I have never been brilliant at reading ferry timetables, and my arrival at Forresfjorden in Tysvaer proved this beyond doubt. There I stood on a windswept quay in late October, having misread the crossing schedule by a full two hours, clutching a carrier bag of soggy cinnamon buns from a Stavanger bakery and wearing what I now realise was optimistic footwear. The autumn rain had turned my canvas shoes into something resembling wet blotting paper before I had even reached the holiday cottage.

The drive from Haugesund had been spectacular in that brooding, Nordic way that makes you feel you have wandered into a particularly atmospheric crime drama. The road hugged the fjord, and everywhere I looked the hillsides were performing their annual colour show. Birch trees had turned the colour of old pennies, rowan berries blazed against grey rock, and the occasional spruce stood dark and disapproving among the chaos. It was the sort of landscape that makes a person from Surrey feel rather small and over-dressed.

When I finally reached the cottage, perched on a slope above the water, the light was already beginning its early autumn retreat. At this latitude in late October, daylight behaves like a guest who has overstayed at a party and is now making pointed moves toward the door. By four in the afternoon, the gloom was gathering in earnest. I fumbled with the key box, dropped it once into a patch of wet heather, and eventually stumbled inside with my damp luggage and slightly deflated ego.

The first thing that struck me was the smell. Wood smoke, certainly, from the stove that the letting agent had sensibly prepared. But underneath it, that particular autumn aroma of a house that has been closed up against the season, waiting. The air held a faint mineral quality, as if the fjord itself had seeped into the walls during the months of darkness. I later learned that this was simply how things were here from October through April, when the weather dominated daily life in a way that felt almost personal.

I lit every lamp I could find. The cottage had that typical Norwegian practicality, all clean lines and sensible storage, but in the encroaching autumn dark it felt unexpectedly snug. I pulled on dry socks and stood at the window, watching the last grey light dissolve over the water. The fjord had turned to polished steel, utterly still, reflecting the last embers of sunset from somewhere beyond the western hills.

That first evening, I understood something about seasonal living that my suburban upbringing had never taught me. In late autumn, this place did not apologise for its limitations. The deck chairs were stacked and strapped. The rowing boat sat upturned by the boathouse, its season clearly finished. There would be no midnight sun nonsense, no languid evenings drinking outside. Instead, there was the immediate, almost aggressive cosiness of making your small stand against the dark and the wet.

I ate my cold cinnamon buns by candlelight, feeling rather pleased with my own fortitude. The rain drummed against the windows with what I can only describe as commitment. Somewhere outside, a gust shook the birch trees and sent a fresh cascade of leaves past the glass.

By eight o'clock I was in bed, exhausted by weather and travel and the sheer sensory overload of so much landscape. Lying there in the dark, listening to the fjord breathe against the shore, I felt the particular melancholy of autumn press close. It was not unpleasant. There is something honest about a place that gives you exactly what the season promises, without pretence or performance. The summer visitors had gone, taking their expectations with them. What remained was something quieter, more demanding, and I suspected rather more rewarding if one could only stop dropping key boxes into the heather.

I woke once in the night to absolute darkness and the sound of rain. For a moment I had no idea where I was, only that the world outside had become very large and very wet. Then I remembered the fjord waiting in the blackness, the trees shedding their last leaves, the slow turn toward winter. I pulled the duvet higher and smiled into the dark, already knowing that this particular mishap of timing might turn out to have been exactly right.