Icehotel
Jukkasjärvi, Sweden
Two hundred kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, the original ice hotel has been rebuilt every winter since 1989 from ice harvested out of the Torne River. Each season a new set of art suites is carved by invited artists, so the building is effectively a different hotel each year and is gone entirely by summer.
Guests sleep on ice beds under reindeer hides and thermal sleeping bags at a steady few degrees below zero, then thaw out in a warm service building with saunas and beds for those who want a second, conventional night. A separate year-round section, cooled by solar power through the midnight-sun months, keeps a version of the experience available in July.
Hôtel de Glace
Quebec, Canada
North America's ice hotel is reassembled each January on a site near Quebec City and stands for roughly three months before it is allowed to melt. The plan changes annually — vaulted corridors, themed rooms, an ice chapel that still hosts weddings, and a bar where the glasses are cut from ice as well.
It works as an overnight stay and, for most visitors, as a daytime visit; the ticketed tour runs while the hotel is open. Those who do sleep over are briefed carefully first, then sent to a heated pavilion for showers and breakfast in the morning.
Kirkenes Snowhotel
Kirkenes, Norway
Kirkenes sits at the far northeastern corner of Norway, close to the Russian border and well placed under the auroral oval. The snow hotel is rebuilt each winter beside a fjord, its rooms carved and decorated with snow sculpture and kept just below freezing.
The operation around it is what makes the place: a large husky yard, king crab fishing on the ice, and a set of heated glass-fronted cabins for guests who want the same sky without the sleeping bag. Reindeer belonging to the property wander the grounds in plain view.
Arctic SnowHotel & Glass Igloos
Sinettä, Rovaniemi, Finland
Twenty-odd kilometres out of Rovaniemi, this property rebuilds a snow hotel each winter with sleeping rooms, an ice restaurant and an ice bar, and pairs it with glass-roofed igloos that stay warm and let guests watch for the aurora from bed.
There are snow saunas, an ice-floor restaurant serving Lappish cooking, and the usual Arctic programme of snowmobiles and huskies in the surrounding forest. Staying here generally means doing both halves: a night on the ice, then a night under glass.