In Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, outside the city of Kiruna just north of the Arctic Circle, a very cool attraction draws people from afar year after year: the Icehotel. And visitors come in contact with SCA’s products in the hotel’s restrooms.
The pillared hall with crystal chandelier is from 2005.
Each year a team of snow builders, architects, designers and artists from around the world creates this village of snow and ice. The first hotel was completed in the winter of 1992/93. This year, there are 21 ice suites and a total of 90 rooms at the Icehotel, 60 of them ice rooms.
Each Icehotel visitor comes into contact with SCA’s tissue brand Tork when using the hotel’s restrooms. Tork products have been in use at the Icehotel for four years.
The Ice Throne. Artist: Arne Bergh. The toilet was specially made for the taping of an Australian TV program, "The Kenny Show", that visited the Icehotel in 2008. Photo: Ben Nilsson/Big Ben Productions.
The history of the hotel in brief: Yngve Bergqvist, the founding father, was working with a French artist who arranged an exhibit of ice sculptures in an igloo on the Torne River in northern Sweden. The show attracted so many people that the hotel was fully booked, and one couple was offered a place in the igloo. The overnight stay was a success, and the idea of Icehotel was born.
During a single season, some 30,000 people visit the winter landscape, and 26,000 stay overnight. Hotel revenues for 2007 were SEK 195 million (USD 30 million).
The cold facts:
- Building material made of “snice”, is used in construction. Snice, a compound of snow and ice, is a compact, durable mix that gives the walls and roof stability. The pillared hall, corridors and rooms are made so that the roof won’t collapse but will instead mealt and drip down the sides.
- As a gauge to the volume of water involved, it is said that it takes five seconds for one Icehotel to flow past in the Torne River. The Icehotel is 5,000 square metres in size and consists of 30,000 tonnes of snow and 4,000 tonnes of ice.
- The construction process begins in the middle of November and the first phase is done on December 7. After that, a new section is opened each week up to January 5.
Rewrite from SCA’s corporate magazine Shape 1/2008