I should have known the holiday had truly begun when I managed to get our estate car wedged between two birch trees on a track barely wider than a wheelbarrow. My partner, who had been navigating with the confidence of someone who once visited Stockholm for a weekend, had assured me this was "definitely the right turning." It was not. We were three hours from Gothenburg, deep in the forests of Varmland, and I was reversing with the kind of frantic patience you normally reserve for parallel parking during your driving test.

The actual approach to Ostra Viker, when we finally found it, felt like discovering somewhere you were never meant to know about. The cottage sat among proper Scandinavian woodland, not the manicured sort you see in brochures, but the honest kind with moss everywhere and the occasional fallen trunk making itself comfortable. Lake Varmeln glimmered through the trees, close enough that you could smell it before you saw it properly. I stood there with a carrier bag of groceries cutting into my wrist and thought, yes, this is exactly the sort of place where you forget what day of the week it is.

The children had already disappeared round the back, drawn by the promise of a proper garden that actually ended at a proper forest. I could hear them arguing about whether a particular rock was suitable for sitting on, which is childhood code for being absolutely thrilled. My partner was inspecting the exterior with the serious expression of someone who once did a weekend plumbing course, pronouncing the woodwork "sound" with the authority of a man who had just that morning confused east with west.

Inside, the place had that particular Swedish cottage character that manages to be both rustic and somehow immaculate. Wooden walls everywhere, giving off that faint resinous smell that no candle has ever successfully replicated. The kitchen was compact in the way that makes you realise how much unnecessary space you waste at home, and I immediately began planning meals with the enthusiasm of someone who rarely cooks anything more ambitious than pasta. There was a proper stove, the sort that demands you take your time with things. I pictured myself stirring something wholesome while the children played outside, a fantasy that lasted approximately until I remembered I had forgotten to pack the decent wooden spoon.

The living area opened up to views of the water, and I found myself doing that thing where you keep wandering back to the same window as if the lake might have disappeared. It had not. It remained stubbornly beautiful, with a couple of small boats bobbing at the jetty that I already knew would become the centre of our universe for the week. My son appeared at my elbow, asking if we could swim immediately despite the fact that we had not yet located the towels and he was still wearing his travel clothes. This is the essential magic of a place like Ostra Viker: it makes children believe that sensible arrangements are merely obstacles to be overcome by enthusiasm.

That first evening, we walked the short path down to the water's edge as the light did that prolonged Scandinavian fade that never quite seems to end. The forest was full of noises I could not identify, which I chose to find charming rather than concerning. My daughter collected stones with the gravity of an archaeologist on a significant dig. My partner and I stood there with our hands in our pockets, doing that married thing of not needing to say much, both of us slightly sunburned from the car journey and already talking about when we might return before we had even unpacked properly.

I thought about how we had arrived chasing some vague idea of simplicity, and how places like this have the honesty to actually deliver it, if you let them. The mishap with the birch trees already felt like the right kind of story, the sort you tell later with embellishments about how narrow the track really was. We walked back to the cottage as the mosquitoes began their evening shift, already scratching and complaining and entirely happy to be exactly where we were.