I have never been so relieved to see a wooden cabin in my life, and that includes the time I got caught in a hailstorm near Aviemore. The drive from Alesund to Straumgjerde had been nothing short of spectacular, winding through More og Romsdal's fjord country with mountains that looked like they'd been painted by someone showing off. But somewhere near Skodje, in my excitement to spot an eagle, I managed to send my phone sliding down the gap between the passenger seat and the centre console. There it stayed, chirping useless directions while I circled a roundabout three times, growing increasingly convinced I was being mocked by Norwegian road signage.

By the time I pulled up at the cabin, I was forty minutes late, slightly sweaty, and making promises to various deities about never buying a car with such aggressively narrow gaps again. The owner, a chap called Arvid with the sort of practical calm that Scandinavians seem to absorb from their furniture, simply handed me the keys and pointed out that the sunset would be worth the delay. He was not wrong.

The cabin itself sat where a small river met something even smaller, the water chuckling past in a way that immediately made my shoulders drop about three inches. I dumped my bags with the grace of a sack of potatoes and stepped onto the deck, and that was more or less where I stayed for the next several hours. The evening light came sidling through the birch trees, turning everything golden and slightly unreal, and I realised with some embarrassment that I had been holding my breath without knowing it. Not from the drive, though that had been special enough. From everything, really. From emails and deadlines and the general hum of pretending to be busy.

I had brought three books, which now strikes me as optimistic verging on delusional. I read perhaps six pages of the first one over the entire week, always distracted by something more interesting. A kingfisher. The particular way light moved across the water at half past four. The discovery that I could identify exactly zero of the birds singing outside, despite owning a supposedly comprehensive guide to European fauna that I had never opened.

The days developed a rhythm so gentle it barely qualified as rhythm at all. Morning coffee on the deck, wrapped in a blanket because Norwegian summer mornings have opinions about warmth. A slow walk to the small jetty, where I would sit with my feet dangling and contemplate swimming before sensibly deciding against it. The water was not cold, Arvid had mentioned, which in Norwegian terms meant it would probably not kill me immediately. I remained unconvinced.

There was a village shop within walking distance, though walking distance expanded considerably when you had nothing pressing to return to. I made the trip most days, buying bread and cheese and occasionally something from the freezer that claimed to be fish but required significant imagination. The woman who ran it recognised me by day three, which felt like an achievement of sorts, and we conducted our transactions in a mixture of my broken Norwegian and her patient English, both of us pretending this was perfectly normal.

What struck me, and what I keep returning to when people ask about the holiday, was how little I needed to do to feel completely occupied. I did not hike any famous trails, though several apparently existed nearby. I did not take a ferry to any islands, despite their evident proximity. I sat. I watched the light change. I learned that birch leaves make a particular sound in a breeze that I had never noticed before, and that this sound is somehow enough to fill an afternoon if you let it.

On my final morning, I found my phone still wedged in that ridiculous gap, battery long dead. I fished it out with a coat hanger borrowed from Arvid, who did not ask why I needed it and simply produced one from a shed that clearly contained solutions to problems I had not yet imagined. The screen lit up with notifications, hundreds of them, all suddenly meaningless. I turned it off again and went back to the deck.

The eagle, I should mention, never appeared. I saw it on my last afternoon instead, circling high above the river while I pretended to read my book. It was smaller than I expected, and more magnificent, and completely uninterested in my presence. I watched until it drifted out of sight, then closed the book entirely and simply sat there, doing nothing at all, which turned out to be exactly what I had needed.