Mike Goldwater
Blue Cube Productions

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Three snow cannons, fed with freezing water from a nearby river, run for several days as the first freeze of winter hits the Swedish Arctic Circle to provide snow for the Ice Hotel construction.

Snow canons generate a mountain of snow from which the Ice Hotel is made.

Setting up forms to build new sections of the Ice Hotel.

Northern Lights over the Ice Hotel, waving across the sky in the early evening.

With temperatures below - 15 degrees C, gas torches have to be used to separate frozen supply pipes when snow blowers need to be moved.

Tjasa Gusfors, artist, with ice that will form part of her illuminated design.

Setting up ice columns in what will be the main corridor of the Ice Hotel. With the corridor’s large span the columns of ice help to support the snow roof.

Hans-Peter Strand, who provides a sauna and ice bathing facilitity on the frozen Torne River for guests at the Ice Hotel, cuts an ice hole to test the river water.

Arne Bergh, Art Director of the Ice Hotel, carving an ice sculpture on the banks of the Torne River.

Having cut an ice hole Hans-Peter Strand strips off and pats his dog before dropping into the freezing water of the Torne River.

Hans-Peter Strand immerses himself through the ice hole he has just cut into the freezing water of the Torne River.

Matthias Hallin in his ‘Viking Suite’ that he has just finished. The waves in his tableau are made from blocks of ice and illuminated by daylight.

A couple in bed in the room designed by artist Tjasa Gusfors. Fibre optics provide the lighting over the bed.

Candle light within smaller rooms spills across corridor inside the Ice Hotel.

The 'Baltic Bamboo' suite built by sculptors Kestutis and Viautas Musteikes.

Ice sculptures by Lena Kristrom, a Swedish sculptor who usually works in stone. Her ice sculptures form the main exhibition in the Ice Hotel’s gallery.

The ice for the columns was taken from the Torne River at the end of the previous winter. Because the ice formed slowly it is as transparent as glass.

Lena Kristrom, a Swedish sculptor with her ice sculptures that form the main exhibition in the Ice Hotel’s gallery.

The Ice Hotel bar

Apprentice artist Maya Erdelyi lights the Sami face in Mats Indseth’s ‘Sami Suite’.

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In Sweden, 200 km north of the Arctic Circle on the banks of the Torne River, building work starts each November on the construction of the Ice Hotel. Using snow canons and heavy equipment snow is moulded over vaulted steel forms that are removed two days later once the snow and ice have set. A complex of rooms and suites is made in this way then given over to sculptors to create unique environments.

In December, the doors are opened to the winter season visitors. By the time the spring sunshine has done its work the Ice Hotel has slowly but surely melted back into the River Torne.