In from the cold
The world's only hotel made of snow is about to end another season. Last year, Nils Bergvist's Arctic Hall hotel opened for 157 days before it literally melted around him. By the end of the month, it will once again revert to a puddle of water.
Masochists of all nationalities pay around £34 a night for the privilege of staying in the world's most luxurious igloo.
The management of the Arctic Hall Hotel reserve the right to refuse entry to those with a chesty cough, runny nose or any other flu-like symptoms. Anyone with a family history of sleepwalking is also turned away. Even perfectly healthy customers are asked to sign an indemnity absolving the owners of responsibility if they die of pneumonia or hypothermia. Guests arriving at the Artic Hall Hotel in Jukkasjarvi, 100 miles into Sweden's Lapland, are given a warm if slightly unorthodox welcome.
The 10-bedroom, 18ft-high hotel initially opened as an art gallery and Bergvist has been rebuilding it at the start of the season for the past four years. The temperature is -4ºC inside the hotel - compared to -40ºC in the arctic wastes two metres away.
The tariff includes a reinforced sleeping bag, a mattress in the shape of an extraordinarily uncomfortable chunk of ice, a neverending supply of cold- running water and, if you survive, sauna and breakfast the next morning.
Guests can choose between two seating areas - "freezing" and "not-so-freezing", the latter being closer to the bar, which claims to offer every guest a complimentary cup of "Wolf's Claw": one part vodka to two parts snowmobile antifreeze.
The Arctic Hall also houses the world's first snow pub. At the 20ft bar carved out of ice you can rub shoulders with locals - bushy-bearded fur trappers, sled drivers or spruce-tree dealers.
Chef Antero Laurila is known locally as "the chef of the last wilderness". The hotel's Wardhus restaurant - built of more durable materials than snow - features all the delicacies of Swedish Lapland such as elk soup, bear cutlets, mushrooms, roes of bleak and whitefish, trout, char, grayling, grouse and, of course, reindeer.
Blue arctic raspberries are a speciality as are Lapish cloudberries - "The Gold of the Forest". Lingonberry jam is the traditional accompaniment to various meat dishes.
Locally born and trained, Laurila has built up a reputation as one of Europe's top reindeer and brown deer chefs. Over the past 10 years there has been a revival in traditional Swedish home-cooking. "We have a natural freezer and larder on our doorstep. We have masses of morels as well as a local almond potato," explains Laurila.
"There are so many native foods to work with. People are more willing to experiment across culinary boundaries. If they cross into the Arctic Circle people should expect a choice of traditional Arctic fare in a traditional eating environment."
Bergqvist adds: "For a long time Sweden didn't have a native restaurant culture. It was largely fat, salt, starch, and home-based. Severe cold burns more calories than any form of exercise - people wanted stodge. Pork and blood sausages were the staple fare. But now it's possible to provide gourmet cooking in the middle of nowhere.
"I set out to develop tourism based on local cultural and wilderness activities. People come to live out a last frontiersman lifestyle and to fulfil all their Scott, Shackleton and Jack London fantasies."
