Here at Country Life, our roots are very much in Britain, but we still appreciate the finest things that the rest of the world has to offer.
Quite often, this revolves around the swankiest spots in New York, heartbreakingly pretty coastal retreats in Italy or, er, flying donkeys in France. But once in a while our friends just across the North Sea in Norway become the focus for our tales, from exotic libraries and life aboard converted minesweepers to a ski lodge so perfect that it temporarily granted my colleague James Fisher the gift of clairvoyance.
And right now, Norway is back in our sights because there's a property for sale that fits rather neatly into that 'finest things around the world' bracket. It's a mountain villa that's called, with typical Scandinavian understatement, Gulsviksetervegen 1476.
The house is located on a mountain called Høgevarde, in the Hallingdal valley a couple of hours' drive north of Oslo. And as you'll no doubt have seen already from the pictures, it's pretty breathtaking, inside and out. As you'd very much expect for 74 million Norwegian kroner — the equivalent of just under £6 million.
The villa was a four-year labour-of-love for the owner, who visited Høgevarde in 2009 and decided he absolutely had to build a home here. Four years of planning, architectural headaches and construction followed, and now it stands proud as a six-bedroom villa that fits perfectly into this unspoilt landscape.
It's not hard to see how the vendor fell in love with the place. There's an edge-of-the-world vibe amid these mountains that makes it feel like a set from Lord of the Rings, with grassland and woodland, peaks and lakes, and wide open skies.
Every effort has been made to make the most of those views, with picture windows, strategically-placed terraces and more.
The agent, Lars Jakob Aarak, calls it 'much more than a conventional mountain retreat,' and the facilities here really back that up. The space that combines gym, spa bath and sauna, for example, is the stuff of high-end hotels. And I particularly love that fact that the wine cellar is in one corner, so you can soak in the tub while glancing across to mentally pick out your next bottle of the weekend.
As well as the main house there's also an annexe, barn and garage, which seems to be set up as a sort of workshop for getting your outdoor gear ready for a fresh adventure in the mountains.
As beautiful as it is, there's one key element: the price. Though there's plenty of space — more than 5,500sq ft — the plot of 2,249sq m equates to little more than half an acre.
The same sort of purchase price in Scotland would buy you this magnificent highland retreat with almost 12,000 acres. It's not just us making the comparison: an article about the lodge in Norway's biggest newspaper, Dagens Næringsliv, led on the fact that this is a record price being sought for a Norwegian mountain home.
Aarak's answer is that this is not any old house, but instead a home 'where timeless craftsmanship meets magnificent nature', and, 'an ambitious personal vision, brought to life through substantial dedication, architectural planning, craftsmanship, carefully considered materials and extraordinary attention to detail'.
For sale through PrivatMeglerern — see the details in English here, and the sales listing here.
