Ice Hotels

The original, and still the reference point. Every winter the hotel is rebuilt from ice harvested out of the Torne River, with a set of art suites carved by invited artists so that no two seasons repeat; in spring the whole structure melts back into the river it came from. Alongside it, a solar-cooled wing stays open all year.

A night in a cold room is a short, well-managed piece of theatre: a thermal sleeping bag on a reindeer hide, a hot drink in the morning, and a warm building a few steps away with saunas and beds for the rest of your stay. Jukkasjärvi is far enough north that the aurora is a regular part of the evening rather than a promise.

Rebuilt every January just outside Québec City, this is North America's only ice hotel, and it is designed with a theme that changes annually — vaulted corridors, a chapel, a bar where the glasses are ice too. Guests can tour it by day and stay in it by night, which keeps the place busy and slightly festive.

Overnight guests get a briefing, a heavy-duty sleeping bag and access to outdoor hot tubs and a sauna before turning in, plus a warm pavilion for anyone who decides at two in the morning that they have had enough. The advice from staff is uniformly practical, and worth following. Most people sleep better than they expect.

Kirkenes sits close to the Russian border on the Barents coast, and the snow hotel there is rebuilt each season with carved rooms held a few degrees below freezing. What sets it apart is the surrounding operation: a large kennel of huskies, reindeer, and a working fjord immediately below the site.

The stay is usually split — one night in the ice, the rest in the timber gamme cabins that line the shore, each with glass facing the water for aurora watching from bed. Meals are king crab-heavy and genuinely good. It is the most complete Arctic-camp version of the format, and the least like a novelty.

Twenty-odd kilometres outside Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland, this property runs two kinds of accommodation side by side: carved snow rooms in the winter structure, and heated glass igloos with a view of the sky from the pillow. Guests routinely book one of each, which is a sensible way to do it.

There is an ice restaurant, a snow sauna — rarer than it sounds — and smoke saunas by the frozen lake with an ice hole for the brave. Aurora alerts are offered as a wake-up service. The forest location means it is dark in the way that matters for a northern-lights stay, and staff run the evening accordingly.