I should have known the holiday was going to be characterful when I tried to unlock the wrong cabin and nearly gave a local pensioner a heart attack. There I was, jabbing my key at a weathered red hut near the water, wondering why the blessed thing would not turn, when the door swung open to reveal a wiry chap in woollen long johns holding a filleting knife. Turns out my actual Roan cabin was two hundred metres further down the gravel track, hidden behind a copse of birch trees. I apologised in what I thought was Norwegian but was apparently, according to him, "Swedish with a cold." He introduced himself as Oddvar, laughed like a drain, and insisted I come back later for cod he was catching that afternoon.

The drive from Trondheim had been spectacular enough, winding through fjord country with mountains rising on either side like great grey shoulders. But nothing prepared me for the parade of personalities that awaited in this quiet corner of South Trondelag.

My neighbour at the proper cabin was a woman named Sigrid who appeared the next morning bearing coffee and a sceptical expression. She was seventy-ish, built like a fire hydrant, and had lived in Roan her entire life. Within ten minutes she had established my marital status, my opinion on Brexit, and my complete unsuitability for Norwegian winters. "You English," she said, pouring me a cup so strong it could have stripped paint, "you think wool is a fashion choice." She came back daily, each time with some small observation about my incompetence, delivered with a warmth that took me several days to properly detect beneath the bluntness.

At the village shop, barely more than a shed with a till, I met Arnt, who ran the place with the leisurely pace of a man who had never once checked a watch. I asked for bread. He asked what I intended to put on it. Brown cheese, I suggested. He sighed heavily, a sound like a deflating lilo, and spent twenty minutes explaining why the particular brand I had chosen was, in his estimation, "for children and Americans." He sold me a different one, made me try a slice there and then, and watched my face with the intensity of a hawk considering a vole. It was sharp, caramel-adjacent, and genuinely excellent. He nodded once, satisfied, and only then wrapped it up.

The absolute highlight, though, was the evening I spent at Oddvar's actual cabin, the one I had mistakenly tried to enter. He had not forgotten my promise to return, appearing at my door at precisely six with a bucket of cod and a bottle of aquavit that looked older than I was. His wife, Gudrun, presided over a wood-fired stove with the authority of a ship's captain, occasionally interjecting into Oddvar's stories with corrections he entirely ignored. They argued about whether the 1992 storm or the 2001 storm had been worse, about whose grandmother made better lutefisk, about whether I should be allowed more aquavit given my evident lightweight status.

A young fellow named Einar turned up midway through, apparently Oddvar's grandson, home from studying in Trondheim. He regarded me with the weary tolerance of someone who had watched his grandfather collect stray foreigners before. "He does this every summer," Einar confided, helping himself to potatoes. "Last year it was a German cyclist. Year before, some Dutch birdwatchers." He made it sound like a mild medical condition, which perhaps it was.

What struck me, nursing my aquavit and watching these four generations of Roan inhabitants bicker and tease and seamlessly include this bumbling English intruder, was how little I had actually planned for this trip. I had researched hiking routes, noted boat hire places, packed appropriate footwear. I had not packed for being adopted by a family of strangers who found my incompetence with fish gutting genuinely entertaining.

Sigrid appeared at my departure, as I had somehow known she would, with a packed lunch and a final assessment. "You did better than expected," she conceded, which from her counted as a rave review. Oddvar waved from his doorway, already, I suspected, scouting for next summer's project.

I drove away slowly, gravel crunching beneath the tyres, already certain I would return. Some holidays you remember for the views. This one I will remember for the people who could not believe I had tried to break into their home, and who decided to keep me anyway.