I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I managed to get my boot stuck in the car door at the ferry terminal. There I was, one foot wedged in the Volvo, hopping about on the tarmac at Sandefjord while a very polite Norwegian family watched in silent bemusement. By the time I arrived at the Skrim cabin up at Omholtfjell, I was already starving, slightly bruised, and determined that food would be the making of this trip.

The cabin itself was everything the photos promised - proper timber walls, that distinctive smell of pine, and a kitchen that made me immediately ambitious. I dumped my bags, ignored the view for a solid ten minutes, and started investigating the cupboards. Previous guests had left behind a jar of something pickled that I dared not open, plus a half-empty packet of kardemomme that smelled absolutely divine. I made a mental note to actually use it, which in hindsight was my first mistake.

The nearest proper shop was down in Skien, about twenty minutes winding through forest roads that had me gripping the steering wheel like it owed me money. I found a Meny supermarket and went slightly feral in the cheese aisle. Brunost, that famous brown cheese, sat there looking like a slab of caramel and tasting like nothing I could describe to you now without sounding unhinged. I bought two kinds, plus some spekeskinke that the woman at the counter recommended with the kind of confidence that brooks no argument. Some local potatoes, a bunch of dill that smelled like summer, and I was already planning my first self-catering triumph.

Back at the cabin, I discovered that cooking at altitude with unfamiliar equipment is its own special challenge. The hob had settings I still do not understand. My first attempt at pan-frying the spekeskinke resulted in smoke, a frantic window-opening dance, and meat that was simultaneously raw and burnt. I ate it anyway, hunched over the kitchen island like a viking who had forgotten how to viking, with the brunost sliced thick on proper knekkebrod beside it. The combination of salty, sweet, smoky and shameful was actually rather good.

Morning brought the local bakeri in Skien, where I queued behind elderly gentlemen in sensible jumpers and emerged with skolebrod still warm from the oven. That custard and coconut situation, eaten on the cabin deck with coffee so strong it practically introduced itself, made the previous night's culinary disaster fade somewhat. I took a photograph that made it look like I had my life together. Social media is a wonderful liar.

The cabin had a proper grill outside, and I became mildly obsessed with using it. Local lamb from a farm shop near Siljan, which the owner sold me from a freezer in his garage with the casual air of a man conducting international diplomacy. I marinated it with the leftover dill, some rapeseed oil, and a prayer. Standing there in the fading light, turning skewers while the forest went quiet around me, I felt genuinely competent for perhaps twenty minutes. The lamb was excellent. The potatoes I had wrapped in foil and buried in the embers emerged as charcoal nuggets. You cannot win them all.

By midweek I had established something of a routine. Morning pastries from Skien, a proper cooked lunch at the cabin, then simple evening meals of local fish or whatever looked promising at the market. I attempted fiskesuppe one rainy afternoon, standing at the hob in my socks with a recipe on my phone that kept going to sleep. The result was thin and slightly aggressive, but I ate two bowls out of stubbornness and went to bed feeling like a champion.

What struck me most was how the food anchored me to the place. The brunost on knekkebrod became my breakfast ritual. The lamb from the garage freezer. The dill that kept appearing in everything because I had bought too much and refused to waste it. Even my failures felt connected to the landscape in a way that restaurant meals never could have managed.

On my final morning I made proper coffee, used the last of the brunost, and sat watching mist move through the trees below. The boot incident felt like weeks ago. I had arrived hungry and slightly broken, and I was leaving full, slightly wiser about Norwegian hobs, and already planning what I would cook differently next time.