English eccentricity rather than a fundamental right.

Each morning I would emerge with my coffee, and each morning someone would materialise with commentary. On Tuesday it was Eldrid, Tor's wife, who came to inspect my attempts at outdoor cooking and left me with a jar of cloudberry jam and several unasked-for opinions about my fire-starting technique. "You are too gentle with it," she announced, watching me poke pathetically at some damp kindling. "The fire does not respect hesitation. Also, you need better wood. Tor! Bring the man some birch!"

Tor appeared, muttering about projects abandoned, and spent twenty minutes demonstrating the correct splitting technique while Eldrid supervised from my deckchair, which she had appropriated without discussion.

By Thursday I had accumulated what felt like an entire Norwegian extended family. There was young Magnus, Tor and Eldrid's grandson, who visited on his moped to practise his English and tell me elaborate lies about local troll sightings that I absolutely believed for far longer than I should admit. There was the postman, Geir, who delivered nothing to my cabin whatsoever but always stopped for a chat and once spent fifteen minutes explaining the proper way to dry fish, a subject I had not previously considered worthy of detailed instruction.

The woman who cleaned the cabins, I learned, was called Sigrid and had opinions about everyone. She told me about the German couple who had stayed in my place the fortnight before, their elaborate complaints about the shower pressure, their insistence on hiking in inappropriate footwear. "They did not want to talk," she said, with the particular disdain reserved by Norwegians for those who do not want to talk. "They wanted to photograph everything and be miserable about the WiFi. You, at least, you sit and you listen. This is better."

I was absurdly pleased by this assessment, which probably says something uncomfortable about my need for validation from strangers.

On my final evening, Tor produced a bottle of homemade aquavit and the three of us - Tor, Eldrid, and myself - sat on my terrace watching the light do that impossible Scandinavian thing where it simply refuses to properly disappear. We talked, or rather they talked and I listened, about the changes in the village, the young people leaving, the cruise ships that now brought different kinds of visitors, the particular quality of silence in winter when the tourists have gone and the fjord freezes at the edges.

"You will come back," Eldrid stated, rather than asked.

"I'd like to," I said, and meant it.

"You will," Tor confirmed, pouring more aquavit with the confidence of a man who has seen many English people fall under the spell of this particular hillside. "You are one of us now. The man who got lost at the petrol station. Ingrid still talks about you."

I drove away the next morning with the jar of cloudberry jam rolling around in my passenger footwell and a genuine ache in my chest that I had not expected from a holiday I had booked somewhat randomly on a rainy Tuesday in Crouch End. The fjord glittered behind me, and I found myself already calculating when I might return, already rehearsing the stories I would tell, already wondering what Tor's next driftwood project might be.

Some places you visit. Others, apparently, simply claim you, often through the persistent, generous, slightly overwhelming intervention of the people who were there long before you arrived and will remain long after you have gone, shaking their heads at your fire-starting technique and waiting for you to find your way back.