Kittilä, Finland
Lapland Hotels SnowVillage
SnowVillage is rebuilt from scratch every winter near Kittilä in Finnish Lapland, with a fresh architectural theme each season shaping the carving, the layout and the lighting. Nothing survives from one year to the next except the practice of building it, which is a stranger and more appealing form of continuity than permanence would be.
Guests sleep in snow rooms on beds of ice topped with insulating layers and hides, in expedition-grade sleeping bags, at an interior temperature that holds a few degrees below freezing regardless of what the weather outside is doing. Bathrooms, saunas and changing facilities sit in heated buildings alongside, and the briefing on how to sleep warm is a genuine part of the experience rather than a formality.
There is an ice restaurant and a bar with glasses cut from ice, and the whole structure is open to day visitors as well as overnight guests. By late spring it has melted back into the ground it was made from.