Ice Hotels

Jukkasjärvi has been building and rebuilding its ice hotel since the late 1980s, using ice harvested from the Torne River and a snow-and-ice composite the company calls snice. Artists are invited each year to design the art suites, so the interior of the building changes completely from season to season while the plan stays broadly familiar.

A permanent year-round structure with mechanically cooled rooms now operates alongside the seasonal one, which means the property functions as a hotel outside the winter window as well. Warm accommodation, a restaurant and the ceremonial ice church sit within walking distance across the village.

Guests booked into a cold room are given thermal sleeping equipment and a briefing, and keep their luggage in a heated building. It is a working hotel with a service culture, not an endurance test.

The Hôtel de Glace is constructed each winter near Québec City and opens for a short season before it is dismantled. Its design changes annually — themed suites, vaulted corridors, a chapel and a bar where the glassware is also ice — and the arches are formed over moulds rather than cut from blocks, which gives the interiors their distinctive sweep.

Because it sits within a larger resort, guests have access to heated accommodation, spa facilities and a full restaurant, and the cold night is generally sold as a package with a warm one. Day visits are available for people who want the building without the sleeping bag.

It is the most easily reached ice hotel from a major airport, which shapes both the crowd and the way the property is run.

Kirkenes sits far north on the Barents Sea, close to the Russian border, and the Snowhotel is built on the shore of a fjord a short drive from the town. The snow rooms are carved and sculpted each season, and the property also runs a set of heated timber cabins at the water's edge that operate all year.

The site keeps a working husky kennel and a reindeer herd, and much of what guests do here — sledding, king crab fishing through the ice, aurora watching from the shoreline — is organised in-house rather than farmed out. That gives the place the feel of a small lodge with a snow building attached.

The cold rooms are a single-night proposition for most visitors; the cabins are what people stay in for the rest of the trip.

The Rovaniemi property rebuilds its snow hotel every winter and operates it alongside a set of heated glass igloos, so the two ways of sleeping in Lapland — inside the snow and underneath the sky — are available in the same place. Guests routinely book one night of each.

There is a snow restaurant, an ice bar, and a sauna and hot tub area that is more central to the experience than it sounds: the ordinary Finnish rhythm of heat and cold structures the evening for most people staying here.

Rovaniemi's airport is close, and the surrounding forest is used for the usual programme of husky and snowmobile trips. The hotel handles cold-weather clothing, briefings and luggage storage as a matter of routine.