I should have known the holiday had truly begun when I managed to leave my walking boots on the ferry from Solavagen. There I was, standing on the deck in a pair of borrowed supermarket slippers, watching my proper footwear sail off towards Festoya without me. My wife found this considerably funnier than I did, and my children have since added "Dad's ferry fail" to their list of greatest family hits.

The drive from the ferry terminal to Lauvstad had that particular quality of Norwegian coastal road that makes you forgive absolutely everything. Mountains rising straight from dark water, patches of snow still clinging to the higher slopes even in late spring, and the occasional red wooden house looking as though it had been placed by a particularly thoughtful giant. I drove slowly, partly for the views and partly because my slippers offered absolutely no grip on the pedals.

Arriving at the cottage felt like stepping into one of those Scandinavian dramas where everyone wears excellent knitwear and solves crimes between cups of coffee. The building sat low against the hillside, weathered wood blending into the landscape as though it had grown there rather than been built. My first impression was of extraordinary quiet, broken only by water lapping somewhere below and what I later learned was a very persistent local blackbird with opinions about territory.

The key was exactly where promised, which sounds unremarkable until you have experienced the alternative. Inside, the smell of wood and something faintly maritime, the particular scent of a place that has been closed up against the weather and is now letting you in. My children thundered upstairs to claim sleeping arrangements before I had even set down our bags. My wife opened the kitchen window and immediately declared we would be cooking fish at least twice daily, whether the children approved or not.

I will admit to a moment of gentle self-reflection standing on the small wooden deck that first evening. The slippers had been replaced by a pair of ancient wellies left thoughtfully in the utility room, and I was drinking a cup of tea that tasted better than any tea had reasonable right to taste. Somewhere between the ferry mishap and this quiet point, something had shifted. The need to be anywhere particular, to achieve anything specific, had simply dissolved. There was a barbecue to assemble, badly. There were clouds moving across the fjord that demanded watching. There was my youngest attempting to communicate with a sheep through the fence, with limited success on both sides.

The cottage itself encouraged this slowing down. Nothing was designed to impress, everything was designed to function. The kitchen had seen decades of breakfasts. The living room sofa had the particular give of furniture that has accommodated generations of slightly damp walkers. We found board games with Norwegian instructions we could not read, and played them anyway, inventing rules that became increasingly elaborate and unfair.

That first evening, we walked perhaps ten minutes along the lane, the children complaining heroically about the gradient until they discovered a stream worth throwing stones into. The light lasted forever, that northern generosity that makes bedtime feel almost optional. We saw no one, which felt like a gift rather than isolation. A car passed eventually, the driver lifting one finger from the steering wheel in that minimal Norwegian greeting that somehow conveys complete goodwill.

By the time we returned, the cottage had already become ours. The boots I had ordered online were apparently arriving in three days, which meant three days of wellies and slippers and not minding at all. I stood outside once more before bed, listening to the blackbird settle whatever dispute it had been conducting, and thought that sometimes the best holidays begin with small disasters. The slippers, I later discovered, had been photographed by my wife and distributed to extended family. They have become, in their way, as much a part of the story as the mountains themselves.