Ice Hotels

Icehotel is the original, and the operation is now split in two. The seasonal hotel is rebuilt every winter from ice harvested out of the Torne River and from snice — a snow-and-ice mix sprayed over steel forms — then melts back into the river in spring. Alongside it, Icehotel 365 stays frozen all year on solar cooling.

The art suites are the reason the building changes character annually: artists apply from around the world, are selected, and carve a room each, so the interior is effectively a new exhibition every season. Sleeping is done on ice beds laid with reindeer hides inside expedition sleeping bags, at a steady temperature a few degrees below freezing.

Warm accommodation, a sauna and a hot breakfast are part of the arrangement rather than an upsell, which is what makes the cold half of the stay workable. The village sits about two hundred kilometres above the Arctic Circle.

North America's ice hotel is rebuilt each winter just outside Québec City, and the scale is what registers first: vaulted corridors, a chapel used for real weddings, a bar where the glasses are ice, and a theme applied across the whole structure that changes from one season to the next.

Construction takes several weeks and uses snow blown over arched forms, with clear ice reserved for sculpture, furniture and the bar. The hotel opens to day visitors as well as overnight guests, so the building works as an attraction during the afternoon and empties into something much quieter after the last tour.

Overnight guests are briefed before they turn in, and have access to heated facilities, outdoor spas and a warm pavilion for the small hours.

Kirkenes sits at the far north-eastern corner of Norway, close to the Russian border and well inside the Arctic. The Snowhotel is rebuilt each December on the shore of a fjord, its corridors lined with carved rooms whose walls hold the shape of the year's design.

What distinguishes it from other ice hotels is how much of the operation is outdoors. There is a working husky kennel on site with several hundred dogs, a reindeer enclosure, and a fleet of small cabins on the water for guests who would rather sleep warm and visit the ice.

King crab fishing runs through the winter, and the aurora is a reasonable prospect on clear nights given the latitude.

Sorrisniva stands on the bank of the Alta River, roughly twenty minutes from the town of Alta, and has been rebuilt annually since the late 1990s. The ice comes from the river itself; the snow is machine-packed over forms and carved once it has set.

The plan usually includes an ice chapel, a bar, a gallery of carved sculpture and around thirty rooms and suites. Guests sleep on ice blocks dressed with reindeer hides in cold-rated sleeping bags, then thaw out in the sauna and the heated service building in the morning.

The family behind it also runs a year-round lodge on the same site, so the ice hotel is one part of a larger operation rather than the whole of it.