Ice hotel plus midnight sun – a very cool combo
Ispent last night in a fridge with two mermaids. I hoped we’d all get on but they were cold as ice. It wasn’t the best night’s sleep I’ve had but it was certainly one of the coolest things I’ve done.
Sweden’s Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi is world-famous. Every winter they build a hotel from ice and snow filled with shimmering sculptures of ethereal creatures. Located 240km above the Arctic Circle, winters in Jukkasjärvi are long, dark and exceptionally cold. But in late spring it warms up and the hotel slowly melts back into the river. At least it used to. My night in an Icehotel room took place in mid-summer.
They still build a new ice hotel each winter but those clever Swedes have also added permanent ice suites and an ice bar. They call this bit Icehotel 365. It’s just opened. Now you can sleep in an ice room, while outside there’s sunlight all night.
I prepared for my night on ice with a sauna ritual. I thwacked myself with birch branches, sweated buckets, jumped in the icy river and wallowed in an outdoor hot tub. Then I feasted on smoky reindeer steak before I chilled in the Ice Bar.
There are 20 rooms in the cold area of Icehotel 365, created by sculptors from around the world (there are also ‘warm’ rooms with heated stone floors). One of the 20 cold ones is full of huge jellyfish, another has an ice stag.
In my room, two 8ft mermaids were ‘working out’ either side of my bed. Zipping my thermal sleeping bag right up felt claustrophobic but it was freezing. After a restless night, I woke with a start next morning when someone brought in a cup of hot lingonberry juice.
The mermaids were still exercising. It didn’t look as if they’d even broken sweat.