We’d arrived in a country whose Nordic angles had been softened by a blanket of pristine snow. Blue-white, crisp-crust, rasping-dry, squeaky-teeth, polystyrene snow. Though the scenic route around the fjord’s edge had made us hours late, the red-timbered door of our little wilderness hotel opened to a glow of smiling faces and warm hellos: the sound of delicately accented, near-perfect English and the aromas of woodsmoke, akvavit and pine.
Overnight a gale blew in, threatening any moment to peel away our tin roof and expose us like...
