Ice Hotels

The method is the subject here. Ice is cut from the Torne in spring, stored through the summer, and used the following winter to build a structure that has never been the same twice. Artists are invited each season to design individual suites, so the interior is a set of separate commissions rather than a single scheme, and the whole thing is demolished by the weather within months.

The practical side is more prosaic than the photographs suggest. Cold rooms are for sleeping in insulated bags at around minus five degrees; warm accommodation, bathrooms and services sit in permanent buildings alongside. Most guests spend one night in ice and the rest in a heated room, which is the arrangement the operator recommends.

Within this wire, Jukkasjärvi is the origin point and the reason the rest exist. It also sits furthest into the Arctic Circle of the entries here, which affects daylight: in midwinter the sun barely clears the horizon. Kiruna is the nearest airport, roughly twenty kilometres away. There is a year-round hall kept frozen by solar power, but the seasonal building is the one that changes.

Construction is a snow-first process. Snow is sprayed over formwork to make thick vaulted walls, the forms are removed, and ice is used for detail: columns, furniture, bar tops and carved reliefs. The vaults are what give the building its character, and because the plan changes annually the circulation changes with it.

Rooms range from plain sleeping chambers to themed suites, some with fireplaces that heat nothing in particular. Guests sleep on ice beds in insulated bags. As at every entry on this wire, heated buildings nearby carry the bathrooms, the changing rooms and the spa, and the operator briefs guests carefully before the first night.

Compared with Jukkasjärvi, the Québec building is more architectural and less gallery-like: the interest is in the vaulting and the plan rather than in a set of separately commissioned suites. It is also the most accessible entry on this wire. Québec City is a short drive away, and the site is often visited by day as well as slept in. The season is short, running through the coldest part of the northern winter, and it closes when the structure becomes unsafe.

Kirkenes is close to the Russian border and a long way from anywhere else in Norway, which shapes the whole operation. The site is not a single building but a small settlement: carved snow rooms, timber cabins, a restaurant and a kennel, spread along the shore of the fjord. The snow structure is rebuilt each winter and carved with new work, though the plan is more consistent year to year than at Jukkasjärvi or Québec.

Sleeping is the same proposition as elsewhere on this wire. Rooms hold at a few degrees below zero, bedding is an insulated sleeping bag, and bathrooms are in the heated buildings. What differs is the setting: the fjord freezes, the surrounding country is low and open, and darkness is total for weeks in midwinter.

The site also runs working huskies, and dogs are part of the daily rhythm rather than an added extra. Guests who want silence should know that in advance. Kirkenes has an airport with domestic connections, and the transfer is short, but reaching Kirkenes at all takes most of a travelling day from southern Norway.

The site is inland and wooded, which distinguishes it from the fjord and river settings elsewhere on this wire. Snow rooms are carved with relief work along the walls and lit from within the ice, and a snow restaurant and chapel sit under the same roofline. Heated glass-roofed cabins occupy a separate part of the site, which lets guests split a stay between the two without moving.

The published season is unusually specific for this format, running from about 15 December to 31 March. Outside those dates the snow structure does not exist. That is worth saying plainly, because photographs of these buildings circulate all year and the buildings themselves do not.

Sleeping arrangements follow the pattern: sub-zero rooms, insulated bags, sauna and bathrooms in the heated buildings, and a briefing beforehand. Rovaniemi is the practical base, with an airport and direct trains from Helsinki, which makes this the easiest Nordic entry on the wire to reach. The town sits on the Arctic Circle itself, so the site is close to a working city rather than an hour out in empty country. The forest setting also means less open horizon than at Kirkenes, and correspondingly less exposure to wind, though it costs the guest the wide sky that the fjord and floodplain sites deliver for nothing.

Altitude is the difference here. Where the Nordic entries on this wire sit at low elevation in high latitudes, this one sits high up in the Alps, which means the cold is thinner, the sun is fierce during the day, and the site is accessible by lift and on foot rather than by car. Domes are built from compacted snow each season and connected by short tunnels, with carved interiors that change year to year.

Sleeping is the standard arrangement for the format: sub-zero rooms, expedition sleeping bags, and warm facilities in a nearby building. Evening meals lean towards fondue, which is a regional habit rather than a novelty, and the site runs a small bar cut from snow.

The Swiss entry is the most social of the six on this wire. Because it sits within a working ski area, the village is busy in daylight and quiet only after the lifts stop. Guests carry their own overnight kit up, and the operator is direct about what to bring. The season depends on snow cover, and the whole village is dismantled by the spring melt.

The annual redesign is the defining fact. The village is not simply rebuilt to the same drawing; the footprint, the height and the decorative programme all change, and a theme is chosen for the season. That has produced years that read as galleries and years that read as film sets, which makes this the most variable entry on the wire.

Practically, it works like the others. Sleeping rooms hold below freezing, guests use expedition bags, and the heated buildings on site carry the bathrooms and the sauna. A snow restaurant and an ice bar occupy part of the structure, and the village takes day visitors alongside overnight guests.

Kittilä sits in western Lapland with its own airport, and the surrounding fell country is used for skiing through the same months. Levi, the nearby resort town, supplies most of the beds in the area, so the snow village tends to function as one night inside a longer stay rather than as a base for a week. The season is short, it ends with the melt, and none of the structure is preserved or stored for the following winter. Anyone deciding on the strength of a photograph should check which year it was taken in, because the building in it no longer exists.