INTRODUCTION
It takes less than two hours by train to travel from the bustling city of London to my English cottage that’s tucked away on the border between two shires, Dorset and Wilshire. On a cold and foggy November afternoon a few years ago, I boarded that train for the first time, and eagerly looked out the windows as we steadily made our way through the cultivated English landscape of rolling hills and groomed old estates. Over streams and rivers we went, bending back and forth underneath brick bridges and passing stone cottages that dotted the edges of narrow countryside lanes. A taxi picked me up at the other end. I pressed my nose up against the window, trying to peer through the fog that seemed to grow thicker and thicker the higher we went. As the driver easily navigated what seemed like impossibly narrow streets that wound through the little town situated on the top of a Saxon hill, my excited nerves were calmed ever so slightly. You see, I was on my way to see my love for the very first time, and I felt a bit nervous.
We hadn’t yet met, but I knew it was love at first sight—or at least, at first photograph. The night before, I had tossed and turned for hours, blaming my restlessness on the full moon that lit up the guest bedroom I was staying in like it was daytime, all the while trying to hold back tears. I failed more times than not, soaking my pillow with tears of feeling lost in this big world. I’d been struggling to find my voice, a direction, and a home.
After years of travels and living abroad, I had moved back to my home country, Norway. I had thought, perhaps naively so, that I was going home, which of course I was in a way. I had returned to my childhood roots, but when I unpacked my suitcase after more than twelve years of living in various places around the world, a result of my work and studies, all I could feel was that I was lost. The woman I’d become after all these years was not marinating in homecoming bliss, that comforting feeling of knowing you belong. Rather, I was sad to acknowledge that all those years had changed me, leaving me with a deep gratitude and love for where I was born, while acknowledging that the woman I’d become might belong somewhere else.
So there I was spending the night in a bed-and-breakfast in England, between a job shooting a campaign for an American fashion brand and meetings in London, crying big wet tears of not knowing where I belonged in this world. “Where do I go from here?” I desperately wanted to type into the search box on the Internet. So I did, or nearly did. I wiped my eyes clear of salty tears, opened a blank search page on my mobile phone, and typed, “Houses for rent in England.”
Little did I know how those very words would change my life forever.
Twelve pages in, I fell in love. With a house.
It was love at first sight, and I knew, inexplicably, that this was my future home. I looked at the photo of the white thatched cottage with a tiny garden surrounded by a white picket fence over and over. This cottage was my home—I could feel it—and it really didn’t matter where it was located. As far as I was concerned, I already lived there anyway.
In a smaller text underneath the photo, the name of the town was written. Shaftesbury, it read, and I sounded it out in the dark moonlit room, as if I was learning to pronounce a word for a magical spell for the very first time . . . Shaftesbury . . . The next day, I was on the train. And it didn’t take much persuasion for me to sign on the dotted line. Eagerly, I returned to Norway, only to pack my bags and return to England for a shiny new chapter—to my new home.
Every chimney of the cottages in my new hometown bellowed out smoke on a daily basis that first winter, indicating a cozy fire crackling away inside, warming its inhabitants with a steady glow. Mine had one too. In the center of the living room—with its low ceiling of dark wood beams—there was a big old stone fireplace with a wonky wooden lintel piece that looked like it had been there ever since the cottage was built hundreds of years ago. The wood was darkened by time and dotted with tiny holes where woodworm had feasted over the years. The cottage had a hobbit-like entrance with a white stable door, a straw roof, a tiny kitchen, and a small yet inviting bathtub, just large enough for me to either submerge my legs or back, but never both at the same time. I filled the shed at the back of the garden with wood, storing up for the long winter ahead, and began exploring my new hometown.
I learned quickly that, although Norway has longer and colder winters than England, there’s nothing more bone-chillingly cold than the latter. During the first winter in my new home, freezing winds made a mess of my wavy blond hair and pinched my pale cheeks pink. I stuffed my rubber wellies with knitted woolen socks to stay warm, and explored the nearby hills via the muddy paths and narrow countryside lanes. Despite being wrapped in oversized wool coats, knitted mittens, and a fluffy warm scarf, nothing seemed to keep the humid cold from penetrating the many winter layers I had on. I felt exposed.
I was no stranger to setting up a new camp or living abroad. Ever since the age of fifteen, I’d spent summers living in Switzerland to learn Swiss German. I moved to Tokyo at the age of seventeen, quickly followed by new adventures in Italy, where I studied fashion design in Milan. When I was twenty, I worked as a flight attendant for Scandinavian Airlines, and lived in the Dominican Republic before moving to Malta for studies. My love for exploring new cultures and languages led me to seek a second degree in Middle Eastern studies at a university in America, where I simultaneously immersed myself in the American way of life. However, this move felt new. It was less about a new adventure, and more about coming home.
“Are you sure you won’t be lonely over there in England all by yourself, so far away from friends and family?” my beloved mother asked, after I announced I was moving again. “I’ll be fine,” I said, brushing off her loving concern. But I knew in my heart I would—of course I would. But here’s the thing about when you get that deep feeling of knowing something is right: There’s an inexplicable feeling of warmth and calm that guides you in an unexpected direction, and you unwaveringly choose to follow, because you trust, you leap, hoping that all your questions will be answered as you go along. It feels like a pillar of strength is erected inside of you, and even if you know you’ll be lonely and that it will be hard—harder than you ever imagined—you also trust that you’ll develop all the strength you need as you choose to have faith, both in the journey and, perhaps even more so, in yourself.
There’s a food market in town every Thursday where farmers, florists, cheese-and fish-mongers, and a local baker all set up tables along high street to present baskets and wooden crates filled to the brim with fresh seasonal produce and newly caught seafood. It has supplied my kitchen with wonderful, quality produce from day one. Much as my mother’s garden in my childhood home in Norway has faithfully supplied her kitchen with produce through the ever-changing seasons, so did the market in town supply me and my kitchen. Potatoes, rutabaga, and kale fill the wicker baskets during the sleepier months of the year, and during the summer the baskets are heaped with an everchanging abundance of seasonal fruit and vegetables. Even the town hall doors are open wide to display all the indoor stalls of people wanting to practically give away their gardens’ yield.
During that first year, when the artichokes arrived in late June, I leapt with joy and created simple dishes with the spiky green vegetable, reminiscing of my time in Italy. And as the golden chanterelles appeared in late summer, I returned home to the cottage with armfuls of the mushroom, simply throwing them into a sizzling skillet with a gentle sprinkle of salt and pepper and a generous knob of butter, just as my mother used to do. As it turned out, this is when I felt most at home during those first few months in my little English cottage, re-creating nostalgic childhood dishes with produce from the local town market.
I grew up in the countryside, on an island on the outskirts of a fjord in Norway. Being the youngest of our, I spent much time in my mother’s company, watching her cook and bake. Saying that I learned to cook on my mother’s knee is both true and untrue. I watched her in the kitchen as a child, sitting on the kitchen counter as she prepared our family meals. My job was more that of a supporting actor than the main cast. I cracked eggs, or stirred and kneaded dough, but I was always more excited about the eating part than the preparing part. Impatient by nature, I eagerly anticipated when we would all take a seat around the big oak dining room table, light candles, and enjoy the wonderful dishes that my mother had made. Daily family gatherings of this kind were a steady heartbeat in our home.
Copyright © 2017 by Marte Marie Forsberg. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
