Whoever designed the first igloo would be fascinated at how his idea has come back into fashion. Sleeping under ice has become, er, cool..
The ice hotel group opened its first hotel in Sweden nearly a decade ago.
Now the group's five star igloos are scattered like snowflakes all over the world, with trademark ice sculptures adorning the rooms, sweeping glass ice stairways and bars where people drink vodka out of ice glasses that slowly melt in your gloved hands as you drink.
Nothing prepares you for the experience of staying there. Lots of writers and broadcasters have tried to describe it. Most of the accounts of a night in the ice hotel turn out to be about the writer not the experience.
You can see why. Words do not do this experience justice. Pictures of halls of white with shaded lights won't represent the scenery. The ice hotel gets you thinking about yourself and how you will react to the cold.
And when the lights go down and you are alone in your extreme sports sleeping bag, facing the prospects of a night at minus three to minus seven, (admittedly the most comfortable minus three to minus seven imaginable), your thoughts turn back to your vulnerability in the face of extreme temperatures.
Ablutions become an obsessions, because the prospect of frostbite en route to the bathroom are reasonably high, or as reasonably high as you can imagine in a €300 a night hotel.
Each bit of your anatomy becomes a concern. You become obsessive about the nose or ear that begins to freeze (because it is not covered, or is it?).
The question of the head takes on a life of its own - how much of it you can reasonably keep out of your sleeping bag?
Ice brings us into a world of introspection, and maybe that is why a night in an ice hotel (just one, most people are happy to leave it at that) has become one of the great 21st century must-dos.
There are restrictions - each person's stay is limited to seven hours, which means time is precious.
I did it as I would at home, pyjamas, bare feet, sleeping bag and laying on the ice bed covered by animal skins, wishing I had brought an ice teddy bear.
My dreams were vivid, clear, an out of body feeling, with sounds and images echoing icily in the snowy Narnia waste.
Maybe it was another side-effect of the icy introspection.
I woke up feeling I had rarely slept as well as I did in that sharp clear air.
And I wanted to stay there again, and again and again. Maybe I should check if those guys selling properties abroad do any igloos.
Lillehammer has got the latest of the ice hotels a splendid heap of frozen water with 14 decorated bedrooms and 40 beds which was officially opened on 5 January.
It was not due to come on stream until 2009, but this is Norway where things are delivered BEFORE time and under budget.
It cost about €300,000 to build, the ice had to be shipped in from southern Norway because still water makes clearer ice.
They built it inside Lillehammer's signature family attraction, the Hunderfossen winterpark (slogan: 'cold and freezing adventures that warm your soul') and more than 100 loaded trucks with snow and about 50 tons of ice had been used by the time the speeches were made, the quartet of sopranos had delivered their soaring melodies in the ice-wedding chapel and the vodka had been poured into ice cold glasses.
Many of the first night guests were from Ireland, including a honeymoon couple from Mayo. It says something about the greening of Norway's most famous alpine ski resort.
The experience starts in the nearby Quality hotel, a campus of dwellings around a main block scattered in the forests beside railway station two hours to Oslo international where SAS fly and four hours from Torp where Ryanair fly.
You check in and travel with your sleigh along 400m of pathway. When you arrive you see an igloo, because ice hotels don't look much on the outside, basically the pile of snow that it will turn in to in May.
At 7am your night porter will wake and rouse you and you return to the Quality hotel for hot drinks and a sauna.
This is the first of the ice hotels to have such an elaboate wedding chapel (they call it the cathedral) a determinedly agnostic building with sculptures which can seat 100 people on ice benches covered with animal skin.
The ice hotel opened this month and closes in April before the big melt begins and wil be rebuilt again next year over a three month period they say they wil change the design so it never looks the same in any two years.
Factbox
Eoghan Corry flew to Oslo with SAS, who fly six days a week from Oslo. www.vinterparken.no Email: grhunderfossen@choice.no
Things to do
Hafjell ski resort: 30km with slopes, 19 green runs, 9 blue, 7 red and 4 black. There are 30 slopes in all with a green and blue run of 7km to the bottom, 7km of slopes are floodlit and open three evenings a week for evening skiing two day tickets also apply for night skiing, important here because daylight disappears at 3.30pm.
There are 14 lifts, a gondola opened for last season, three chairlifts of which two are experesslifts, and three lifts for beginners and children. There is a plan for a gondola from the railway station and Quality hotel. The season opens in November and closes on 20 April. A new lift from the top of the gondola to Mosetertoppen has been opened for 2007-8.
Children aged 0-8 have free access to all lifts, the gondola included.
Lillehammer bob and luge track, a one minute adrenalin rush in a bob raft (a rubber bobsleigh for five passengers)over the Olympic course, the taxibob (three passengers) goes even faster and the junkies can try the skeleton. www.olympiaparken.no
Snowmobile rides through the forest, +47 6105 45200 www.olympiaparken.no
Toboggan ride from Mostertoppen, a vertical drop of 586m, and a 4km ride in all to the bottom. +47 274700 www.hafjell.no
Lillehammer Olympic Park has a toboggan lift, which drags your toboggan uphill.
Brenneriet Restaurant and night club is the best spot in Lillehammer, an array of gimmicks and enhancements gathered from around the world by charismatic manager Kjetil Litjeback +47 6127 0660 www.bryggerikjellerenrestaurant.no
Eat at Trollsalen www.qualityhunderfossen.no
Eoghan Corry
