It reminds me of rosemaling, a Norwegian folk art embodied by joyful sprays of painted leaves, flowers and scrolly bits that have swirled over my grandmother’s house for as long as I can remember. The rosemaling she brought with her to Canada from her native Norway is more than just decoration. Each brush stroke speaks to a specific region and an individual artist. For me, the swirling designs, along with her father’s paintings that cover nearly every wall in her home, have always been a window into my heritage. When I had the chance to visit Norway again, the “yes” was out of my mouth before I opened it.

In the next room of the Træna Museum are framed photographs of an island family: a matriarch in black and white, a family portrait with a mother and a little girl. I spend time looking at them, their smiles.

But now, it’s time to get back to the hotel. After a quick stop a few doors down to broker the purchase of a handmade sweater, our group of travel journalists and editors return to Ytri.

“This is a barefoot luxury. Not a luxury to be seen, but to be felt,” adds Møgster. “A place to land, a place to breathe. Leave your problems on the mainland and just be present and feel.”

I’m told later that Husøya is Norway’s oldest fishing village, with human history dating back more than 9,000 years. The next day, we take a short trek on adjacent Sanna Island to see where the first evidence of that history was uncovered.

Our guide, archeologist Anders Budde, leads us from Sanna’s dock down a well-worn stone path to Kirkehelleren, a cathedral-like cave parting one of those dramatic peaks we’ve been admiring from Ytri.

“They found a fishing hook made of bone, of antlers,” Budde says of the early cave excavations. Three years ago, he took part in the first dig at Kirkehelleren since the site was originally excavated in the 1930s and ‘40s.

Standing at the cave’s entrance, Budde explains that it had “been in continuous use for [roughly] 10,000 years. We found no break of a thousand years or even a few hundred years in the layers [of soil].”

Our destination is Hotel Union Øye, nearly 1,000 kilometres south in a different terrain entirely, where the Atlantic’s long fingers grasp Western Norway’s snow-capped mountains in a network of fiords. It’s also the soil where my Norwegian roots are planted.

My grandmother, Greta, was born in Ålesund, a stunning coastal town north of Union Øye, set on a series of islands. Growing up, she’d tell me stories about her town and family: her father, Jonas Peson, an artist whose paintings of their life I’ve studied closely; her mother, Ruth, an artist in her own right, who brewed her own gin and fished from the pier in a fur and heels, getting into trouble with her best friend, Turid, whom she’s spoken to regularly since she left more than 60 years ago; the dark times of her childhood during the Second World War.

Just beyond Mount Saksa, a short distance from Ålesund as the crow flies, is Hotel Union Øye in the tiny hamlet of the same name. Situated at the terminus of Norangsfjord and cradled by mountains known as the Sunnmøre Alps, this circa-1891 half-timbered hotel is right out of a fairytale.

“My great-grandfather saw a lot of guiding in the mountains,” says Øye, before noting that in western Norway at that time, many locals avoided hiking in the mountains because it was dangerous. “Then the farmers saw people coming here hiking the mountains,” she adds. “It was more easy to guide them up the safe way, then bring them down after it’s too late. That’s how my family’s hospitality story started [here].”

“I guess I will probably haunt the place,” she says with a laugh.

Øye leads us through the property into the lounges where climbers would record their day’s exploits. Now, it’s where guests gather for evening storytelling over a drink. We visit a dining room where Kaiser Wilhelm II (the last German emperor) dined before fleeing to the Netherlands following the First World War.

A recent $300-million-kroner (about C$44 million) renovation has breathed new life to the hotel, adding a conservatory, bar, wine cellar and additional suites, one of which, a cosy living-roof cottage overlooking the formal garden, is where I get to rest my head. In 2025, the hotel was awarded a coveted Michelin Key in recognition of its outstanding hospitality.

About 45 minutes into the journey, we make a quick stop in Trandal to visit Christian Gaard Bygdetun, a remote restaurant and music venue accessible only by boat, ferry or, as its website suggests, “on foot over the mountain.”

Concert posters and photographs of bands’ performances from the blues festival hosted here each summer line the walls. In a little alcove, rosemaling swirls over a fireplace bellows. Home is here, too.

By the time we arrive at Storfjord that afternoon, overcast skies loom above the dark timber chalet-style hotel, its green roof surrounded by towering pines. A small bonfire sends the smell of smoke into the air.

The forest hideaway above the fiord of the same name offers 30 rooms in four timber buildings. In my suite, wood-panelled walls meet wide fiord-focused windows. I sink into the four-post bed here too and look up at the tapestried canopy blooming with roses. Inside the hotel’s main building, which proudly boasts two Michelin Keys, guests play puzzles and read in a series of cosy lounges. We’re here for only one night. After that, my time touring Relais & Châteaux’s Norwegian properties ends, and soon, my time in the country, too.