Every winter, a handful of hotels in the far north of Europe build themselves from scratch, then quietly melt back into the landscape come spring. If a night on a block of ice sounds like your kind of adventure, three names keep coming up: ICEHOTEL in Swedish Lapland, Sorrisniva Igloo Hotel in Norway and the Arctic SnowHotel in Finland.

ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi is the original, starting life as an ice art exhibition in 1989 before taking its first overnight guests the following year. Each winter it's rebuilt with ice cut from the nearby Torne River, and each spring it returns to that river — which is why no two years look the same. ICEHOTEL 37 opens on 11 December and runs until April 2027. New art suites this edition include The Cold Descent, with an icy pool built into the artwork, and The Emperors Suite, packed with hand-sculpted penguins. The permanent, refrigerated wing, ICEHOTEL 365, marks its tenth anniversary this year and has just added a podcast studio carved entirely from snow and ice. There's also a day-trip option if you'd rather not commit to sleeping at minus five: entry costs 325 SEK (about €29).

Norway's entry is the world's northernmost igloo hotel, Sorrisniva, near Alta. Around 250 tonnes of ice and 7,000 cubic metres of snow go into rebuilding it each winter around a fresh theme — past editions have drawn on Sami culture and the Vikings. It runs from 20 December to 31 March, with ice beds, snowmobile and husky safaris, snowshoeing, northern lights chases and an Ice Chapel that hosts actual weddings. Day admission is 395 NOK, roughly €38.

Across the border in Rovaniemi, the Arctic SnowHotel has been reconstructed every winter since 2008. Between 15 December and 31 March it hosts up to 70 guests in around 20 snow rooms, plus an Ice Restaurant with tables and benches carved from frozen water, an Ice Bar and its own Ice Chapel. Its party trick is what it claims is the world's only snow sauna — steam rising inside walls of snow. Softer beds are available in the 39 heated glass igloos, which come with an Aurora Alarm that buzzes when the northern lights appear overhead. Day tickets cost €35.

Why does this matter for travellers? Because these hotels are genuinely temporary — the version you book this winter will never exist again. They also solve a classic Lapland dilemma: you get the bucket-list bragging rights of sleeping on ice without giving up the rest of the trip, since all three offer daytime visits and, in Finland's case, warm glass-roofed rooms for the colder-blooded among us. Book early for the December openings and peak aurora season, and pack proper thermal gear regardless of which bed you choose.