The Unusual Story Behind a Hotel That Gets Demolished Every Year and Has Been Since 1989

Every April, one of the world's most visited hotels melts into a river. Every November, construction begins again.

The ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi, a village of around 900 people located 200 kilometres above the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland, has been doing this since 1989. What started as a temporary igloo built by Japanese ice artists for an exhibition has become the world's first and largest ice hotel, spanning over 6,000 square metres and drawing visitors from across the globe each winter season.

The construction process is worth understanding on its own terms. In spring, teams harvest blocks of ice from the frozen Torne River. Some blocks weigh up to two tonnes. They are stored in a nearby production hall through the summer; refrigerated and waiting. When temperatures drop far enough in mid-November, snow guns begin spraying a mixture of snow and ice known as snice onto steel molds shaped as inverted catenary arches. After a few days, the snice sets hard enough for the molds to be removed, leaving freestanding corridors of compressed snow. The entire shell takes approximately six weeks to complete.Then the artists arrive.

Each year, designers and sculptors from around the world submit proposals for the hotel's art suites. A jury selects around 50 of them. Each accepted artist travels to Jukkasjärvi and spends weeks carving their suite by hand from clear Torne River ice blocks, working in temperatures that can drop to minus 40 degrees Celsius. The brief is open. The constraint is the material. Every room is different, and every year the hotel looks nothing like it did the season before.

Guests sleep on beds of ice covered with reindeer skins and thermal sleeping bags. Interior temperatures hold at around minus five to minus eight degrees Celsius regardless of outside conditions. Overnight stays cost between €400 and €700, including thermal gear, sauna access and breakfast. The ice bar, where glasses are carved fresh from river ice each season, has since inspired franchise versions in Copenhagen, Tokyo and Oslo.

In 2016, a permanent structure called ICEHOTEL 365 was added to the site. Kept frozen year-round by solar panels, it allows the ice experience to continue through summer when the original building has long since returned to the river.

The relationship between the hotel and the river is what makes this genuinely unusual as a construction story. The ice is taken from the Torne, one of Sweden's four protected national rivers and among the last undisturbed waterways in Europe. When the hotel melts each spring, the water returns to the same river. Nothing is permanently added to the environment, and nothing is permanently taken from it. The entire operation runs on what the river provides and gives it back when finished.

Yngve Bergqvist, who founded the hotel after inviting Japanese ice artists to Jukkasjärvi in 1989, originally asked a simple question: Would anyone pay to sleep in the ice? Over one million guests later, that question has been answered.