Ice Hotels

The original, rebuilt every winter since the late 1980s from ice harvested out of the Torne River. Artists are invited each season to carve individual art suites, so the interior is effectively a new exhibition annually, and by spring the whole structure has returned to the river it came from.

A permanent, year-round wing with cooled ice rooms now runs alongside the seasonal build, which is why the hotel can take guests in July. Warm accommodation, a sauna and a restaurant sit a short walk away, and cold rooms are stayed in for a single night as a matter of practice rather than rule.

North America's ice hotel is reconstructed annually on a fresh theme, with vaulted corridors, a chapel that hosts winter weddings and a bar where the glassware is cut from ice. It opens in January and is gone by late March.

The hotel shares a site with a year-round resort, so guests have heated rooms, spas and restaurants immediately at hand — most people spend part of the evening in the ice building and treat the warm facilities as the other half of the stay.

Rebuilt each January on the bank of the Alta River, Sorrisniva is family-run and has kept its scale modest, which is part of why the carving work feels considered rather than industrial. Suites, a chapel and an ice bar are cut fresh every season.

The setting is well inside the Arctic Circle, so the winter programme leans heavily on the river and the surrounding plateau. A separate year-round lodge with conventional rooms and a restaurant sits beside the seasonal structure.

Twenty-odd kilometres out of Rovaniemi, this property pairs a snow hotel — carved rooms, an ice bar, a snow restaurant — with a field of heated glass igloos for guests who would rather watch the sky from under a duvet than a reindeer hide.

Both sides of the operation run through the winter season, supported by smoke saunas, outdoor hot tubs and a main building where meals are served. The snow structure is rebuilt from scratch each year.