If you’re looking for a holiday with a difference, you won’t find anything more unusual than the Ice Hotel in Sweden. You will be able to enjoy all the luxuries you would associate with a 5 star hotel at temperatures of 5 below.
The Ice Hotel is built every year in December and dismantled in April in the village of Jukkasjärvi, on the banks of the river Torne. It began as a concept in 1989, when a group of Japanese ice artists visited the area and built an exhibition of ice art. It was first slept in in 1990. The French artist Jannot Derid housed a showing of his work in a large, cylindrical shaped igloo in the area. One night during Derid’s exhibition, there were no hotel rooms available in the local area, so visitors asked if they could spend the night in the igloo. They slept in sleeping bags and reindeer skin, and thus the Ice Hotel was born.
Every year, a group of builders, architects, designers and artists from all over the world, known as the Ice Hotel Art and Design Group, gather to build that season’s hotel. They take blocks of ice and tonnes of snow from the Torne River and use it to build the hotel and everything in it.
A stay in Jukkasjärvi is not just limited to the Ice Hotel; you could visit Lapland or go ice fishing. But an Ice Hotel experience in Sweden is one sure to stay with you for a lifetime. We offer a vast range of holidays of various types, including North Pole holidays and ice diving.