Vega Cottage: A Serene Scandinavian Retreat | The World's Most Extraordinary Homes S02E07 (Norway-1)

Sprawling fjords and glacial mountains give Norway one of the most invigorating and awe-inspiring landscapes in the world. Are you excited to be here? I am. I like extreme places. I like places that are a long way away, hard to get to, beautiful, dramatic and different. And this has all of those things. We're up near the Arctic Circle. With a population of little over 5 million, much of Norway remains remote and unspoiled. On our journey, we'll be discovering what it takes to design, build and live in this rugged wilderness. We'll see how deep-seated tradition has either been embraced and updated. This is, for me, personally, perfect. Or left behind altogether. Hospital, the word that springs to mind. We're taking a boat ride to Vega, a remote island 400 miles north of Oslo, where, since the Stone Age, people have made their living from the sea. Vega Island is one of around 6,000 islands in an archipelago. There are just over 1,200 people living here. It's quintessential Norway and very quiet. We're looking for a remote island retreat, built to blend in with the surrounding landscape. Well, there it is, but you'd hardly notice it, would you? What's fantastic is that there isn't a gate and a sign and a driveway. Nothing's been cleared. There's just a cabin on a rock. This is Vega Cottage. This unassuming reinterpretation of a traditional fisherman's hut is, in fact, a modern, robust home perched delicately in this landscape. It's the epitome of Norwegian understatement. To resist the extreme weather, the construction called for complex engineering and durable materials, including large wood cladding and glass four centimetres thick. It's really discreet to have the entrance tucked around the back, I suppose protected from the winter winds and the weather. The challenge for the architects was to build on rough terrain without damaging the landscape. Building on a tiny footprint, they've squeezed a lot of home into only 140 square metres. On one side are the bedrooms, two on the ground floor and a third for the kids, tucked under the eaves. The other side of the cottage is given over to a single vaulted family room, divided by a chimney stack into zones for cooking, dining and relaxing. And I love the fact that you've got, you walk straight in and suddenly it's family, it's all about family straight away. And then you've got this wonderful, stonking great... Hearth. Which does everything, cooking and warmth. These are ordinary pieces of wood, ordinary things that you can get pretty much from anywhere. Nothing blingy, is there? And it's an ordinary form. Yeah, yeah. This is a very, this is the most ordinary shape of a building. And yet, the way you put them together, the way you place them in a landscape, makes them into a piece of architecture. The sound would be incredible, wouldn't it, with the rain lashing against that window. The windows are perfectly placed to respond to key views, but the house isn't only about landscape. And internally, every inch of space is maximised. That's nice, isn't it? I like the little sort of, what do you call it, a gangway. Bridge? Bridge. Gangway. I like that a lot. It's nice, isn't it? Really nice. There are kids' bedrooms up here. How sweet. Yeah, they're lovely, actually. They're really under the eaves. I think the adults' bedrooms must be down here. This has got the proper picture window, so you can lie in bed and gaze out at the seabirds. Oh, what's nice in here, P, is that you've got this window that opens, so you've got the breeze coming into the bedroom. You can imagine on a hot evening, having the view and the sun setting, and then coming up again moments later, and the breeze. I'm meeting the Scandinavian architect Erik and Viktor, whose passion for working in natural landscapes is what attracted the owners to commission them. Tell me about designing a house in this extraordinary landscape. Well, we kind of very early on realised that we didn't want to cut down any trees, we didn't want to blow away any bedrock, and we didn't want to, let's say, make a house that would dominate the terrain and would kind of take over. Silvered by time and the elements, Vega Cottage sits comfortably on its rocky outcrop. It's owned by theatre director Alex Mork-Edom, who built it with his siblings as a place to meet and, well, hang out. The two architects and Alex, the owner of this house, and they're naked over there, standing on the rocks, and I think they're about to go into the water. If that doesn't explain what life in Norway is about, then I don't know what does. As if he hadn't revealed enough already, I caught up with Alex after his dip to find out what led him to build here in the middle of nowhere with his brother and sister. Alex and his siblings now have their very own fabulous family escape to gather in and share with future generations. It's quite one of the most spectacular spots I've ever been to. Look at the view, and look at the fishing huts there, and then looking back at the cottage there, and in hundreds of years this architecture hasn't really moved very far, has it? But I like that sense of using thousands of years of knowledge and doing something that just builds on that. In this landscape, I think that this utilitarian way of building really works. I think it's utterly charming and discreet and just a little treasure.