Ice Hotels

The original, and still the most ambitious. Every winter the hotel is rebuilt beside the Torne River from ice harvested out of it, and every spring what was built melts back into the same water. Nothing is stored, nothing is reused, and the whole building is a temporary structure that has been running continuously since 1989.

The art suites are the reason people book. Each is designed by a different invited artist and carved individually, so no two rooms repeat and no room survives the year. Guests sleep on ice beds under reindeer hides in thermal sleeping bags, at a steady few degrees below zero, after a briefing that is more practical than dramatic.

A permanent, heated building next door holds the warm rooms, saunas and dining, and there is now a year-round ice section kept frozen by solar power through the midnight-sun months. The village around it is small; most guests fill their days with river trips, dog sledding or waiting for the aurora, and their nights with an experience that lasts about eight hours and is talked about for years.

North America's ice hotel is rebuilt each January just outside Québec City and holds through to late March. It is constructed from snow blown over vaulted forms and blocks of ice, with arched corridors, a chapel, a bar where the glasses are ice, and a slide cut through the structure for no reason other than that it is enjoyable.

Themed rooms and suites are carved fresh every season around a chosen subject, and several include their own fireplace and a private hot tub outside the door. Standard rooms are simpler: an ice plinth, a mattress, an arctic-rated sleeping bag and instructions delivered by staff who have clearly given them a thousand times.

The site keeps heated pavilions with lockers, changing rooms and warm washrooms a short walk from every bedroom, which is what makes an overnight stay reasonable rather than heroic. A large share of visitors come only for the day tour, and the hotel is unbothered by that — the building is treated as a public work as much as an inn.

Kirkenes sits close to the Russian border in Norway's far northeast, and the snow hotel there is built each winter beside a fjord on a site the operators also run through the summer. The interior is carved snow and ice, with sculpted rooms lit in colour, and the temperature holds a few degrees below freezing regardless of what the weather outside is doing.

Overnight guests are given thermal bags and hoods and sleep on ice beds with hide-covered mattresses. Because the property runs year-round, the surrounding infrastructure is unusually solid: heated service buildings, a proper restaurant, a sauna, and warm cabins on the shoreline for guests who want a night in the snow and a night in a bed.

The operation keeps a working husky kennel and a herd of reindeer, and the winter programme leans on both. King crab fishing through the ice is the local speciality, and the hotel's kitchen makes a point of serving what the boats bring in that day.

Twenty-odd kilometres out of Rovaniemi, in forest rather than in town, this property pairs a rebuilt snow hotel with a line of heated glass igloos, so guests can choose between sleeping inside the cold and sleeping warm underneath it. Many book one night of each, which is exactly how the site is designed to be used.

The snow rooms are carved and sculpted afresh each season and held around minus five, with sleeping bags rated well beyond that. The glass igloos have proper beds, private bathrooms and an angled glass roof over the pillow, which makes them the more practical option for anyone hoping to watch the sky without setting an alarm.

There is a snow sauna, an ice restaurant and an ice bar on site, along with an outdoor hot tub that most guests underestimate until they use it. The location, well away from the lights of Rovaniemi, is the reason the place exists where it does, and the aurora forecasting service the staff run is taken seriously by everyone staying.