Hurtigruten began life 130 years ago, in 1893, as a ferry service to transport people and goods along the 780-mile coast of Western Norway from the port of Bergen to Kirkenes at the Russian border. And while the journey has become one of the world’s most popular cruises, outside the holiday season the experience returns to its roots as this feature, a version of which was first published by the London Evening Standard, illustrates.

Now Voyager it wasn’t. Passengers in bobble hats and bulky overcoats dodged between crates of salmon on Bergen harbour. Peering at the docked ships, they shielded their faces from huge hailstones that ping-ponged off the frozen ground with a sound like a million shattered lightbulbs. A smartly-uniformed sextegenarian officer standing on the Nordlys' gangplank waved them on board, and shook icy droplets from his magnificent silver quiff against an indigo dusk.

This was to be a chilled sip of the Norwegian fjords: a four-night cruise on a Hurtigruten steamer that would nose between mountains and islands to visit coastal towns shivering in winter's grip. It would also be - fingers crossed - an opportunity to see the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights, whose surreal shimmerings had once kept the Vikings shaking in their fur boots. Since we were sailing right up to Tromsø, 360km north of the Arctic Circle, the chances of experiencing them looked good.

As the Nordlys cruised out of the harbour, brilliant stars lit the way past black mountains that were low and rounded like crouching bears. The atmosphere was cosy and very, very calm. In summer, up to 650 tourists swarm over the sleek, seven-storey boat. Now only 50 - mostly Norwegian - passengers lingered over gravadlax and goat's cheese in the chandeliered dining room and browsed the small gift shop selling Scandinavian goods such as strokeable elk skin waistcoats and woolly hats bearing a design of Bergen's cheerfully coloured townhouses.

State-of-the-arctic stabilisers meant the steamer's swift progress was almost indiscernible. On the first night, dozing in my compact, functional cabin, the faint drone of a forklift truck and the seeping smell of smoked fish were the only indications of port calls.

"This is peace," sighed a stressed-out construction boss at our buffet breakfast the next morning. Then he paused over his cinnamon porridge to point out a fishing hamlet painted in salmon, sage and chocolate shades to a couple of young men on the next table. These turned out to be university students travelling home for the weekend.

Later in the glass-walled observatory, a travelling salesman tapped out text messages and squinted against a shaft of midday sun so dazzling it seemed about to beam up a passing snow-capped mountain. I opened my first novel of the journey, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, chosen for its substantial length. Two elderly sisters on a spree click-clacked knitting needles as an industrial-looking fish-processing plant came into view.

The day ticked on. Everyone settled into their own private, peaceful world, one overseen by the benevolent, silver-quiffed captains. When I visited them to ask what wildlife I might spot, they were shimmying around the bridge to the sound of The Carpenters on the radio and sipping mellow coffees from mugs they kept perched beside a computerised radar screen. Slight emotional stirrings came only with a sighting of a minke whale ("Ja, very tasty") and then a seal ("Bad, a nuisance to fishermen").

A daily port call of several hours came as a jolt to the senses - not least because of temperatures hovering around the minus four mark. First stop was the quirky art nouveau town of Ålesund. Positioned at the entrance to Geirangerfjord, it was rebuilt after a fire in 1904 hence its uniformly glorious architecture. I chatted for a while to divers who had been swimming with cod and wolf fish around the fjord's sunken WW11 German battleships. The colder the better for a clear view of the wreckage, they told me.

The next day it was an icy slither around Trondheim. With time short, I had to edit my to-do list. Gothic cathedral or a trawl through the city’s chic interiors shops? The reindeer-patterned blankets won out. “Ah, you should have been here last week,” said one boutique owner. The Aurora Borealis was spectacular. I’m not sure you’ll be so lucky now.”

Immediately I got back to the ship I signed up for an Aurora wake-up call. If they showed, the captains promised I’d be among the first to know about it.

We reached the Arctic Circle. In summer, the ship holds a jokey crossing-the-Circle ceremony which involves ice-cubes being dropped down passengers’ necks and the reading of a lengthy poem about Neptune in three languages. The Nordlys slipped across in darkest dawn, and we woke to find mountains craggier and snowier, and just a scattering of lonely houses perched between barren peak and grey water. Some would be stock farms, said one of the captains, and would be plagued by lynx and wolverine that slunk through icy forests from the Russian border.

Then came the news I’d been gloomily anticipating. Cloudy weather meant that the only sighting of the Northern Lights was likely to be the improbably citrus-shaded postcards in the gift shop.

However, that evening alternative after-dark activity was on offer. We’d docked at the city of Bodø, and swanning up the gangplank came hordes of revellers, shivering in satin and shirtleeves, vodka bottles clinking, for a Saturday-night ship's party.

"Now you will see the dark side of the Norwegian," warned one elderly passenger, exchanging a worried glance with his companion at dinner. Stomachs were lined with a spectacular koldtbord in which red, yellow and black caviar embellished dishes of lobster and smoked salmon.

In fact, Norwegian good nature triumphed. The following alcholic frenzy resulted in nothing more alarming than energetic jiving to a 60s covers band. And the sole casualty was a reveller who was moved to hippy shake shake with so much might that he removed most of his clothing and was carried off handcuffed to a stretcher for an earnest discussion with the silver-quiffed captains.

By 2am, a giant singalong had overtaken the glass-walled observatory. Above us, sparkling snowflakes danced with Arctic stars to the tunes of Simon and Garfunkel sung en masse in charmingly accented English. And it suddenly seemed rather wonderful to be simultaneously surrounded by so much cold and so much warmth.