Ice Hotels

The original, and still the most ambitious. Each winter the hotel is rebuilt from ice harvested out of the Torne River and from “snice”, a snow-and-air mixture sprayed over moulds; in spring the whole structure returns to the river it came from. A separate year-round wing, cooled by solar power through the summer, keeps a smaller set of ice rooms standing permanently.

The art suites are the reason to come. Each is designed by a different invited artist and carved by hand, so the corridors read as an exhibition that guests happen to sleep inside. Warm rooms, a sauna and hot food are all a short walk away, which is what makes a night at minus five bearable.

Guests sleep on beds of ice under reindeer hides and thermal bags, and are woken with hot lingonberry juice. The village around it supplies the rest — dog sledding, river trips, and one of the more reliable places in Europe to stand under the aurora.

North America's ice hotel is rebuilt every winter just outside Quebec City, on the grounds of a year-round holiday village. It goes up in a matter of weeks — vaulted corridors, themed suites, a chapel that hosts real weddings, and a bar where everything including the glass is ice — and melts away by spring.

The rooms are carved and lit with an eye to spectacle, and the hotel is open to day visitors as well as overnight guests, which gives it a busy, sociable atmosphere until the evening clears.

Overnight guests get a briefing, a proper arctic sleeping bag and access to heated pavilions, saunas and outdoor spas before bed. Most treat it as one memorable night bracketed by warm rooms, which is exactly how it is designed to be used.

Far above the Arctic Circle near the Russian border, Kirkenes Snowhotel is rebuilt each winter on the shore of a fjord, with snow rooms whose walls are carved into scenes and figures and lit in cold blues. Alongside it the property keeps a set of warm timber cabins on the water, open through the year.

The operation is unusually self-contained: its own restaurant working with king crab and Arctic ingredients, its own husky kennels, and its own guides for the crab safaris and snowmobile trips that occupy the short daylight hours.

It sits on the aurora belt, and the fjord gives the sky an unobstructed edge. Guests generally sleep one night in snow and the rest in a cabin, which is the sensible way round.

A short drive from Rovaniemi, this property pairs two ideas that sound contradictory and work well together: snow rooms rebuilt each winter, and glass-roofed igloos heated year-round where you lie in a warm bed and watch the sky.

The snow side is done properly — carved suites, an ice restaurant and an ice bar — and the hotel is careful about the practical side, with sleeping bags rated far below the room temperature and a warm service building a few steps away.

Snow saunas, an ice-hole plunge for the willing, husky and reindeer farms nearby and a serious aurora alarm service fill the rest of the stay. It is the most complete introduction to the format for anyone who wants the ice without committing every night to it.