I have never been so grateful to see a wooden toilet seat in my entire life. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The drive from Oslo to Tuddal took about three and a half hours, which in Norwegian terms is practically popping to the shops. I had rented a little cabin through Novasol, one of those red wooden affairs that looks like it belongs on a Christmas card, and I was already imagining myself by the fire with a cup of something warm and probably alcoholic. The sat nav had other ideas. It sent me down what I can only describe as a gravel path masquerading as a road, and there I was, bumping along in my hire car, convinced I was about to become one of those newspaper stories about tourists who drive into fjords.

The mishap came at a petrol station in Notodden, about twenty minutes from the cabin. I pulled in to grab some supplies, feeling terribly organised, and managed to lock my keys in the boot. The boot. With the engine running. I stood there in the drizzle, patting my pockets like a man performing a very sad magic trick, until a chap in a woolly jumper appeared from the garage. He did not look surprised. I suspect Norwegian petrol station attendants have seen worse.

"Britiske?" he asked, which I took as less a question and more a diagnosis.

He produced a wire coat hanger from somewhere, fiddled with my rear window for approximately ninety seconds, and had me back on the road before I could properly apologise. His name was Arne, he told me, and he had worked at that station for thirty-one years. "You are the third this month," he said, with what I choose to believe was fondness rather than pity. "The Swedes are worse."

I arrived at the Tuddal cabin as the light was fading, which in late autumn means about half past four. The place was exactly as advertised: red clapboard, white trim, a little porch that creaked satisfyingly underfoot. I unloaded my bags, still slightly trembling from the key incident, and was immediately accosted by a woman from the neighbouring cabin. She introduced herself as Ingrid and thrust a Tupperware container into my hands.

"Elk stew," she said. "You look like you need it."

I did not know what to say. I still do not. I stammered something about being vegetarian, which was an outright lie, and she fixed me with a look that suggested she knew it. "Eat it tomorrow," she instructed. "It keeps." Then she disappeared into her own cabin, which I noticed had a small Norwegian flag on a pole that spun wildly in the wind.

The cabin itself smelled of pine and something else I could not identify, which I later learned was the wood-burning stove that would become my closest companion. I spent that first evening poking at it like a caveman who had briefly encountered fire but never truly understood it. At around nine, just as I had achieved something approaching warmth, there was a knock at the door. A man stood there, perhaps seventy, with eyebrows that deserved their own postcode.

"Olav," he said, by way of introduction. "I am checking you are not burning down Ingrid's cabin. She owns this one too." He peered past me at my smouldering efforts. "You need smaller logs. And patience." He stepped inside without waiting for invitation, rearranged my woodpile with the efficiency of a man who had done this ten thousand times, and had the stove roaring within minutes. "My grandfather built this cabin," he said, dusting his hands. "In 1958. Bad year for potatoes. Good year for cabins."

We talked for perhaps half an hour, though "talked" suggests a balance that was not really there. Olav told me about the lake, which was apparently excellent for fishing but only if you knew where the trout were hiding, which he did, but he was not telling me. He told me about his wife, who had passed three winters ago and who had loved this cabin more than their house in town. He told me that Ingrid's elk stew was famous throughout Telemark and that my lying about being vegetarian would be forgiven if I complimented her properly.

"She likes to be told the meat is tender," he advised. "Even when it is not. Especially when it is not."

When he left, I sat by that properly burning stove and ate cold bread from the petrol station, too tired to attempt anything more ambitious. The stew sat in its Tupperware, judgemental and fragrant. Outside, the wind moved through the pine trees with a sound like distant traffic, though there was no traffic, not for miles.

I thought about Arne and his coat hanger, about Ingrid's immediate and slightly aggressive hospitality, about Olav's unsolicited fire management and his dead wife. I had been in Tuddal for four hours and had accumulated more human interaction than I typically managed in a month back in London. There was something almost confrontational about it, this small-town insistence on connection, on inserting yourself into another person's afternoon whether they had planned for it or not.

I was not sure yet if I liked it. I suspected I might. I suspected, also, that my opinion was not particularly required. The stove popped and settled. Somewhere, a dog barked once and thought better of it. I made a mental note to buy a wire coat hanger of my own, just in case, and fell asleep in the chair with my boots still on.