Stockholm Ice Hotel
Your comprehensive guide to Everything Stockholm
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You might think that an actual Ice Hotel only exists in movies such as James Bond: Die another Day, but you would be wrong. The Swedes have been building an Ice Hotel every winter for the last 19 years and plan to construct their 20th during the 2009/2010 winter.
As soon as winter begins, the Ice Hotel´s team of snow builders, architects, designers and artists from all over the world gather in the remote town of Jukkasjärvi, 200 km north of the Arctic Circle. The construction begins in November and the first phase of the hotel opens on December 10th. New phases are then regularly opened until December 31st, when the construction of Ice Hotel is completed.
The entire hotel is built on location under the open sky and thus a product of real extreme engineering. Normally the hotel is over 5500 square meters in size with a reception, bar, a church and actual hotel rooms made entirely out of snow and ice. They even have three types of rooms, Snow Room, Ice Room and Art Suite decorated with ice sculptures. The rooms remain at -5°C to -8°C regardless of how cold it might be outside. One might wonder how people actually sleep in rooms made out of ice and snow but there is no need to worry. By wearing thermal underwear and a hat you are completely warm in the sleeping bag provided.
Since the entire hotel melts every spring time, it has to be built again every year. This allows for new art and design to be implemented so that the hotel is constantly changing its appearance.
The hotel itself is an art gallery by day with ice sculptures in every corner. As night falls it is however only accessible by hotel guests. Besides the hotel it there are activities to engage in during the day.
How to get there?
From Stockholm it takes only 90 minutes to fly to the town of Kiruna. Kiruna is 12km away from Jukkasjärvi. Both SAS and Norwegian offer regular flights from Stockholm to Kiruna.
