I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the wrong cabin. There I was, standing in the drizzle on Midsund, jiggling a key in a stranger's door while their cat watched me with what I can only describe as professional disdain. Ten minutes of this. Ten minutes of muttering "come on, you absolute menace" at a lock that was, in my defence, identical to the one on my actual rental. The realisation hit when a friendly local walked past and gently pointed out that my place was two doors down, helpfully adding that I'd been trying to break into the village's retired fisherman. I have never moved so quickly in wellies.

The drive from Molde had been spectacular enough to make me forgive myself, winding through those impossible Norwegian landscapes where every bend reveals another fjord, another mountain, another reason to question why anyone lives anywhere else. But hunger was setting in, and my first priority upon finally entering the correct cabin was to assess the kitchen situation.

The self-catering setup at the Midsund place was decent enough: good hob, oven that looked like it had seen some action, and a fridge that hummed with the confidence of an appliance that knows its job. I had grand plans. Grand, foolish plans. I'd stopped at a supermarket in Molde and loaded up on local produce with the misplaced confidence of someone who watches cooking programmes but never actually follows recipes. Stockfish, because when in Rome. Brunost, because the brown cheese is practically a religion here. Cloudberries, because they sounded poetic. Some unidentified root vegetable that I later learned was kohlrabi, though I spent three days calling it "the turnip-y thing."

My first evening's attempt at proper Norwegian cooking was, to be charitable, a learning experience. I had this vision of creating a rustic fish stew, something a weathered grandmother might approve of. What I produced was a grey, salty porridge that tasted of regret and poor timing. The stockfish, which I had not soaked adequately because who reads instructions, remained stubbornly chewy. I ate it anyway, standing at the kitchen window, watching the light fade over the water, telling myself this was character building. It was not character building. It was chewy.

Morning brought salvation in the form of the local shop, a proper community hub where I bought fresh bread still warm from wherever bread comes from, proper butter, and eggs with actual orange yolks. The woman behind the counter took pity on me, I think. She asked if I was the one who'd been at the wrong house. News travels. I admitted everything. She suggested I try the Saturday market in a nearby village, about twenty minutes along the coast, and wrote me a list of things to look for. Her handwriting was terrible. Her recommendations were not.

That market changed my entire approach. I found smoked mackerel so fresh and oily it practically glistened with health. Local lamb sausages, dense and herby, from a farmer who talked me through his flock with the enthusiasm of a proud parent. Potatoes, because Norwegian potatoes are something else entirely, waxy and full of flavour. I bought too much, as one does, and spent the afternoon in a cooking frenzy that was actually successful this time. The mackerel simply flaked onto that good bread with a squeeze of lemon. The sausages browned in a pan with nothing but patience and a little butter. I ate outside on the cabin's terrace, wrapped in a blanket because even summer here demands layers, and felt genuinely pleased with myself for the first time since arriving.

The rest of the week became a gentle rhythm of small culinary experiments. I learned to make proper rommegrot, that sour cream porridge that sounds odd and tastes like comfort itself. I failed at lefse, the soft potato flatbread, producing something closer to crackers than the tender rounds I'd imagined. I ate them anyway, with butter and sugar, telling myself they were "rustic." I visited the same local shop so often that the woman started setting aside things she thought I'd like: a particularly good cheese, some local honey, once a piece of whale meat that I politely declined with what I hoped was sufficient cultural sensitivity.

One evening, attempting to recreate a fish soup I'd had in Alesund years ago, I stood stirring and watching the sky do that prolonged sunset thing it does at these latitudes, where dusk lasts for hours in shades of pink and gold. The soup was acceptable. Not transcendent, but acceptable. And I realised something, standing there with my wooden spoon and my adequate dinner, that this was enough. The view, the quiet, the simple pleasure of feeding myself in a place this beautiful. I had come chasing some idea of authentic experience and found instead something quieter: the ordinary miracle of a working stove, a decent ingredient, and time to enjoy both.

My final morning, I made pancakes with the last of those eggs, ate them with the last of the brunost, which I had finally learned to appreciate in thin, cautious slices rather than the aggressive chunks of my first attempt. I packed slowly, leaving behind some dried herbs I'd bought, a note for the next guest about the oven's quirks, and a small piece of my dignity from that first day. The cat from the wrong house watched me load the car, expression unchanged. I waved anyway. Some holidays stay with you not for their perfection but for their small, human messiness, and this one had that in abundance, served with a side of surprisingly good smoked fish.