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ICE PALACES are the stuff of legend. For more than two centuries, Russia and
then North America witnessed a succession of these creations, each more
elaborate and preposterous than the one before. They were short-lived,
glittering places of wonder.

One of the earliest was built in 1740 on the whim of a Russian empress, who
reputedly forced a shivering courtier and his bride to spend their wedding night
inside on a bed of ice, with guards around the walls lest they try to escape. I,
on the other hand, am about to spend an unguarded night in the modern
equivalent: an ice hotel. Yes, my bed is also made of ice and my room unheated.
And yet I am staying here without the Empress Anna鈥檚 military encouragement.

The truth is, I鈥檓 fascinated by ice. And for ice junkies, the Swedish hamlet
of Jukkasj盲rvi 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle is clearly the
place to be. Every winter for the past 10 years, Jukkasj盲rvi has been the
site of a hotel made entirely of snow and ice. The first was built in 1989 to
house an art exhibition. A few hardy souls decided to spend the night inside,
and the idea took off. Now there are more than 6000 overnight guests in a
season, and many more day visitors. Some come to get married or baptised in the
ice chapel. Others come for the dare, or鈥攍ike me鈥攖o witness the
closest living relative of the old ice palaces.

And now that I鈥檓 here, what I really want to know is this: how do you build a
37-room hotel to last 5 months from such an unpromising starting material? And
what does it feel like to see your painstaking efforts melt away into nothing
come the spring?

The first rule of snow building, it seems, is that there are no vertical
walls. Instead, the hotel is made up of interconnecting arched hallways, the
arches not quite semicircular. The white, sloping walls of the entrance hall are
reassuringly solid, and the ceiling is propped up by cylindrical columns of ice,
some blue-green and flecked with bubbles, some perfectly clear.

My first impression is of dazzling whiteness. Overhead is a sparkling
chandelier of ice crystals. The ends of the hallway are closed off by huge
windows made of ice blocks, rendered opaque by intricate carvings. Round the
corner stretches another long hallway, with ice sculptures set into alcoves
along the walls. At the far end, raised on a dais, stands a fairy-tale ice
throne strewn with reindeer skins. Our guide Anna鈥攏o relation, apparently,
to the malevolent Russian empress鈥� explains that it was created for the
Queen of Sweden, who came in December.

Another hallway leads into the bar, where Anna pauses by a stack of ice
glasses: cubes of ice drilled with a cylindrical hole. 鈥淗ere, you drink vodka
`in` the rocks,鈥� she says, and the group laughs nervously. As I slip away, she
is demonstrating how to slide an ice glass, cowboy style, along the translucent
bar.

Sitting beyond the bar, on an ice bench comfortably draped with reindeer
skins, I find Mark Szulgit, one of the hotel鈥檚 architects. He worked on adobe
buildings in the desert, he tells me, before he discovered ice. The techniques,
he says, are surprisingly similar, and the trick is to avoid stresses that
stretch the material. Instead, you have to keep it under compression. 鈥淚f you
stack a pile of sugar cubes on your table and push them, they鈥檒l fall over,鈥� he
says. 鈥淏ut if you use gravity to hold them together, they鈥檒l stay there until
there鈥檚 an earthquake.鈥�

That explains the shape of the snow arches. To keep them under compression,
says Szulgit, you need a catenary arch, which is slightly higher than it is
wide. He demonstrates with a silver chain. Hold the ends of the chain apart
slightly and it hangs downwards, making a shape like the pointed end of an egg.
Flip that shape over, he says, and you have an arch where all the parts are
forced together by gravity, making it very stable.

The arches here are made from a combination of snow and ice, which the
designers call 鈥渟nice鈥�. They start in November, using snow-making machines.
First, they line up a row of metal frames and coat them with a mix of snow and
water. In temperatures that can drop to 鈭�30 掳C or less, the snice takes only
a couple of days to become rock solid. The frames can then be slid out and moved
on to make the next part of the hotel. 鈥淭he snice is incredibly strong,鈥� says
脜ke Larsson, one of the hotel鈥檚 five owners. 鈥淵ou could drive a car on this
谤辞辞蹿.鈥�

There are three different sizes of mould: for the main hallways, the smaller
corridors and the individual rooms. The largest moulds are the oldest, and in
those early days the designers didn鈥檛 get the shape quite right. They are
slightly too wide and flat, and left to themselves the largest hallways would
fall inwards. That鈥檚 why they have columns as props, with mesh reinforcements at
the top to stop the columns punching through the ceilings as the snice creeps.
Still, says Szulgit, it was a nice mistake to make. 鈥淭he columns break up the
space beautifully.鈥�

The ice for the columns鈥攁nd for the windows and sculptures鈥攃omes
from the Torne river, which runs alongside the hotel. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a wild river,鈥� says
Arne Bergh, another of the owners. There are no hydroelectric plants or
factories, and the ice it produces is as clear as glass.

Special tools are needed to cut the ice, says Bergh. Saws designed for wood
or metal wouldn鈥檛 work, because ice is too soft. The specially designed ice saws
have bigger teeth and fewer of them, leaving space for the chippings to be
transported away from the cutting head before they can melt and clog the saw.
Individual ice blocks for the columns and windows are then simply dragged up
into the growing hotel, and welded with water. At these temperatures, says
Larsson, 鈥渋t鈥檚 like superglue鈥�.

