Icehotel
The original, and still the reference point. Since the late 1980s the hotel has been rebuilt each winter in the village of Jukkasjärvi from ice cut out of the Torne River and from snow packed over temporary arched forms.
Its art suites are the reason the place is more than a curiosity: each is carved by a different artist or team selected from open submissions, so the interiors change completely from one season to the next. Sleeping rooms are kept a few degrees below freezing, with reindeer hides and expedition-grade sleeping bags doing the actual work of keeping guests warm.
A permanent solar-cooled section allows ice rooms to be visited outside the winter months. Warm accommodation, saunas and a restaurant sit alongside, since nobody spends a whole stay at minus five. In spring the seasonal building melts and returns to the river it came from.