Ice Accommodations

At this hotel in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden, a cold reception is only the beginning

"IT'S A DRY COLD," Swedish foreign ministry officer Gabriella Augustsson tried to reassure me as we made our way through the Stockholm airport.

A dry cold. The phrase was eerily reminiscent of that hairy chestnut "a dry heat," which people use to try to convince you it doesn't matter when the mercury regularly climbs well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in some region of the world.

Augustsson and I, along with a freelance writer named Eric Roston, were heading to the Ice Hotel to learn how an exceptionally pure river can produce one of the most visually arresting construction projects on Earth.

Made entirely from blocks of ice and packed snow, the Ice Hotel combines the best elements of highly stylized interior design with one of nature's most basic elements, water. Swedish officials view it as a sort of national treasure, because it fits neatly into the government's proj-ect of educating people around the world about how clean water is essential for a healthy environment. And, since 1992, the Ice Hotel has attracted 100,000 guests from around the globe to an unforgiving landscape during the chilliest time of the year. A replica of it has been featured in a James Bond film as well as in high-end fashion ad campaigns, and its rooms are booked for months in advance.

There was only one problem: I don't like the cold.

I can trot out an array of reasonable explanations. I have poor circulation, I'm pretty skinny, and my skin becomes reddened and chafed once the temperature begins to dip. Some of my friends and family members were skeptical of my plans to travel in the dead of winter to the Arctic. Just a few days before my departure, my physical therapist looked at me with concern and said, "You know, you probably have 5 percent body fat, at most." My mother was even more protective once I confessed the day before leaving that I had developed a severe cold. "You can't go to the Arctic with a cold," she insisted.

As the national environmental reporter for The Washington Post, I spend a great deal of time thinking about what it means that Earth is warming. Each week, new scientific studies chart how glaciers around the globe are melting, sea ice cover is shrinking and animals are migrating northward in search of cooler habitat. I have interviewed Inuit leaders about how climate changes are eroding their traditional way of life, and spoken to public health experts about how shifting precipitation patterns and temperatures could affect the spread of famine and disease across Africa and Asia.

Over the past couple of years, as it becomes increasingly clear that the northernmost regions of the globe are becoming less frigid, I began pondering the intrinsic value of cold. Climate-change contrarians like to speak of new shipping lines through the Northwest Passage, lower heating bills and humankind's ability to stave off rising sea levels through dikes and other technological innovations. But what would it be like to visit a place of bitter iciness that faces the risk of losing that cold altogether? Only one place would satisfy my curiosity: the village whose townspeople have turned freezing into an asset.

"YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE A NORWEGIAN FLAG ON YOUR JACKET," my fiance, Andrew, told me gently just before I left for Sweden.

I winced. "Do you think it's going to be a problem?"

"Well." Andrew paused for a moment. "It would be worse if you were headed to Norway with a Swedish flag on your parka. After all, Sweden occupied Norway."

Andrew's words provided little comfort once I arrived in Stockholm: The face of every single Swede fell as soon as they gazed down and noticed the red flag with a blue cross on my jacket. Within a few hours, I had resorted to clasping my hands around my midsection in a sort of prayer position to camouflage the offending foreign symbol.