“He wanted to return to Norway to get hold of some documents, and then go back into Sweden, where he has a construction project on the go,” Trond Helge Ronning of rescue group Norske Folkehjelp told AFP.

“But to avoid the quarantine, he decided to cross the border over the mountains,” said Ronning from Tydal, a village near the border with Sweden.

In all, it would have been a 40-kilometre (25-mile) journey over difficult terrain, he said.

But the adventurer, who is in his 50s, ran into bad weather after 25 kilometres of his trek on Saturday.

A local reindeer breeder rescued him, handing him over to two fishermen at a nearby lake, who looked after him until the rescue services arrived, said Ronning.

“He was soaked through and he was cold,” as well as being annoyed and unapologetic, said the rescue worker.

The rescue services took care of him — before handing him over to police for having violated the coronavirus quarantine rules.

Local police told AFP that the man should have got a negative Covid test to present to the authorities before making the crossing — and then spent 10 days in quarantine in a hotel.

“That’s valid even for a Norwegian citizen,” said a senior police official in the Trondelag district.

The man will now have to sit out his hotel quarantine before interviewed by officers.