1.2 What is the Icehotel’s service concept? Jukkas AB is a company offering a wide range of activities, such as white-water rafting, fishing, reindeer and dog-sledding tours, cross-country skiing, snowmobile safaris and guided tours. It is based in Jukkasjärvi, a small village in Swedish Lapland, which lies 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle by the River Torne.

The problem was that visitors were few and far between in the long, dark winter months when the temperature drops to –40 ºC. Manager, Yngve Bergqvist, now president of Icehotel, saw this as an opportunity. In the winter of 1989 he invited a group of Japanese ice artists to come to Jukkasjärvi to carve sculptures from the crystal clear ice that forms from the pure waters of the River Torne. He then built a 60-square-metre cylinder-shaped igloo, made out of clear ice blocks, to protect the sculptures. Visitors flocked to see the exhibits in his ‘ice gallery’. One day when his hotel was full he was pressed by a good friend to find accommodation for ten colleagues.

Yngve could only offer them space in his ‘ice gallery’ with sleeping bags on reindeer skins. In the morning the guests enthused about the ‘warm and intense experience’. The Icehotel was born.