I have never been so grateful for a thermos of tea in my entire life. There we were, my partner and I, crawling along the Oland Bridge at approximately the speed of a contemplative sheep, when I realised I had left our booking confirmation on the kitchen table in Bromley. Three hours of driving, two ferries, and one spectacular argument about whether I had packed the swimming costumes later, and I had precisely nothing to prove we were expected at a holiday let in Borgholm. The April wind was doing its best to shove our little hire car into the Kalmar Strait, and I was doing my best to appear unconcerned while frantically scrolling through emails on a phone with 4% battery.

Spring in Oland, I am reliably informed, is not to be trifled with. The island sits there in the Baltic like a stubborn pancake, refusing to warm up properly until May at the earliest, and even then it keeps its options open. We arrived in Borgholm proper as the afternoon light was beginning to stretch and thin, that particular Scandinavian quality where everything looks slightly watercoloured and temporary. The town was quiet in the way that only seaside places can be quiet in the off-season, all boarded-up ice cream kiosks and optimistic outdoor furniture huddled under tarpaulins.

Our property, when we finally located it down a lane that my partner described charitably as "rustic" and I described less charitably, turned out to be one of those traditional Swedish wooden houses painted the colour of faded mustard. The owner, a splendid woman called Ingrid who appeared to be wearing approximately seven layers of wool, took one look at my panicked face and said, "You are the English. I was told you would be confused." She produced a key from her pocket with the air of someone who has dealt with worse, and left us to it.

The first thing that struck me, once we had wrestled our suitcases through a door that seemed designed for considerably shorter people, was the smell. Wood smoke, mostly, but underneath it something greener and more patient. The house had been closed up for winter, that much was obvious, and the heating had only recently been coaxed back to life. Every surface spoke of seasons endured and seasons anticipated. The thick curtains, the substantial furniture, the very weight of the place, all suggested a building that knew exactly what January on Oland entailed and had made its preparations accordingly.

I stood in the kitchen, which faced east towards the sea, and watched the light fail properly. April here is a month of negotiation, I realised. The island is waking up, but reluctantly, grudgingly. The tourist season remains theoretical. The beaches are empty expanses of pale sand and darker purpose. You come to a place like this in spring not for the weather, which is capricious and frequently damp, but for the sense of being present at something hesitant and preliminary.

My partner emerged from inspecting the bedrooms with the news that there were, in fact, two duvets on our bed. Not one shared duvet, which we had been expecting, but two individual ones, a Swedish arrangement that struck us both as either deeply practical or deeply symbolic of something we could not quite articulate. We stood there in the gathering gloom, slightly absurd in our layers of travel-wrinkled clothing, and began to laugh. The tea, when I finally remembered the thermos, was cold and stewed and absolutely perfect.

That first evening, we walked briefly down towards the shore before the wind persuaded us otherwise. The Baltic was the colour of old slate, restless and uninviting. Somewhere out there, I knew, were the summer crowds and the sailing boats and the long light evenings that draw people to Oland. But not yet. Not for us. We had arrived in the in-between time, the season of waiting, and the house wrapped itself around us with the particular generosity of places that understand exactly what they are for.