I have never been so relieved to see a kettle in my life. After driving from Oslo through what felt like an endless parade of tunnels and fjord views that were almost too beautiful to process, I finally pulled up to our little holiday let in Skien. The sat-nav had given up somewhere near Porsgrunn, my phone was on 4 percent, and I had just spent twenty minutes convinced I was staying on a road that turned out to be someone's very long driveway. The owner, a lovely chap called Arne, found me doing a three-point turn next to his neighbour's sheep shed. Not my most dignified arrival.

But then he opened the door, and there it was: a kitchen that actually made me want to cook. This never happens. At home I consider beans on toast a culinary achievement. Yet something about the wooden worktops, the proper gas hob, and the window looking out towards Lake Norsjo made me think, perhaps foolishly, that I could become the sort of person who prepares local produce while wearing a sensible jumper.

The first morning proved this was hubris. I had bought eggs from a farm shop near Siljan, proper free-range ones with bits of straw still stuck to them, and some smoked trout from a place Arne recommended down by the water. I was going to make a proper Scandinavian breakfast, something worthy of the surroundings. What I produced was a pan of something between scrambled eggs and fishy rubber. The trout had gone in too early, the eggs too late, and I had somehow set off the smoke alarm despite not actually burning anything. I ate it on the terrace anyway, wrapped in a blanket, watching a heron stand motionless in the reeds. It tasted of failure and faint optimism. The heron judged me silently.

Determined to do better, I walked into Skien proper the next day and found the weekly market down by the harbour. This is where I should have started, frankly. Stall after stall of things I mostly couldn't pronounce: brunost that looked like caramel but tasted like cheese doing an impression of toffee, cloudberries that cost roughly the same as my first car, and potatoes so new they still had soil clinging to them like a badge of honour. I bought too much of everything, which is my standard approach to markets, and lugged it back up the hill in bags that cut off circulation to my fingers.

That evening I attempted raspeballer, those potato dumplings that are apparently a Telemark staple. The recipe I found online mentioned "a pinch" of something called "spekk" and I definitely used the wrong quantity. They were dense. Not merely heavy, but philosophically dense, as if each dumpling contained the weight of Norwegian history itself. My partner ate three out of politeness and then sat very still for a while. We opened a bottle of aquavit I had bought on impulse and watched the light fade over the lake. The dumplings sat in our stomachs like friendly stones.

By day four I had found my level. Breakfast became proper Norwegian waffles from a mould I discovered in the back of a cupboard, made with the brunost and strawberry jam from the market. Lunch was simple: rye bread, pickled herring that was surprisingly not a punishment, and tomatoes that actually tasted of something. Dinner I left to the professionals, walking down to a waterside place in Skien where they did a fish soup that made me want to apologise to every meal I had ever attempted at the cottage.

The kitchen and I reached an understanding. I would not try to be ambitious, and it would not humiliate me. I made decent coffee in the morning, acceptable open-faced sandwiches for lunch, and in the evenings I sometimes just put good things on a plate and called it supper. The local butter was so yellow it looked artificial. The bread from the baker near the church had a crust that could withstand a maritime environment. Everything tasted better because of where I was eating it, because of the heron and the light and the particular quiet of that terrace.

On our last morning I managed eggs and smoked trout properly, timing it right, not setting off any alarms. It was almost exactly the same as my first attempt, except now I knew how to pay attention. The heron was there again, or perhaps a different heron, still judging, still motionless. I raised my coffee cup to it. Some things you cannot rush, and apparently one of them is learning to cook in a Norwegian kitchen while your dignity slowly rebuilds itself.