Ice Hotels

The original, and still the reference point: a hotel rebuilt every December from ice harvested out of the Torne River, opened through the winter, and left to melt back into the same river in spring. Artists are commissioned each year for the individually designed suites, so the building is never twice the same. Alongside the seasonal structure there is now Icehotel 365, a refrigerated wing that stays cold through the summer, and a set of warm rooms and cabins for guests who want a night in the ice and a night in a bed at room temperature. A sauna, a restaurant and the ice bar handle the rest.

North America's ice hotel, rebuilt each winter just outside Quebec City on the grounds of a resort that operates year-round. Construction takes several weeks and produces vaulted corridors, themed rooms, an ice chapel that hosts weddings and a bar where the glasses are cut from ice. Because it shares a site with a functioning hotel and water park, guests have somewhere warm to retreat to, which makes it a more forgiving introduction to sleeping at freezing point than the remote properties. It opens in early January and is gone by late March.

Sorrisniva has been raising an igloo hotel beside the Alta River since the late 1990s, and the family that runs it also runs the year-round lodge next door, so the ice building sits inside an established operation rather than standing alone. The interiors are carved rather than moulded, with sculpture work through the suites and a chapel and bar in ice. What distinguishes a stay here is what is around it — the river, the northern lights when the sky cooperates, and a restaurant that takes northern Norwegian produce seriously enough to be worth the trip on its own.

Close to the Russian border in Norway's far northeast, the SnowHotel is kept cold by refrigeration and therefore stands through the whole year, which makes it unusual among ice properties. Rooms are ice-carved and reached along corridors held at a steady few degrees below freezing; guests are equipped with proper sleeping systems and briefed carefully before turning in. Warm cabins on the same site face the fjord for those who want an ordinary night afterwards. The kennels and the husky operation are a large part of the business, and the place is organised around getting people out into the landscape.