Ice Accommodations

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The Ice Hotel

Accommodations in one of the coldest parts of Sweden offer a frozen place to rest your head.

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"We thought, maybe if we did a press release, Absolut would see what we were doing," he went on, recalling that he simply bought some bottles of Absolut, put them in the Ice Bar, snapped some photos and sent them out, with the help of the Swedish Tourist Board, to journalists in New York, London and Hamburg.

Sure enough, a few newspapers wrote stories about the Ice Bar, and shortly afterward an Absolut executive called Bergqvist to discuss the matter.

The two quickly made a deal, and now Bergqvist's bartenders only sell Absolut vodka (in multi-flavored incarnations) in square-shaped glasses made entirely of genuine Torne River ice. The Ice Bar is Jukkasjarvi's most successful export: There are now Ice Bars in Stockholm, Copenhagen, London, Milan and Tokyo, with other locations in the works.

In the Ice Bar in Jukkasjarvi, guests from around the world spill forth with explanations of why they have trekked this far north to experience frigidity at its finest.

Claire Gross, a 20-something fisherwoman from Juneau, Alaska, had been plotting to visit the Ice Hotel since a friend told her in fifth grade that it existed. Even though she had imbibed a few vodka drinks by the time I interviewed her, Gross recognized the irony in the idea that she'd journeyed from Alaska to the Swedish Arctic. "I've come to the Ice Hotel, which is [expletive] up because I come from an ice hotel of a state," she said, adding that visiting Jukkasjarvi has satisfied her curiosity.

Even Jacinthe Moreau, who works for an international Internet-based pharmaceutical company and was snookered into coming to the Ice Hotel by co-workers as part of a morale-building exercise, said she could appreciate the place's charms. "It's just, like, 'wow' from the very beginning," she said.

Guests at the Ice Bar chat, dance and drink until the early hours of the morning, swapping stories and checking one another out. Perhaps this is because they're afraid to go to sleep in their rooms.

I PREPARED MYSELF AS BEST I COULD for my first night, in the Helices suite, shedding my snowsuit but keeping on my thick, high-tech long johns, hat, gloves and wool socks. I laid out the blue thermal sleeping bag the hotel supplies each of its guests, as well as a set of sheets that go inside the bag, and a small pillow. It wasn't as if I were sleeping directly on the ice: On top of the oval ice bed lay a thin foam mattress covered by reindeer skins. I crawled into the sleeping bag, turned out the light with a switch right by the bed. I gazed for a minute at the conical shapes protruding from the ceiling, which made me realize I hadn't seen a patterned ceiling since I tilted my head up in my best friend's freshman-year dorm room and wondered how a single decade such as the '70s could produce so much atrocious architecture. I did a quick check to make sure that only the minimal amount of my body was directly exposed to the frigid air. Just relax, I told myself, you're not going to freeze overnight. Then, I promptly fell asleep.

In the morning, a hotel employee came in and delivered my wake-up call with a critical source of sustenance: hot lingonberry juice. Now, you might think that after sleeping in a room that's several degrees below freezing you would prefer a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, but lingonberry proves to be an almost magical aid just after you've awakened, shivering, and need something to propel you out of your bed and a few dozen yards down the hallway to the adjoining, heated building where you've stored your luggage. (That, incidentally, is where the bathrooms are, because the hotel's engineers have yet to master the art of frozen plumbing.) Fortified, I sprinted down the hall to the heated changing room and then ventured up the road to the building that houses both showers and a sauna, as well as the main dining room.

Eric had slept in a similar room, and, after surviving one evening in the Ice Hotel, he and I felt vindicated. In fact, I've felt colder camping in the Shenandoahs during the fall. We took to tossing our jackets aside as we ran between one of the heated buildings to the Ice Hotel itself.

"We're [expletive] reindeers," Eric told me, grinning.

Then I opted to sleep in the Ice Hotel for the second night, something that guests rarely do, because there are plenty of heated chalets people can rent once they've proved their mettle. I didn't stay the second night to prove a point: I did it because I had come to find the extreme cold relaxing, a way to dial back the stress and hyperactivity that characterize my everyday existence. Some people tout sweaty yoga as a way to center themselves, but that trendy exercise pales in comparison with the soothing balm of a constant -- but bearable -- freeze.

EMBOLDENED BY OUR NEWFOUND RESISTANCE TO THE COLD, Eric and I eagerly accepted the Swedes' offer to take a late-night snowmobile ride. (It also was the only way we were going to get to the small traditional hut where dinner would be served.) Despite the fact that the wind chill had dipped to 60 below while we were riding, I didn't feel chilled to the bone. As I gently pushed on the accelerator and steered along the icy path in front of me, I marveled at the snow-covered firs that lined each side. Riding in a pack of roughly a dozen people (two to each snowmobile), I felt a bit like a reckless teenager, spewing out exhaust during an unsanctioned joyride as we glided over the frigid landscape and left tracks in our wake. And because we didn't actually see any traumatized reindeer alongside the river, I didn't feel exceptionally guilty. Mainly I was struck by how extreme the whole thing felt -- the pitch-black sky, the sub-zero temperature, the fact that we were the only things moving for what seemed like miles around us.

EACH SPRING THE ICE HOTEL DISAPPEARS. "We take 100 million liters of water from the river a year," Bergqvist says. "That's a loan. We give it back in May, June."

Bergh actually likes walking among the ruins of the hotel, when the walls separate and open toward the sky. He is philosophical about the ritual collapse of his work.

"You know it's ephemeral. You know it will melt," he says.

At the same time, the warming temperatures globally are a cause of concern for the hotel's operators. Their annual opening on the first weekend in December has not changed, even if it is not getting cold as quickly as it used to in the winter.

"We've been more and more hurried opening it, because it always opens at the same time," Bergh says, explaining that they have had to start building it later in recent years.

Fjellborg, the sled dog breeder, is more worried about how global warming is jeopardizing the reason people now come to Jukkasjarvi.

"Right now, this environment that used to be a problem for my grandfather is the reason we have a good life, because we can make this place interesting for people," he says. "If that goes away, that true winter climate, it's going to affect us all. Not dramatically, but super-dramatically, because we'll be done."

Juliet Eilperin is a writer on The Post's National staff. Staff researcher Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report. Eilperin can be reached at eilperinj@washpost.com.