The Sat Nav and the Reindeer

I have never trusted a sat nav less than I did on the drive from Mora airport to our cottage in Stoten Saelen. My partner, Karen, had programmed it while I wrestled three suitcases and a very overexcited seven-year-old into our hire car. Within twenty minutes we were on a gravel track that grew narrower with every turn, flanked by pine trees so dense the afternoon light barely reached us. "It says two miles," Karen announced, as the track became something a determined goat might hesitate to tackle. Then a reindeer stepped out. Not metaphorically. An actual reindeer, staring at us with the unimpressed expression of someone whose afternoon we had thoroughly ruined. It did not move. We waited. It waited longer. I began to wonder if this was how our holiday ended, defeated in a staring contest with local wildlife.

When the reindeer finally sauntered off, presumably to tell its friends about the idiots in the Vauxhall, we pressed on. The track improved slightly, then opened into a clearing where our red wooden cottage sat among low birch trees, smoke curling from a proper chimney. I will admit I felt rather smug. This was exactly the Dalarna I had pictured. The painted wooden details, the small porch, the whole thing looking like it had been built by someone who understood winters here meant business.

The key was in a lockbox, which I failed to open for eleven minutes while Karen filmed me on her phone. "For posterity," she said. The door creaked in that satisfying way old doors do, and we stepped into warmth and the smell of wood and something faintly herby. The cottage was simple in the best sense. Wooden floors, a compact kitchen with everything you actually need rather than the twelve gadgets that clutter most holiday rentals, and a living area with a wood-burning stove that immediately became the centre of everything.

Our daughter, Molly, had already claimed the small loft bedroom, which she announced was "basically a treehouse." Karen and I took the ground floor room with its view across the clearing toward what I later learned was a small fishing lake, frozen now but apparently busy with locals come summer. The bathroom was compact, the shower enthusiastic, the hot water plentiful. These things matter more than any brochure admits.

I made tea using the whistling kettle while Karen investigated the provisions we had brought versus what we actually needed. We had twelve packets of biscuits and no proper butter. This is, I suspect, a universal holiday packing failure. The wood stove took my first attempt at lighting it as a personal insult, smoking slightly and going out. My second attempt, following instructions I found in a drawer written in three languages, succeeded. There is something primitive and deeply pleasing about a fire you have built yourself. I sat beside it with my tea and felt the particular relaxation that only comes when you know you have absolutely nowhere to be.

Molly appeared in pyjamas demanding to know if we might see more reindeer. I said probably not. She looked disappointed. Karen reminded me that honesty is not always the best policy with seven-year-olds. We made a simple dinner from what we had, ate at the small wooden table, and watched the darkness settle completely outside. No street lights. No neighbour's television. Just the fire and the creak of the cottage settling into the cold night.

I woke once, unfamiliar with the silence, and stood at the window. The clearing was silver with frost, the trees motionless, the sky crowded with stars I did not recognise from home. I thought about the reindeer, about my failed fire, about the biscuits we would eat for breakfast because I had forgotten proper bread. It was perfect, I decided. Utterly perfect in its small, slightly chaotic way. The sat nav had not been wrong, exactly. Just optimistic. I rather admired it for that.