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 Trondheim to our roros in Alen, South Trondelag, had been straightforward enough until I decided I absolutely needed to take the "scenic route" through the hills. Two hours later, my partner was giving me that look, the one that says "I love you but I may also leave you in a fjord," and I was desperately trying to convince Google Maps that yes, this gravel track was definitely a road.

The mishap came at the exact moment we finally spotted the cabin. I was so excited that I grabbed the shopping bag from the passenger footwell, the one containing our carefully selected provisions from Trondheim's Mathallen food hall, and promptly upended the entire thing onto my lap. A tub of rakfisk fermented trout opened. The smell was immediate, biblical, and deeply personal. My partner wound down the window in February. I sat in fish-scented shame for the final three hundred metres.

The roros itself, when we stumbled inside still laughing and gagging slightly, was everything the listing had promised and more. Exposed timber beams, a proper wood-burning stove, and a kitchen that made me want to cook immediately despite my aromatic disgrace. I headed straight for the shower while my beloved valiantly opened every window and lit enough candles to constitute a fire hazard.

Clean again and forgiven, I properly explored our kitchen domain. The owners had left a thoughtful welcome basket: local flatbrod crispbread, a wedge of gammelost cheese that I would later learn to approach with caution, and cloudberry jam that tasted like something from a childhood I never actually had but suddenly missed. I spread some on the flatbrod there and then, standing at the counter in my socks, and felt something shift. This was why we had come.

The next morning I walked the two miles into Alen's modest centre, partly for exercise, partly to escape the lingering ghost of rakfisk in my hair. The local grocery was small but determined, with a butcher counter where I managed, through pointing and enthusiastic nodding, to acquire pinnekjott lamb ribs. I had read about this Christmas tradition but it was March, and the butcher seemed amused by my tourist enthusiasm. He threw in a bundle of dried birch twigs for the steaming, miming the cooking process with the patience of a man who has explained this to many foreigners.

That evening I attempted my pinnekjott with the solemnity of a religious convert. Soaking the dried ribs, arranging the birch in the bottom of our largest pot, steaming everything until the meat pulled from the bone with gentle persuasion. I served it with mashed swede and the flatbrod, and we ate in silence for several minutes. It was not perfect. It was probably not even correct. But it was mine, and it was here, and the windows were steaming up from the cooking and the cold outside.

The following days settled into a rhythm of eating and foraging and failing. I tried to make lutefisk from a packet and created something that resembled wallpaper paste with an agenda. I visited the small Saturday market in a neighbouring village and bought reindeer sausage from a woman who spoke no English but communicated perfectly through expressive eyebrow movements. I burned the first batch of svele pancakes because I was too busy watching snow fall past the kitchen window. I ate them anyway, with brunost cheese that I shaved too thickly and loved too much.

My partner, who is the more practical half of our partnership, established a system. I would cook with ambition and enthusiasm. They would maintain the fire, manage the wine, and intervene when smoke became a genuine concern. We fell into this pattern naturally, the way you do in small spaces with big meals to prepare.

By our fourth evening, I had produced something genuinely decent: a fish soup using local cod, cream, and dill from a pot on the windowsill that I had convinced myself was thriving in the weak Norwegian light. It probably was not thriving. It was probably dying slowly and flavourfully. But into the soup it went, and we ate it with proper spoons and fresh bread from the bakery run by a man who opened at six in the morning and sold out by nine.

What I understood gradually, stirring and chopping and setting off the smoke alarm only twice, was that self-catering in a roros is not about culinary excellence. It is about the particular intimacy of cooking in a stranger's well-equipped kitchen, using ingredients you cannot quite pronounce, feeding someone you love with mixed results. The wood stove dries the air until your skin itches. The refrigerator is slightly too small and makes a noise like a disappointed sigh. You run out of something basic and have to improvise, and the improvisation becomes the story you tell later.

On our final morning I made one last attempt at those svele pancakes, and they were nearly right. Golden, soft, spread with the last of the brunost and cloudberry jam. We ate looking out at snow that had fallen overnight, covering my earlier footprints to the compost bin where I had buried the lutefisk disaster with appropriate ceremony.

I packed the remaining flatbrod to take home, knowing it would go soft in our English humidity and never taste the same. Some things belong to where you found them. I left the gammelost cheese, though. There are limits to personal growth, and I had found mine somewhere between the fermented fish and the very edge of South Trondelag.