I could hear my heart thumping through all 6½ layers. I could have blamed it on the walk up. Even spread out over several hours, with regular pit stops, 2,700 vertical feet is no mean feat. But it wasn’t that, and I knew it. Far, far below, in the cleavage of two perfectly formed peaks, was the ship, and in between us and it lay several miles of slope. Steep, ungroomed slope. 

When I had enrolled for the trip, it had seemed like a good idea to play up my off-piste experience; at this moment, not so much. “Now for the fun bit,” said our guide, Rune, to widespread whooping, and one ever-so-slightly audible whimper.

Combining skiing and cruising, and doing it somewhere as magnificent as Norway’s fjord-strafed northern coastline, is such an obvious open goal, it’s a wonder the Nordic cruise line Hurtigruten didn’t think of it sooner. Here, just inside the Arctic Circle, there are almost limitless peaks, and a small ship makes the perfect mobile base for exploring them. It opens up that most seductive of prospects: summit-to-sea skiing. The catch is that you have to get up under your own steam. The hurt in Hurtigruten? I joined its inaugural voyage to find out.

Embarking in the small port of Bodo, I was plunged into a logistical storm. Skis, skins, boots, helmet, backpack, goggles, shovel. You’d have needed an avalanche tracker and probe to find me in my cabin among it all. Handily, I was given these, too. Our home for the next three nights was MS Nordstjernen. Built in 1956, this venerable old girl is the antithesis of the “floating city” cruise ship. Creaky rather than plasticky, no ice rink or zip wire, some portion control.

I was sharing the vessel with about 100 other passengers — the majority Norwegian. They looked, as Norwegians tend to, like they were born swathed head to toe in stylish skiwear. In my improvised and rented kit, I was more 19th-century fur trapper.

As the evening light lingered — in a couple of months this will be midnight-sun territory — we were divided into small groups, each with its own guide, and briefed over dinner on what was to come.

Just before bed, the Tannoy gently urged us onto deck. I headed up to find the northern lights smeared across the starry sky. Many thousands come to the Arctic Circle solely for this; here, it was little more than a pre-event teaser.

Daybreak found us disembarking at Henningsvaer, in the Lofoten Islands — a polychromatic procession, giddy with anticipation. Rune, a jovial Dane with an early-Agassi cap fixation, gathered the six of us together and explained how to attach our ski skins. The concept has been tweaked over millennia (the removable strips are now mostly synthetic, rather than actual animal skin), but, largely, this is Stone Age innovation.

Toes are clipped in, heels remain free. We had a practice, quickly grasping the rudiments: plant your foot firmly with each step and the skins are remarkably adhesive. Tippy-toes? Facey-plant.