I have never been so relieved to see a red wooden house in all my life. After six hours of driving from Gothenburg, a wrong turn somewhere near Karlstad that added forty minutes, and one spectacularly ill-timed decision to trust my phone's "scenic route," I arrived at the stuga in Sunne with the sort of frazzled energy that makes small children cry.

The mishap came at the very end, naturally. I had stopped at a petrol station for the usual provisions: coffee, crisps, and a wildly optimistic bag of charcoal. In my eagerness to stretch my legs, I managed to lock my keys in the boot. There I stood, in a car park that smelled faintly of hot tarmac and regret, watching a Swedish man in very practical sandals observe my predicament with the polite concern of someone who has never once locked anything anywhere. He helped, of course. Everyone in Varmland helps. It is either the fresh air or some regional statute I have not read.

But then the stuga. Oh, the stuga. It sat among birch trees with that particular red paint that seems to glow in the evening sun, and I felt something in my chest unclench that I had not realised was clenched. The key was in the lockbox, the instructions mercifully clear, and I stepped inside to find a kitchen that smelled faintly of pine and previous summers. Someone had left a half-used candle on the windowsill, which I found oddly comforting. Evidence of other people who had also needed to do very little for a while.

I did not unpack properly. I still have not, if I am honest. I put the milk away, located the coffee maker with the urgency of a woman who had been surviving on petrol station brews, and walked straight out to the wooden deck with my cup still steaming. The lake was perhaps two hundred metres through the trees, glinting like someone had scattered foil across it. A dragonfly the size of a small helicopter investigated my knee. I sat there until the coffee went cold.

That has been the pattern of things. Lazy mornings with the sort of light that makes reading in bed feel like a moral achievement rather than indulgence. The stuga has a small garden where I have established myself with a deckchair that creaks satisfyingly and a novel I am reading at approximately six pages per hour. Every so often I look up to watch the birch leaves doing their shimmering thing, or to track a bird I cannot identify across the sky with the confidence of someone who absolutely cannot identify birds.

The local shop in Sunne sells excellent herring and bread that goes stale properly, the European way, rather than staying suspiciously soft for weeks. I have walked to the lake most days, though "walk" suggests more purpose than I bring to it. It is more of an amble, a wandering with occasional sitting. The water is swimmable if you commit quickly and do not think about it, which I did once and found surprisingly pleasant until a fish touched my foot and I retreated with the dignity of a startled heron.

There is a canoe somewhere, apparently. I have not used it. The thought of exertion feels faintly rude in this context, like shouting in a library. Instead I have explored the immediate surroundings with the thoroughness of a very lazy detective: this rock is good for sitting, that patch of moss is softer, here the blueberries are beginning to ripen. I ate some and felt insufferably connected to nature.

What I am learning, slowly, is how poor I am at doing nothing. My first few days carried a background hum of shoulds. Should walk further, should see something notable, should at least learn the name of that bird. But the stuga does not encourage shoulds. The light moves across the floorboards in its own time. The coffee goes cold if you let it. Nothing here is urgent, and urgency, I am discovering, was something I had been carrying around like a stone in a pocket.

I have not been to Oslo, though it is apparently not far. I have not driven to any waterfalls or heritage sites. I have walked to the lake, read my book, eaten herring on crispbread, and watched the dragonflies conduct their mysterious business. That has been enough. More than enough, really. It has been everything.

The other evening I sat on the deck until nearly eleven, which still felt like late afternoon with this northern light. A mosquito bit my ankle and I did not even mind terribly. I thought about my keys in the boot, the man in his practical sandals, the wrong turn near Karlstad. All of it had been necessary, apparently, to arrive here with the proper degree of exhaustion. The stuga asked nothing of me. I intend to give it exactly that.