There are many temporary ice hotels that usually exist as igloos throughout the winter, where it stays cold enough and there is a lot of snowfall. But only one has now become a permanent facility, the first built from blocks of ice since 1989 Icehotel.
The unusual accommodation is located approximately 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden in the village of Jukkasjärvi, very close to the city of Kiruna, which also has an airport where SAS flights from Stockholm regularly land.
Icehotel guests can stay in rooms built from blocks of ice using water from the neighboring Torne River. The furniture is also made of ice, including the bed boxes. The room temperature is approximately five degrees below zero. That’s why you sleep on thick carpe diem beds with reindeer skins as a base and snuggle up in down sleeping bags.
Various artists design the interior of the facility, which changes with each new edition of the Icehotel in December. In addition to the cool rooms, “warm rooms”, so-called “Kaamos”, are also offered, which are more like rooms in a design hotel and whose walls are not made of ice but of wood and have floor-to-ceiling windows.
Watch the northern lights in winter
But not all rooms melt away in spring and summer. You can stay in the largest ice hotel in the world all year round. During the summer, parts of the Ice Hotel are kept cool by solar energy from the midnight sun and are covered with a layer of turf as insulation.
During the winter months, guests can go on various excursions by motorbike or dog sled during the day, go on a reindeer safari and, with a bit of luck, experience the phenomenon of the Northern Lights in the dark.
In the evening we go to the bar, the Icebar. From the counter to the glasses – everything is made from ice. Shortly before the big spring melt, fine cocktails can be mixed with the ice from the river. Bar manager Fredrik Minnhagen emphasizes that the ice used to mix cocktails is the same that was used to build the igloos.
+++ Also click through the photo series: “Northern Lights – Magical Sun Magic in the Arctic Night Sky” +++