Ice Hotels · four hotels

Here the outer wall is made of the same material as the ground: packed snow, shaped each winter and gone by spring. Behind it the site runs to the Alta river. Because the whole structure is rebuilt every season, the exact line of the boundary is not the same twice.

The Alta river valley opens out past the wall, frozen and white for the months the hotel stands. The far bank is low forest. Light behaves oddly at this latitude in winter: long blue hours instead of daylight, and on some nights the aurora is visible straight above the valley.

There is an airlock rather than a door. Warm rooms are kept in separate heated buildings, and the snow structure is entered through a short vestibule that holds the temperature difference. Everything a guest needs before sleeping happens on the warm side of that vestibule.

Sort out proper winter footwear before you arrive, because the ground between the buildings is packed snow throughout.

Clearing is what makes the site: the snow structure, the glass igloos and the paths between them all sit on ground kept open through the winter. Where the clearing ends, the trees begin without any transition. The boundary is therefore maintained rather than built, and it moves slightly year to year.

Beyond it stands ordinary Lapland forest: spruce and pine holding snow on their branches until the load drops off on its own. The ground under them is deep and unmarked except by animal tracks. Sound stops almost completely a short way in, which is the first thing most visitors notice.

The glass igloos do the work of joining the two. They are set out on the clearing with glazed ends rather than walls, so a guest lies inside a warm room and faces cold forest. The snow rooms behind them have no windows at all.

Ask what winter clothing is provided before you pack, so you are not carrying an outer layer you will not use.

Only a short piece of shoreline separates the buildings from the fjord. The site sits low, and the ground gives out into water almost as soon as it leaves the walls. There is no promenade and no defence along it; the boundary is the natural bank, snow-covered for much of the year.

The fjord runs out between low hills toward the Barents Sea, dark against the snow and open through most of the winter. Weather crosses it quickly. This far north-east the light is short in season, and the far shore is often only a shape rather than a detail.

The site is laid out as separate small buildings rather than one block, so moving between them means going outside and passing the water each time. Since the snow hotel has been rebuilt here since 2006, the arrangement of that short walk is well settled.

Carry a headtorch: the ground between the buildings is dark for long stretches of the winter season.

Snowfield holds the village, and it ends where the ground tips over into the descent. That break is the boundary and it exists only in winter; the same place carries grass in summer. The domes are built back from the fall each year, on the flattest part the field offers.

Past the break the mountain falls away toward the valley floor, and the villages below sit small enough to be read as pattern rather than as places. Cloud often forms under the site instead of over it. At that height the weather can change within an hour and close the whole view.

The domes are low and rounded, and they are set so their entrances face away from the drop. Between them the snow is trodden into paths that run along the field rather than toward the edge. It is rebuilt from scratch each winter.

Sort your uphill transport out first, since the village is reached by mountain lift and then on foot across snow.