See the Nordic light amid Norway's autumn bliss

Most trips are fueled by the itch to see something new. Sometimes, though, you travel to recover the thing you can't forget.

That's why I came back to Norway early this fall. It's easy to be seduced by southern Europe. Lemons and lavender, Tuscan hill towns and Provençal markets are an obvious romance. But I've always been drawn to Scandinavia.

There's a quieter seduction to cloudberries and elderflower, stripped pine and oxblood red cabins. And what I remembered, more vividly than any Mediterranean escape, was another autumn, a few years ago, when I made a sort of Nordic grand tour, fjord-hunting and island-hopping along a winding trail of back-road inns.

More and more travelers lately, lured north, have seen the Nordic light, particularly in summer when it stubbornly refuses to fade. In July and August, in fact, Norway's cities can get jammed, especially since Oslo has experienced several recent Big Moments: the development of its sleek new harbor-front and the latest rediscovery of local favorite son Edvard Munch and that hollowed-out scream heard around the world. But maybe the best way to experience the purest Norwegian idyll is to escape the urban high season and map a pastoral network of rural eco-lodges and inns in autumn, when the deep blue dusk compensates for that receding midnight sun.

Why inns? Partly because oil-rich Norway has invested heavily in renovating its landmark properties, recycling a rustic tradition with an eco passion that is a Nordic signature. Partly because there is no easier way to explore the deep country fjords, farmsteads and villages. Mostly because there isn't a better means of experiencing a full-on cultural immersion in all things Norwegian.

The sheer range of choices, especially after the departure of the summer crowds, offers its own embarrassment of riches. Every fjord is lined with historic inns, cottages, farmsteads, eco-lodges and cabins, and each of those fjords is pretty much the most jaw-dropping one you've ever seen, until you see the next one. But I avoided the abundance of options because I was determined to return to some of the properties I remembered. So I flew into Alesund, an Art Nouveau coastal city that's a quick hop north of Oslo or Bergen on Scandinavian Airlines (or one very scenic five-hour drive north from Bergen), and then headed 45 minutes east in my rented Volvo along the Storfjord to the Stor­fjord Hotel (www.storfjordhotel.com).

Though it looks like some Nordic fantasia, the sprawl of pine log farmhouses topped by sod roofs, furry with wild grass, was actually opened in 2006 and the most recent of the three buildings constructed in 2013. British co-owner Barry Brown's Norwegian wife grew up on a local farm, and their vision is an homage to bucolic Scandinavian traditions that ticks every box. There is the hilltop setting, overlooking a forest and a deep bend of the Storfjord, that is a model of Nordic feng shui ("we spent three years looking for the spot," Brown told me). There is the carefully curated haul of reindeer hides, folk rugs and antique hand-carved skis decorating the library and dining room that look familiar for good reason; that clean, pared-down Nordic style that pops up everywhere now is firmly rooted in Norway's rustic, organic past. And the guest rooms are an ode to blond wood, extending, at least in mine, from the high beamed ceiling to the glowing floor. The sole thing missing is a TV, though that hasn't really been an issue. "The only time a guest complained was during the World Cup," Brown said with a laugh.

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I could have stayed happily bundled under one of those Storfjord Hotel reindeer pelts, but I was impelled to head further east to the Westeras Cabins (geiranger.no/en). There were two reasons why that backcountry farmstead stayed fixed in my memory, and became one of those places that quietly keep resonating, until you have to return, like a pilgrimage.

The first was the scenery itself, which was just as soulful as I remembered and foreshadowed by the approach. You have to take the Geirangerfjord ferry to reach the town of Geiranger, where Westeras is located, and the boat ride up the fjord, lined by craggy mountains plunging into the water, is a dramatic drumroll in itself. It gets even better. The Westeras farm hugs the side of its own mountain and rents out five log cabins, each capped by a toupee of grass and looking, deceptively, as twee as a troll's cottage. But mine was big enough to contain two bedrooms, a kitchenette and living room, though all it really needed was the front porch. That's where I spent most of my first afternoon, looking out on the endless tumble of a landscape. In one dilating eyeful I could see a waterfall, a fjord, a snow-capped mountain and the green lap of a pasture. There's a kind of hushed, primordial grandeur to this view that you don't want to disturb. But the hiking trails started at my front stoop, and I headed out the next morning, following the path up toward a jagged snow-fringed peak, past clusters of goats, their bells a raw clang.

The other reason was the family itself, and they looked exactly the same: hearty and intrepid. "The Westeras family was registered in the town church as farmers back in 1603," Iris Westeras said, serving me a plate of goat and lamb sausages, and then a mound of pink North Sea shrimp (and OK, then waffles topped by strawberry preserves and sour cream) at the family barn turned restaurant. The dining room, like the cabins, looked akin to something a designer of a Brooklyn bistro would spend major money trying to duplicate, attempting an artisanal version of rustica. The Westerases, though, just picked through the family attic. There were woolly goat hides draped over log beams and an old metal bucket hanging on a wall.

"The women used to bring the milk down from the summer farm in that," Iris said. Her husband, Arnfinn, who grew up on the farm, remembers when that vessel was still in use, and the whole valley was one ripe larder. "There were maybe 14 family farms in the valley here when I was a boy," he recalled, pointing out the window. "Now there are only three left and we may be the last before the big corporations take over. It's the tourists who let us survive as a farm."

Agri-oligarchies, though, aren't the only threat. Avalanches still sweep down the valley, and the cabins can be rented out only until the first snow.

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If blizzards come early, the best bet is to head west in a lazy circle to Union Oye hotel (unionoye.no; open, like Storfjord, year-round) through the Norangsdalen valley, a moonscape of craggy cliffs and lakes. It's good to end a trip on a high note of comic relief, and Union Oye is the ultimate counterpoint to the Nordic chic of Storfjord and Westeras' bucolic authenticity.

Dating back to 1891, when European artists came to fish the fjords, the storied gingerbread concoction of a hotel (among its past guests: Kaiser Wilhelm, King Oscar, Isak Dinesen, Arthur Conan Doyle and Henrik Ibsen) doesn't have time for Scandinavian minimalism. The landmark, instead, is a study in loopy flamboyance, offering up gothic meets rococo rooms — stuffed with gilded cherubs, canopied beds, damask chintz and massive chandeliers — that range from high camp to, well, higher camp.

I opted for a relatively subdued room looking out on the inevitable fjord, this one the Norangsfjord, though the hotel's gift for dramatic flourishes was hard to avoid; after a three-course dinner, we were treated to a round of ghost stories by the chipper, fittingly theatrical staff. Legions of suicidal lovers and the just plain hapless, apparently, have sunk like a batch of bad lutefisk to the bottom of those fjords over the years, and the valley is haunted by the angry ghosts of people whose vacations went wrong.

Among other pastoral pitstops I'm itchy to return to: the glass cube modernist cabins of the Juvet Landscape Hotel (www.juvet.com), overlooking a riverbank in Valldal; the West Norway farmstead of Eide Gard, sitting on a curve of the Olensfjord; and the sprawling family farmstead of Sygard Grytting, in south-central Norway.

But I only had the long weekend this time, so I came back to Alesund and flew south, looking down, as the plane ascended, at the duet of fjord and mountain waiting serenely now for the first snows to come sweeping in.

Raphael Kadushin is senior acquisitions editor at the University of Wisconsin Press. He writes for Condé Nast Traveler and other publications.