Icehotel
Jukkasjärvi, Sweden
The original, and still the reference point. Every winter the hotel at Jukkasjärvi is rebuilt from ice harvested out of the Torne River, and every spring it melts back into it. Artists are invited to carve the individual suites, so the interior is a different exhibition each season, and none of it survives the year.
A year-round wing, chilled by solar power through the Arctic summer, now runs alongside the seasonal building. Guests sleep on ice beds under reindeer hides and thermal sleeping bags, then thaw out in a warm service building with saunas and hot drinks. It is two hundred kilometres inside the Arctic Circle.
Hôtel de Glace
Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier, Quebec, Canada
North America's ice hotel is raised each January near Quebec City and stands for roughly three months. Thousands of tonnes of snow and ice go into vaulted corridors, a chapel that hosts genuine weddings, and an ice bar where the glasses are also ice.
Themed suites are sculpted individually, some with fireplaces that warm nothing in particular but look the part. Most guests spend part of the night in heated accommodation nearby, which the hotel treats as entirely normal rather than a failure of nerve.
SnowHotel Kirkenes
Kirkenes, Norway
Kirkenes sits at the top of Norway, close to the Russian border, and its SnowHotel is refrigerated to stay open through the year — you can sleep in a snow room in July if the idea appeals. The interior stays a few degrees below freezing regardless of what the calendar says.
The property runs husky kennels and reindeer alongside the hotel, and the surrounding fjord is dark enough for good aurora viewing through the long winter. Warm cabins are available for anyone who wants the ice rooms for an evening rather than a night.
Arctic SnowHotel & Glass Igloos
Rovaniemi, Finland
Outside Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland, this property pairs the usual snow rooms with heated glass igloos, which solves the obvious problem: you can watch the sky without lying in a sleeping bag to do it. Guests often book one of each across a two-night stay.
The site is rebuilt annually and includes an ice restaurant, an ice bar and — less predictably — a snow sauna, which the owners claim is the first of its kind. Snowmobile and husky trails run straight off the property into the surrounding forest.