I had always thought my sense of direction was reasonably sound until I tried to find our holiday let in Eskilstuna one drizzly afternoon in late October. The Sat Nav had given up somewhere near the E20, leaving me to navigate by instinct and a rapidly dying phone battery. I turned down what I confidently told my partner was "definitely a shortcut" and promptly found myself in a small industrial estate, staring at a warehouse full of forklifts. She said nothing. She did not need to. The silence was louder than the ABBA playlist I had insisted on for the drive from Stockholm.

Forty minutes later, after what felt like a tour of every roundabout in Sodermanland, we finally located the property. It sat among birch trees that had already surrendered most of their leaves, the remaining few clinging on in shades of butter yellow and rust. The garden was damp and slightly melancholic, the grass flattened by weeks of autumn rain. A single outdoor chair had blown over against the fence, which I chose to interpret as a welcome rather than a warning.

The key was in the lockbox as promised, though my frozen fingers made the code feel like some kind of Scandinavian intelligence test. When the door finally opened, the warmth hit us immediately. The house had that particular smell of wood and central heating and somewhere-in-the-distance a faint trace of cinnamon. I later discovered the previous guests had left a half-empty packet of pepparkakor in the cupboard, which felt like the most Swedish thing imaginable.

I made the mistake of opening the back door to "let some air in" and was reminded sharply that October in Sodermanland has opinions about such behaviour. The cold was not rude exactly, but it was firm. It marched straight into the kitchen and settled there until I retreated and sealed us back in. The darkness was already gathering at four in the afternoon, pressing against the windows with an insistence that made the lamps feel necessary rather than merely decorative.

That first evening, we did very little. We walked briefly along a nearby path, our boots crunching through leaves that the frost had made crisp and treacherous. The lake we passed was grey and still, its surface holding the last light like something precious. No one else was out. The summer cabins we passed were shuttered and silent, their owners sensibly absent until warmer months returned. We felt like the last people left at a party, which was oddly comforting rather than lonely.

Back at the house, I attempted to light the wood burner with the confidence of someone who had watched approximately two YouTube videos on the subject. The result was smoky and reluctant and eventually triumphant, though I suspect I used roughly three times the recommended amount of firelighters. We sat with mugs of something hot and watched the flames, the darkness complete outside now, the windows turned to black mirrors showing only our own small circle of light.

I found myself thinking about the summer version of this place, the barbecues and midnight brightness and swimming in that same grey lake. But there was something about this stripped-back season that suited me better. The honesty of it. No pretence that everything was lovely and outdoorsy. Just the quiet, the damp, the necessary retreat indoors, and the small satisfaction of having brought the right jumper.

The following morning brought frost proper, whitening the grass and making the world seem briefly new. I stood at the kitchen window with coffee, watching my breath fog the glass, already planning which bakery to visit for proper Swedish bread. The wrong turn, the smoky fire, the premature darkness, they all felt like part of the same lesson: that this time of year asks you to slow down, to accept its terms, to find pleasure in small warm things. I was surprisingly happy to oblige.