The drive up to Oppdal had been going suspiciously well until I realised I had been following the sat nav to a farm shed three miles past our actual cottage. There I was, knocking on what I assumed was a particularly rustic holiday let, only to be greeted by a very patient sheepdog and a farmer who looked like he had seen this exact scene play out a hundred times before. "Novasol?" he said, before I'd even opened my mouth properly. I nodded, mortified. He pointed back down the valley with the kind of weary kindness you reserve for tourists who cannot read a simple map.

Twenty minutes later I found the proper place, a tidy wooden cabin perched on a gentle slope with the sort of view that immediately forgives all navigational sins. The Dovrefjell mountains were doing their dramatic business in the distance, and the afternoon sun was hitting the deck at that perfect lazy angle that makes you want to do absolutely nothing for as long as possible.

I dumped my bags with theatrical exhaustion and claimed a weathered wooden chair outside. This, I decided, would be my base of operations for the foreseeable future. The cottage had that particular Norwegian talent for being both simple and exactly right. Clean lines, a kitchen that actually had sharp knives, and windows positioned by someone who understood that the main activity here is looking out of them.

The next few days settled into a rhythm so gentle it barely qualified as a rhythm at all. Morning sun on the deck with coffee and a book I had been pretending to read since Christmas. The pages turned slowly, not through any fault of the author, but because I kept putting it down to watch nothing in particular happening across the valley. A bird of prey circling. Clouds performing their slow theatre. The occasional sheep making a questionable life decision on a distant hillside.

I did venture out, though never with much purpose. The centre of Oppdal sits barely a few miles down the road, a compact little place with a supermarket that became weirdly exciting and a couple of cafes where I practiced my terrible Norwegian on patient staff. I bought cheese that cost more than I care to admit and ate it in the car park like a man who had never seen a picnic table in his life.

There is a lake, Gjevilvatnet, tucked into the hills nearby, and I drove up there one afternoon with every intention of a proper walk. I managed perhaps twenty minutes before finding a flat rock in full sun and immediately abandoning all ambition. The water was that particular mountain green, and the silence had texture to it. I lay back and considered whether I had ever been this horizontal for this long without being asleep or ill. It felt faintly rebellious, this determined uselessness.

Back at the cottage, evenings stretched out in the Norwegian way, that endless golden light that makes you lose track of time entirely. I cooked simple things badly and ate them well. I finished my book, finally, though I could not have told you the plot with a gun to my head. Something about the main character reminded me of myself, which was either profound or simply proof that I had spent too much time alone with my thoughts.

On my final morning, I packed with the reluctance of a man who knows the motorway to Trondheim airport awaits. The farmer's sheepdog had been right, in his way. I was not where I thought I was, and that turned out to be the whole point.