“Come on, let’s get into the warm,” the porter says, our feet crunching through the snow as he leads me into the hotel. Inside the lobby I feel the blood re-entering my cheeks and the miniature icicles in my nostrils begin to thaw.
The hotel is kept at a constant -5°C but compared with the -4°F outside it feels balmy.
I am at the Icehotel in the Swedish village of Jukkasjarvi, 200km north of the Arctic Circle.
The resort may be firmly etched on to the tourist map, but geographically you are in the wildest reaches of Europe. The nearby mining town of Kiruna – population just 20,000 – is Sweden’s most northerly.
I arrived during the depths of winter, a period known as the Polar Night. An hour before landing in Kiruna the sun slipped behind the horizon for the last time for three weeks.
This doesn’t mean day-round darkness but a world cloaked in a pastel half-light, all hot pinks and deep blues, for just a few hours each day, before night descends at 2pm.
“We suggest you wear just one layer: a thermal top and bottoms, plus a hat and gloves,” the porter tells me, eyeing up my Michelin Man get-up.
Survival instinct urges me to secretly leave all my layers on – maybe even add more for good measure – but the porter, serious now, tells me the sweat would have a negative effect and cool me down.
So after he leaves the room, I dutifully strip down to my base layers and climb into my polar-grade sleeping bag, a reindeer hide and waterproof mattress protecting me from the ice-bed frame.
I watch the ice sculptures around me glisten in the soft blue light and wiggle my toes to check they still have feeling. I turn off the light and the room is immersed in total darkness.
It’s neither the chill nor the darkness that takes my breath away, but the silence. The walls are made of nearly a metre-thick “snice” (a mix of snow and ice) so not a whisper can creep in or out.
I’m staying in one of the 20 suites in the Icehotel 365. It has 11 Art Suites and nine Deluxe Suites with adjoining bathrooms; thankfully, not made of ice. When I shiver out of bed in the morning, I thank the Sami gods for the hot tub, sauna and heated floors waiting to lift my body temperature.
Overnighting in the Icehotel 365 – which allows guests to sleep in sub-freezing temperatures year round: solar power is harnessed to cool it in summer – is a great experience but not the real reason I’m here.
I’ve come to Jukkasjarvi for a look as an international team of artists and architects puts the finishing touches on the complex’s star attraction: the seasonal Icehotel, built entirely of ice blocks harvested from the Torne river.
The Icehotel story began in 1989, when local entrepreneur Yngve Bergqvist invited a few guests to an ice-sculpting workshop on the banks of the river.
The next winter he built an igloo art gallery; before long, they introduced the world’s first ice bar, serving cocktails “on the rocks” in glasses carved from ice.
Every now and then, Bergqvist and his team would sleep over in sub-zero temperatures, which gave him and his friend, Par Granlund, an idea. The world’s first ice hotel put the village on the international map.
Twenty-nine years on, the Icehotel has become an iconic destination attracting thousands of annual visitors.
Guests can spend one night “on ice”, and for the other nights there are functional warm rooms and chalets. Activities such as husky sledding, ice sculpting and wilderness survival sessions are also on offer.
For many a winter visit to the Icehotel is an elaborate means to a speculative end: to witness the northern lights.
Creative director Arne Bergh oversees the hotel’s artistic vision. This time he has invited 34 sculptors to carve out 15 rooms over two weeks.
Construction is entirely dependent on the climate behaving but in 2018, Mother Nature didn’t play ball.
Over the summer, Sweden witnessed terrible forest fires and even up here barbecues were banned as the mercury crept above 30°C.
Only in early December did Jukkasjarvi receive its first significant snow dump of the year. With just days to spare, the team could finally get down to business.
When I take a tour of the Icehotel just 24 hours before the opening, it is abuzz with activity. Wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, we peek into the rooms to find staff driving chainsaws into the walls, artists chipping away at sculptures and electricians rigging up lights.
In one suite Swedish artist Linda Vagnelind has already completed her sculpture of a striking woman’s face emerging from the wall.
Another room, called Spruce Woods, is designed as a campsite fitted with a VW camper van and a fire made of ice, while The Living Oceans suite is a fantastical underwater world with a whale spanning the length of the ceiling.
By late (northern hemisphere) spring the entire thing will have melted back into the Torne.
A three-night stay including breakfast, return flights and transfers will cost you a chilling R19,370 a person sharing, through Discover the World (discover-the-world.com). – The Telegraph