It’s situated beside the frozen river Torne at Jukkasjarvi, just outside the town of Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden famous for its iron-ore mining and the location of the hotel’s nearest airport, just a 15-minute bus ride away. That’s if you want to travel by bus. A much more stylish way to arrive is by one of the dog sleds based at the airport for guests who prefer to immediately immerse themselves in the Arctic lifestyle.
The Ice Hotel is where you imagine the Queen in Narnia to live. It’s stuff that dreams are made of. Everything is made from ice, from the windows, ice pillows, ice chandeliers, snow carpet, all the way down to the cocktail glasses. Imagine shaking your booty in ice boots and several layers of thermal clothing while a rock band plays on an ice stage - it’s a real fantasyland.
The nearby river provides the building blocks that make up the Ice hotel’s foundations. Building begins every year in early December and it’s typically completed in mid-January before melting back to the river as the weak spring sunshine hauls itself over the horizon. At this time of year, sunrise is as late as eleven o’clock and isn’t really a sunrise at all as the darkness is barely broken by the strange blue arctic light which is the closest we come to daylight.
What I find most interesting about the founder of the Ice Hotel, Yngve Bergqvist, is that he’s exactly what you’d expect. The mad cap idea was formed like ice cap in his head twenty years ago but never melted away: “let’s make a really cold hotel room that people are going to clamour to stay in.” It was born from an igloo essentially. And what I loved about the creator and the founders in general is they have that joie de vivre. They have the idea of fun being at the centre of all things. And the fact I think that it’s become this global franchise of bars, the bi-product of it is the business side, but the fun has never escaped him and he still spends one night every month with his dog Rocko in the rooms. He told us the oldest guest he’s had to stay was 85 years old and the longest-staying resident spent three weeks sleeping in the ice rooms.
One of the reasons for our trip here is the proximity to the Norwegian border and we spend a day travelling to the fijord at Narvik before returning to London via a night in Copenhagen – our cinematic show takes in the frigid foursome of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.
Awards season is about to engulf us once more and there are ten nominations for Best Picture at the Oscars this year. Last year’s Academy Awards provided me with my first chance to walk the red carpet at the world’s most prestigious cinematic ceremony.
At the time it ranked as one of those things to tick off the bucket list of things to do in your life. But as I joined Nils, the Sami herder as we fed his reindeer near the Ice Hotel I realised I’d found something even more memorable.
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