Cottages can be hard to reach, especially in winter. Health personell can't prioritize thus. Also, there are entire cottage villages, adding 20000-30000 to small town populations. The ban is for preventing future unnecessary crisis that could weaken health coverage.

More like cabins in the wild than country cottages, some of them not accessible by car. Calling them country cottages makes them seem like they’re houses, but they’re more like cabins, often without water and electricity, because they’re not near population centres, so the infrastructure doesn’t exist. The entire point of a Norwegian cabin is to escape the urban life for a little while and go back to basics.

Because many of these small towns do not have hospitals or many staff for handling sick people.