The ice hotel
Snow bedrooms with Arctic sleeping bags.
No machine-readable author provided. Dmit~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Christine Zenino from Chicago, US — CC BY 2.0 · Christine Zenino from Chicago, US — CC BY 2.0 · Lijonama80 — CC BY-SA 4.0
It depends entirely on what you want, and the differences between seasons are extreme. **December** for Santa's village, the atmosphere and fresh snow — the busiest and most expensive. **January to March** is the best season in practice: the snow is settled, the day lengthens, the **northern lights** are at their strongest, the snow castle is open, and the husky, reindeer and snowmobile activities all run. **Summer** is a different place: the midnight sun, hill walking and paddling — with no snow, no aurora and no Santa in the usual image. **Autumn** brings the ruska forest colours in September, beautiful and quiet. **The essential point**: do not expect winter Lapland in July.
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The SnowCastle of Kemi is **the largest snow castle in the world**, rebuilt from scratch every winter since 1996 — to a different design each year. The complex holds a **hotel** with snow rooms where you sleep in Arctic sleeping bags on ice beds, a **restaurant** with tables and chairs of ice, an ice **chapel** in which real weddings are held, and snow sculpture and passages lit in shifting colour. The temperature inside stays at about **five degrees below zero** through the season — warmer than outside in deep winter, which surprises visitors. Note carefully before planning: **the castle is entirely seasonal.** It usually opens from **late January to early April** only, and melts afterwards. Anyone visiting Lapland in summer or autumn will find nothing — and this is the mistake visitors most often make. **About 115 km from Rovaniemi, an hour and a half by car or train.**
Snow bedrooms with Arctic sleeping bags.
Real weddings are held in it.
Kemi, Gulf of Bothnia