Spending A Night at the Original Ice Hotel in Lapland

About the Icehotel

Every year, the Icehotel rebuilds the ice section of the property. They also have regular warm cabins you can stay in year-round or buy a day pass on-site to explore and hit up the ice bar. Day visitors can explore from 10 am to 6 pm (visiting is free to all hotel guests, even if you’re in a warm room). Staying a night in an ice room is definitely a bucket list experience, but maybe not the best night’s sleep of your life!

I recommend booking a 1-night stay in a regular ice room for the full experience. You can also book one of their themed ice suites full of cool ice sculptures (some of them even include sound as part of the art), but before 6 pm, guests are allowed to roam and walk into all the rooms to check them out, so I’d do that and save your money.

If you want to splurge, the themed art suites are pretty cool – pun intended. My favorites during my visit were Mystery on the Icehotel Express and The Breach, both of which had sound as part of the ice sculpture art. The art suites are rooms uniquely designed by commissioned artists worldwide, so you’ll get something different every year.

Beyond the ice rooms, other things to explore include an ice bar where you can go for some fun cocktails in ice glasses and goblets, and you can go down an ice slide if you’re brave enough. And, of course, the Ceremony Hall is gorgeous if you’re looking for the ultimate winter wedding up in the Arctic Circle.

You can also book great activities and excursions – for example, if you’ve ever wanted to try ice sculpting. Another cool, unique experience they offer is a wilderness dinner in a cabin in the woods. We went by snowmobile out to the cabin, where we enjoyed our 3-course dinner featuring moose goulash (you can ask for a vegetarian option in advance) that was absolutely delicious, as we sat around the fire in the middle of the cabin. If you’re lucky, it’s also a great darker sky place away from the lights of Kiruna, so you might get prime northern lights viewing or stargazing. 

Our cabin we snowmobiled to for the Wilderness Dinner. The night sky was so clear out there with the lack of light pollution.

How To Get to Kiruna, Sweden

Getting up to Kiruna is not as hard as you might think. Both SAS and Norwegian Airlines fly directly from Stockholm Arlanda to Kiruna Airport. The flight time is only 90 minutes, and once you’ve landed, the airport is only a 15-minute drive to the hotel in the town of Jukkasjärvi.

Another popular option is to come up by train. From Stockholm, the train takes 14 hours to reach Kiruna. The train station is also only about 15 minutes from the hotel. Of course, you can always drive too, but it’ll be a much longer trip if you’re coming from the city. We drove over from Rovaniemi, Finland, as part of a larger road trip, which took us about 5 hours.

What Spending the Night In an Ice Hotel is Like

Once we checked in, at 4:30 pm, there was an info briefing where they explained how the night would work. There is a main locker open room for the regular ice rooms where each room number has its own larger locker to store suitcases in. Note: you do not bring your stuff into the ice room with you. There are also male and female locker rooms with things like showers, a sauna, and toilets. You also don’t want to shower right before you go to bed, though, as you don’t want damp hair or anything before you go in for the night.

Starting from 6 pm, you can go in for the night, though I recommend waiting until you’re ready for bed. You pick up your sleeping bag and liner from reception and wear base layers, wool socks, and a hat to sleep in. They say that’s all you need, but I think adding another layer is more comfortable, so I also wore my fleece pants and a light jacket. I wore my boots in and had to take them off to sleep, but I think having a pair of warm fuzzy slippers would be the most convenient thing to bring, especially if you have to get up and make a run to the bathroom in the middle of the night. This would have been the ideal time to break out my winter Birkenstock clogs!

Speaking of bathrooms – probably the worst thing to happen is if you wake up needing the bathroom. Unfortunately, that means having to get out of the sleeping bag, put on your shoes, make your way past all the other ice rooms, go out the door, and through a small outdoor area (definitely the worst part since it’s usually much, much colder outside than in the Icehotel), and then enter into the reception building.

Luckily, they have a set of bathrooms right there when you enter, but I won’t deny it’s a little rough. I know this because I had to get up at 3 am, and while I had been pretty cozy in my sleeping bag, leaving it left me very cold. I had to jump in the sauna fully clothed in the dark (since it wasn’t really open, but hey, desperate times) to warm up enough to return to my ice room.

If you do get too cold and wake up, the connected reception area is open 24/7, and you can drag your sleeping bag out and claim a spot on a couch or the floor, and go back to sleep. Not everyone makes it through the night, and a few members of my group slept in the lobby. One of the hotel employees told me sometimes they have a full house out there, with guests sleeping on the floor. I was absolutely fine, but everyone has a different level of cold tolerance. If you’re worried, I’d wear all your layers to bed.

The rooms are a few degrees below freezing, and the sleeping bags are very thick, so it’s really not too bad. Is it the most restful night of sleep ever? No, but that’s why I say only to stay 1 night. It’s a bucket list one and done, but you most likely will be glad you did it. 

There are no plugs in the room for phone charging, so I brought my portable battery pack and charged my phone inside my sleeping bag overnight. In the worst case, you can leave your phone and charger with reception overnight to charge or sit and charge your phone in the lobby for a while. The only things I brought into my room were my phone and battery pack, a few tissues, and chapstick, all of which I kept in my sleeping bag with me.

They do kick you out of the rooms by 9 am, but odds are, you’ll be awake and out by then anyway. Most people aren’t sleeping in late inside the ice rooms! But then, you can still store your luggage in your lockers for a few hours more or in the main lobby luggage room until you’re ready to leave. 

I’m happy to say I did make it through the whole night, though I’ll admit I got cold at one point and burrowed fully into my bag more. They say to keep your face out, but I disagree. I was way warmer by pulling my face back further into the bag!

At the end of the day, I’m definitely glad to say I did it! It was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience, and I figure if you’re going to sleep in an ice room anywhere, staying at the original ice hotel in Lapland is the place to do it. Are you ready to book your stay?