I have never been so grateful to see a wooden sign with a reindeer on it as I was last Tuesday, after spending forty minutes driving in circles around what I am fairly certain was the same frozen lake three times. My partner had insisted we did not need the satnav, that the directions were "intuitive," and that Norway's roads basically look after you. Reader, they do not. Not when you have confused your left and right because you are too busy arguing about whether we should have stopped for petrol in Lillehammer. We had not stopped for petrol. We were running on fumes and marital goodwill by the time we spotted that reindeer sign pointing toward Gala, our cabin for the week, and I may have wept slightly.

The cabin itself sits in Oppland, which is the sort of Norwegian landscape that makes you feel simultaneously tiny and smug about your life choices. Gala is a proper wooden affair, all red paint and white trim, with a view across rolling farmland that in late afternoon light looks like someone has applied an Instagram filter to reality. We stumbled out of the car, still bickering about petrol station strategy, and were immediately silenced by the cold. Not the unpleasant kind, but that sharp, clean cold that feels like it is doing you good whether you like it or not. I took a breath that actually hurt and thought, yes, this is correct, this is what I paid for.

The first thing I noticed about the cabin was the kitchen. This is not normally how I operate on holiday. Usually I am a "where is the nearest pub" sort of traveller. But Gala's kitchen is the heart of the place, all warm pine and surprisingly decent knives, with a window over the sink that frames the sort of view estate agents would mortgage their grandmothers for. There was a proper cooker, a fridge that actually worked, and enough pots and pans to suggest the owners had once attempted something ambitious. I felt immediately judged by their quantity and quality, but also weirdly inspired.

We had brought supplies from a supermarket in Lillehammer, a frantic sweep through aisles of Norwegian packaging that left us with bread, eggs, some suspiciously pink fish, and a cheese that I later discovered was brown. The brown cheese was my partner's selection. He claimed expertise. I was sceptical but too tired from our circular lake adventure to argue. We unpacked onto the wooden counter, and I stood there in my still-wearing coat, realising that I had absolutely no plan for any of this food beyond "cook it somehow."

That first evening we made scrambled eggs with bits of the pink fish flaked through it, which sounds like something you would eat in a power cut but was actually rather wonderful. The eggs tasted of actual eggs, which I mention only because I had forgotten that eggs could taste of anything specific. We ate at the small table by the window, watching the light fade from grey to darker grey to that particular Norwegian darkness that feels less like night falling and more like someone gently dimming the world. The brown cheese sat unopened, watching us. We opened a bottle of wine we had also panic-bought, and I decided that this was absolutely the life for me, even if I had no idea what I was doing.

The next morning I walked to the local shop, which took twenty minutes along a road where I saw no other humans but did startle a hare the size of a small dog. The shop was one of those miraculous Scandinavian establishments that stocks everything from woollen socks to decent coffee to frozen reindeer meatballs. I bought potatoes, carrots, onions, and a packet of something labelled in Norwegian that I later translated as "stock for hearty occasions." I also bought more brown cheese, having decided that my partner's enthusiasm needed proper investigation, and a loaf of bread that was dense enough to use as a doorstop.

Back at Gala, I attempted what I grandly called a "root vegetable stew," which involved a lot of chopping and the realisation that I had never properly cooked on an electric hob before. Everything took longer than I expected, and I kept opening the oven to check on nothing in particular, just to feel busy. The stew was ready eventually, thick and orange and deeply comforting, served with doorstop bread and butter that tasted of somewhere specific and grassy. We ate in silence for several minutes, which I take as the highest compliment either of us is capable of paying.

The brown cheese, when we finally tried it, was sweet and strange and completely not what cheese is supposed to be. I found myself eating more of it than I intended, spreading it thicker and thicker on the bread, unable to decide if I loved it or was simply confused by it. My partner ate it with a look of vindication that I chose to ignore.

By day three I had developed a routine. Morning walk to the shop, sometimes with a detour to stare at the frozen lake we had circled in our car, now a completely different creature under proper daylight. Afternoon cooking project, usually something that took too long and involved me consulting my phone repeatedly for basic techniques. Evening meal at the window, watching the darkness settle, feeling smug about my domesticity in a way that absolutely would not translate to home.

I attempted Norwegian meatballs from a recipe I found on a website of questionable authority. They fell apart slightly but tasted of pork and nutmeg and something else I could not identify, served with lingonberry jam from a jar and those potatoes I had walked so far to acquire. I made a fish soup that was mostly cream and hope, using stock from a packet that promised hearty occasions and delivered something close enough. I baked a loaf in the cabin's oven that rose unevenly and tasted faintly of the previous tenant's cooking, which I choose to believe was cinnamon rather than anything alarming.

The local market happened on Saturday morning in a village hall I would have missed entirely without the shopkeeper's directions, delivered in English far better than my Norwegian. It was small and serious, tables of preserved fish and root vegetables and woollen things, with none of the performative cheerfulness of British markets. I bought cloudberries in a jar, golden and expensive, and a piece of dried fish that I was assured needed only butter and determination. The woman selling it looked at me with what I interpreted as scepticism about my determination, but I appreciated her honesty.

That evening I attempted the dried fish, which involved more preparation than I had anticipated and a smell that filled the cabin and made my partner retreat to the bedroom with a book. The result was chewy and intense and absolutely not for everyone, but I ate it with a sense of achievement that had nothing to do with flavour and everything to do with having persisted. The cloudberries I saved for our final morning, spread on the last of the doorstop bread with butter, eaten slowly while we packed the car and prepared to face the satnav and the roads and the journey home.

I left Gala with a jar of brown cheese in my bag, a recipe for meatballs scrawled on a supermarket receipt, and the certain knowledge that I am the sort of person who can cook adequately in a foreign kitchen if given enough time and encouragement from scenic views. We found our way back without circling any lakes, though I suspect this was luck rather than learning. The brown cheese lasted three weeks back in Britain before I finished it, spreading it thinner and thinner, trying to make it last, already half-planning when we might return.