Ice Hotel by Arnie Wilson

It started with a giant igloo. In the spring of 1990, a French artist, Jannot Derid, displayed his paintings in “Arctic Hall” – built on the frozen River Torne near the old village of Jukkasjärvi just outside Kiruna, some 200km north of the Arctic Circle. One night, some guests spent the night there, sleeping on reindeer pelts. And the world’s first ice hotel was born.

Braving cold weather to go skiing is one thing. Trying to sleep on a slab of ice in an ice cave just for fun is another. And yet the Icehotel is fully booked – often by skiers heading for Riksgränsen and Björkliden, or who have travelled up from Dundret - virtually until the ice starts to melt in late April!

There’s some good skiing up here in Swedish Lapland. The season is normally February to May (In December and January it gets dark too early). And it’s not as cold you might think – the North Atlantic Drift (a warm Atlantic Ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico) takes care of that: in January, the temperature difference between coastal Norway and northern parts of continental Canada is approximately 30 °C, even though they are the same latitude.

Riksgränsen, right on the Norwegian border, sells itself as the world’s most northerly ski resort (Norway’s Narvik might just dispute this) but it’s certainly the best known resort in Swedish Lapland, and you can even heliski there in the middle of the “night” on mid-summer’s day. Björkliden, which also has heliskiing, is a fast-developing area with 23 runs, Sweden’s third highest vertical drop, and vast expanses of off-piste. Dundret (it means ‘Thunder’) is some 400km south of the Icehotel, near the town of Gällivare – but many skiers push north to experience it. Although Dundret only has 13 runs, they are long and some are pretty steep. And there are very few lift-lines. Between them these three resorts feed many guests into the Icehotel.

It’s quite an extraordinary place – a frozen cathedral formed around great arches of ice. The key to it is one of Europe’s last major untouched rivers. The River Torne, swollen with water melted from the snow-capped peaks its water unsullied by even a breath of industry. It is this crystal clear river which provides magnificent environment for trout, salmon and Arctic char – and the building blocks for the hotel. They are free of cracks, bubbles and impurities.

When the first Icehotel in the world opened, some people were a little bemused by exactly what it was. The BBC, anxious to make a film about it, asked if they could send a crew in June. It was gently explained to them that by then there would be almost no sign of the hotel – all the ice would have melted. The hotel is built from scratch each winter, and – like snowflakes – no two Ice Hotels are alike. The shareholders like to say that the entire Icehotel is “a loan from the river and is thus respectfully returned to its source” when spring returns.

“From the river, the ice came, and to the river it shall return” is the hotel’s leitmotif. “All that remains is memories.”

However, in recent years, an “Igloo Village” has been built for the summer months, enabling visitors to get a hint of what’s on offer during the winter.

But what exactly is the Ice Hotel? It changes every year, with different artists building their own unique designs into each suite - but fundamentally it is a 4,000 square-metre maze of some 60 rooms of all shapes and sizes superbly crafted in ice, curtained off from long corridors of ice. While some rooms are pretty basic, many of the more expensive ones are chillingly ornate, with a complex variety of themes. There’s actually low-profile electric light in the rooms, which casts an eerie but beautiful Swedish blue or yellow glow through the ice features.

There are guided tours of the rooms during daylight hours. After 6pm, overnight guests take over. A porter takes your luggage to a special storage area: otherwise it would freeze in your room! The temperature inside the hotel is regulated at a constant minus 5 to minus 8 – regardless of the temperature outside, which can fall to minus 30. Heated washrooms and changing rooms are provided in a heated section built into the Icehotel. And the two restaurants – where ice guests stoke their inner fires before bed – are NOT made of ice. But if you choose the ice menu, all the dishes are served on slabs of it!

Apart from the rooms, there are many ice features. In recent years a life-sized Globe Theatre was built in which to stage Shakespeare’s plays, including A Winter’s Tale. A depiction in ice of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper allowed guests to sit at the same table as Christ and his disciples. The key component is something that the hotel’s founder, the affable Yngve Bergqvist calls “Snis” (pronounced like s’nice) which, as its name implies, is a carefully monitored mixture of snow and ice – and as hard as cement. Mere snow wouldn’t do the job, and pure ice would shatter too easily. But together they are a formidable and robust combination. Each year the hotel uses some 3,000 tons of crystal clear ice, extracted in huge blocks by yellow fork-lift trucks from the ‘ice manufacturing plant’, the Torne River, and combines it with 30,000 cubic metres of snow from snow-guns to build the Ice Hotel every year. The hotel sleeps more than 100 guests, and every bedroom is unique.

There is even an ice cinema, and a “perishable” ice church where babies are christened and couples can marry. Whether they spend their honeymoon in one of the ice-clad rooms is another matter. Just as you need very warm clothing to venture out on a snowmobile, to sleep in the hotel – on a bed made of ice, covered in reindeer skin - you will need to don Michelin-man sized quilted overwear: a kind of thermal sleeping bag. And don’t forget the hat!

Incredibly romantic though the surroundings are – a silent, fantasy world of ice sculptures ingeniously lit, and ice-cool air which gives your lungs an almost sweet shock as you breathe it – romance in such vast and restraining clothing, not to mention the ambient temperature, is somewhat restricting.

Visitors who want a taste of the ice hotel can book warm comfy cabins nearby, where skylights offer a view of the Northern Lights – if they materialise – and there’s even a fridge! But they can still visit the Icehotel’s Absolut Ice Bar, where a wide variety of flavoured vodkas in and on the rocks are available in glasses made of pure ice from the river. The atmosphere is surreal and dreamlike. Time seems to stand still: “the ice holds its breath and waits. It’s not in a hurry: it communicates stillness, calm, and silence.”

Reality seems a distant concept as you sip your Absolut Ice Age (Mandarin, dowsed with lemon and cranberry, topped with Cassis) Absolut Ice Bear (Vanilla with blueberry liqueur, elderflower juice, and blue Curacao) Absolut Swede ( peach with pineapple liqueur, orange juice, and blue Curacao) and Absolute Valhalla (citron, with butterscotch liqueur, elderflower juice, lemon and grenadine). For those who prefer something as little warmer, there are even hot vodka combinations: Absolut hot peach and Absolut hot tub.

The ice glasses are in demand at ice bars around the world, including London, Milan and Stockholm. About half the ice “harvested” from the River Torne is exported .Just about all visitors visit the ice bar because it’s such a bizarre experience, and a few drinks before turning in can do wonders to prepare you for a night “on the rocks”. The trick is to drink just enough to give you a little Dutch courage, but not so much that you need to visit the loo – some distance away in the reception area near the cabins…a walk too far in such sub-zero conditions.

When spring comes, and the rays of the sun start to melt the Icehotel, the structure never collapses. The hotel slowly trickles back into the River Torne. The rooms, the suites, the church, cinema, the bar and even the reception area – the whole creation, in fact – will once more become part of the rushing rapids. Till winter returns once more.