The next step is to bring in an army of artists to create the sculptures and
model the rooms. Many of the guest artists have never worked with ice before,
but they are usually thrilled by the speed they can operate at. 鈥淚f I design
something, I want to see the results immediately,鈥� says Szulgit. 鈥淗ere, to make
a table and four chairs takes less than a day.鈥�

The hotel designers are very particular about the art inside, and are
scornful about traditional ice carvings of swans and pagodas. 鈥淲e bring
contemporary artists, teach them the crafts and they create from their
temperaments,鈥� says Bergh. 鈥淵ou won鈥檛 find pink swans here.鈥�

As for the lighting, Bergh says, it鈥檚 a constant battle to produce light
without heat. The chandelier is lit from a projector on the roof, which feeds
into a bundle of fibre-optic cables. Behind the sculptures are low-wattage
halogen lamps, and the bar has a gentle neon strip light. The purism extends to
the colour schemes, which are designed to emphasise the cold. 鈥淲e鈥檙e allergic to
too many colours,鈥� Bergh says. 鈥淲arm colours on ice don鈥檛 work鈥攊t looks
like candy. We want it to look like ice.鈥� To power the lighting, he says, the
hotel walls contain many kilometres of cables, frozen into the ice. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a hell
of a job, installing electricity into a living building of ice and water.鈥�

There may be electricity here but there is certainly no heating, and away
from the warm bodies in the bar I start to shiver. The temperature inside the
hotel right now is a steady 鈭�6 掳C, and it鈥檚 no place to linger in your
room. Still, I want to explore. As I walk back down the corridors I can make out
the joins left over from the moulds, segmenting the walls like the back of a
millipede, and behind the sculptures I now see black cables disappearing into
the snow.

I turn into one of the smaller corridors, and the atmosphere changes yet
again. Now there are no sculptures or ice windows, and the predominant mood is
ascetic. The scuffed snow floor dulls any sounds, the white walls and ceilings
are low, and candles gutter in sockets along the walls. It feels for all the
world like a convent cloister, pervaded with a vague smell of reindeer skin and
burning wax.

Every room in the hotel is different. Mine turns out to be quite plain, with
just a few small carvings in the wall and a huge ice bed draped yet again with
reindeer skins. But along the corridor, I find a room to gladden every Viking
heart. The bed is dominated by two stylish dragons carved into the foot. There
is a ice tablet covered in runes by the side of the bed, and Norse symbols cut
into the walls. Anna appears in the doorway, and slightly spoils the romantic
effect by telling me that the runes over the bed head simply mean 鈥渟leep well鈥�.
She has come to show me her favourite room from this year鈥檚 hotel, just along
the corridor. It contains a rather plain bed, but the wall bears a marvellous
snow mural depicting a miners鈥� strike from the ore mine in the nearby town of
Kiruna. Beside the bed is an ice sculpture showing four helmeted figures with
jutting jaws and roughly hewn limbs. 鈥淢y father鈥檚 a miner,鈥� Anna tells me.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 just what they all look like.鈥�

My next stop is the outdoor ice arena, new this year. It can seat 1000
people, but right now it contains only me and Thorbj枚rn L枚vgren, a
local photographer who has promised to show me his slide show of the northern
lights. His photographs are projected through鈥攚hat else?鈥攁 screen of
ice. But he鈥檚 not happy. Following a run of cold nights, large crystals have
grown on the surface of the screen, distorting the images. Still, I like the
effect. The pictures show through the ice in weird Van Gogh clumps and swirls.
As the accompanying Lapp music groans its way out of the speakers, a real aurora
appears over the rim of the arena. We both watch as green lights meander
silently across the sky. For a moment the effect is spellbinding, then cold
reality kicks in. The temperature out here is below 鈭�25 掳C and it鈥檚
beginning to hurt. I retreat hastily to the bar.

Here, things are warming up, and soon it will be warmer still. The hotel
never survives beyond early May. But this year, at least, there will be an ice
exhibition throughout the summer, housed in a specially built giant
鈥渇reeze-house鈥�. And the designers are already planning next winter鈥檚 hotel. It鈥檚
unlikely to be multi-storey, they say, since that will be hard to stabilise. But
it will certainly be different.

Thinking back to the snowy asceticism of the corridors, I ask Bergh about the
old ice palaces, which did have more than one storey and were constructed purely
of ice. They cost too much to build, he says. 鈥淭hese days it鈥檚 impossible to get
slave labour.鈥� But judging by the growing crowd in the bar, this place seems to
be profitable, and ice hotels are springing up in Finland, Norway and Canada
too.

So what鈥檚 the appeal? Staying the night here means a miserable few hours on a
hard, cold bed, with鈥攊n my case鈥攐nly a sleeping bag and reindeer
skins for company. True, you get a hot drink as soon as you wake, and can then
head straight off to the sauna. But for 5-star prices, it鈥檚 not exactly 5-star
comfort. And yet, I can鈥檛 wait鈥攁nd my fellow guests are equally excited.
鈥淧eople are fascinated by giant ice and snow,鈥� says Bergh. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the clarity and
coldness. They find something very pure in it.鈥� To an ice addict like me, that
makes perfect sense.

But I鈥檓 still baffled by the architects鈥� willingness to work on such an
ephemeral building. Don鈥檛 they want to leave a more concrete legacy? How does it
feel when the ice finally melts? 鈥淪ome people feel anguish, some feel relief,鈥�
says Szulgit. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like a music concert. How does it feel when the concert鈥檚
over? People expect sculptures to last, but that鈥檚 because the ones that were
temporary have disappeared, and there are no photos. All the art forms have a
lifetime: music, a few instants; granite carving, a few thousand years. This is
somewhere in-between.鈥�

Larsson is just as philosophical. 鈥淵ou borrow the frozen moments from the
river,鈥� he says. 鈥淎nd if you borrow something, you always know you鈥檒l have to
pay it back.鈥