Ice Hotels
Buildings made of snow and ice, rebuilt from scratch every winter and returned to the landscape each spring.
An ice hotel is a temporary building with a permanent name. Each is raised in early winter from harvested river ice or blown snow, carved by invited artists, occupied for a few months and then allowed to melt. That cycle means the rooms below will not exist in the same form next year — which is the appeal, and also why the practical briefing on how to sleep at −4°C matters as much as the design.
The entries
Icehotel, Jukkasjärvi
The original, and still the reference point. Every autumn, ice harvested from the Torne River the previous spring is brought out of cold storage and rebuilt into a new hotel in the village of Jukkasjärvi, well north of the Arctic Circle; every spring it melts back into the river it came from.
Art suites are carved by invited artists and differ completely from year to year, so no returning guest sees the same building twice. A year-round wing, cooled by solar power through the summer, keeps a portion of the ice rooms available outside the season, and warm accommodation sits alongside for those who want a bed above freezing.
Hôtel de Glace, Québec
North America's ice hotel has been rebuilt every winter since 2001, latterly at Valcartier near Québec City. Snow is blown over enormous forms to make the vaults; ice is cut for the columns, the bar and the sculpted detail in the themed suites.
Guests are briefed carefully before the night — thermal bag, liner, what to wear and what to leave in the heated locker room — and the outdoor spa and sauna alongside are part of the routine rather than an extra. Days are spent in the surrounding forest park; the hotel itself opens to visitors who only want to look.
Kirkenes Snowhotel, Norway
Kirkenes is about as far northeast as Norway goes, close to the Russian border, and the Snowhotel there holds its carved rooms at roughly four degrees below zero all season. Ice sculpture lines the corridors; the beds are ice blocks under reindeer hide and serious sleeping bags.
A large husky kennel operates on the same site, along with heated Gamme cabins for guests who prefer to sleep warm. In season the aurora is a routine part of the evening rather than a promised event, and the King Crab fishing trips run from the fjord below.
SnowHotel at SnowCastle of Kemi, Finland
Kemi's SnowCastle has been raised each winter on the shore of the Gulf of Bothnia since the mid-1990s, and the SnowHotel is the sleeping quarter inside it. Around it sit a snow restaurant and a snow chapel, all part of the same annual structure.
The castle is a public attraction by day, busy with families walking the courtyards, and quietens at night for the people staying. A year-round experience centre now keeps a version of the rooms available outside deep winter, with the sea ice and the icebreaker cruises a short distance away.