Icehotel (Jukkasjärvi)

Icehotel
Icehotel Main Hall (2014) by Alessandro Falca & AnnaSofia Mååg
General information
Location	Jukkasjärvi, Sweden
Coordinates	67°50′59″N 20°35′40″E / 67.84972°N 20.59444°E / 67.84972; 20.59444Coordinates: 67°50′59″N 20°35′40″E / 67.84972°N 20.59444°E / 67.84972; 20.59444
Opening	1990
Technical details
Floor area	6,000 m2 (64,600 sq ft)
Design and construction
Architect	There is a different architect for every room
Other information
Number of rooms	55
Number of restaurants	10
Website
icehotel.com

The Icehotel is a hotel rebuilt each year with snow and ice in the village of Jukkasjärvi, in northern Sweden, about 17 kilometres (11 mi) from Kiruna. It is the world's first ice hotel.

After its first opening in 1990, the hotel has been rebuilt each year from December to April. The hotel, including the chairs and beds, is constructed from snow and ice blocks taken from the nearby Torne River. Artists are invited to create different rooms and decorations made by ice. Besides bedrooms, there is a bar, with glasses made of ice and an ice chapel that is popular with marrying couples. The structure remains below freezing, around −5 °C (23 °F).

In 1989, Japanese ice artists visited the area and created an exhibition of ice art. In Spring 1990, French artist Jannot Derid held an exhibition in a cylinder-shaped igloo in the same area. One night there were no rooms available in the town, so some of the visitors asked for permission to spend the night in the igloo at the exhibition hall. They slept in the igloo in sleeping bags on top of reindeer skins, and were the first guests of the "hotel".

The entire hotel is made out of snow and ice blocks from the Torne River, even the glasses in the bar are made of ice. Each spring, around March, Icehotel harvests tons of ice from the frozen Torne River and stores it in a nearby production hall with room for over 900 t (990 short tons) of ice and 27,000 t (30,000 short tons) of snow. The ice is used for creating Icebar designs and ice glasses, which are used for ice sculpting classes, events and product launches all over the world while the snow is used for building a strong structure for the building. About 900 t (990 short tons) of what is left is used in the construction of the next Icehotel.

When completed, the hotel features a bar, church, main hall, reception area, plus about 100 rooms for guests. The room rate starts at 1500 kr. The hotel hosts also an ice restaurant. The furniture is sculpted blocks of ice in the form of chairs and beds. The thick walls, floor and ceiling are made of ice. Even the beds, the fittings and decoration are carved from ice. No two rooms are the same; the rooms are unique works of art. At the Icehotel the beds are bedded with reindeer furs and people are given special equipment to use while sleeping in the hotel. The guests sleep in polar-tested sleeping bags. There is no heating and the bedroom temperatures are constantly around −5 °C (23 °F). There’s no plumbing at the hotel, but there's a sauna that is run on the premises of the Icehotel with hot tub outdoors.