Ice Hotels

Seasonal structures rebuilt from snow and ice each winter.

An ice hotel is a temporary building. It is carved each winter, stands for a few months, and melts. That impermanence shapes everything about a stay — the way rooms are heated (they are not), the way sleeping is organised, and the warm service building that always sits alongside the cold one.

Tromsø, Norway

Tromsø Ice Domes

The Ice Domes are built each winter in the Tamok valley, roughly an hour and a half inland from Tromsø and well above the Arctic Circle. Unlike ice hotels formed from river ice, these are snow structures: domes sprayed and packed into shape, then carved inside, with ice used for the sculptural work and the furniture.

The complex holds sleeping rooms, an ice bar and a cinema room, and every part of it is rebuilt from nothing the following season, so the layout and the carvings change year to year. Guests sleep on ice beds under reindeer hides in expedition sleeping bags; a heated service building alongside holds bathrooms, showers, a restaurant and somewhere to leave luggage. The valley is far enough from any settlement that the sky is properly dark, which is the other reason people make the drive.

  • Tamok valley, inland from Tromsø
  • Snow-domed, rebuilt every winter
  • Ice bar and carved cinema room
  • Heated service building alongside