Wild Ice & SaunaDec – Apr

Icehotel Nights

Rebuilt from the river each year

It is rebuilt every year, and that is the fact that reframes the whole thing. Ice is cut from the Torne river in March, stored through the summer, and from mid-November a new hotel is built with it — new rooms, new art, designed by different people each season. In spring it melts and goes back into the river it came from.

So nothing you sleep in has existed before or will again. That is unusual enough to be the reason to go, more than the novelty of a cold bed.

Inside sits at about minus five whatever the weather outside is doing, which in January is considerably warmer than the walk to the door.

How the night actually works

How the night actually works: you sleep on a block of ice with reindeer hides over it, in a proper expedition sleeping bag, wearing thermal base layers and nothing else — more clothing makes you colder, not warmer, which is counterintuitive and true.

There is a warm building with your luggage, your bathroom and your shower in it. You are not living in the ice, you are sleeping in it.

Most people manage one night and are glad they did. Two is uncommon and nobody minds if you book a warm room for the second, which is what we usually arrange without being asked.

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