Ice Hotels

A kota is a cone of timber or turf with a hearth on the ground at its centre and a smoke hole above it. People sit around the walls, facing in. The building has one room and no chimney in the built sense: the fire is the middle of the floor and the smoke leaves through the top.

What it names here

At this resort the kota is a standing building on the grounds, kept for meals and gatherings rather than for sleeping. The resort names it in its own material as a Lappish kota and books it for groups. Guests eat around the open fire in it, and the glass and log accommodation stands elsewhere on the site.

Where the word comes from

Kota is a Finnish word for this kind of hut, and it is the word the resort uses in its English pages. It is used in Finland today for the round hearth-huts built at holiday sites and campgrounds as much as for older ones.

How the house uses it

Everything in the building points at the hearth: the seating ring, the smoke hole, the cooking. Food is prepared over the fire and handed round the circle, which fixes how many people the room takes. The resort keeps it as an event space.

A cabana in Romanian mountain usage is a chalet: a solid building high on a range that takes in walkers, skiers and anyone caught by weather. It has beds, a kitchen and heating, and it is often the only permanent house at that altitude. Other structures gather around it.

What it names here

Here the word names the chalet at the lake, which stands a short walk from the ice building and belongs to the same operation. Guests of the ice rooms leave luggage in it and use its bathrooms. The ice building is raised again each winter beside it; the chalet stays through the year.

Where the word comes from

Romanian cabana belongs to a family of words used across Europe for a hut or cabin, and in Romania it is the standard term for a staffed mountain lodge. The chalet at this lake carries the word in its own name.

How the house uses it

The chalet does the work the ice cannot: heat, cooking, washing, storage. Rooms in the ice building have beds cut from blocks and are left cold on purpose, so everything requiring warm water happens in the chalet next door.

A ceremony hall is a room set aside for the events that need witnesses: a marriage, a naming, a service. It is furnished for sitting and standing in order, with a focus at one end. Nothing else happens in it, which is why it is planned separately from the rooms people sleep in.

What it names here

At this hotel the ceremony hall is cut and carved from river ice like the rest of the building, with benches and an altar end shaped from blocks. It is used for weddings and services through the season, and it is rebuilt every winter when the hotel is rebuilt, so its shape is not the same twice.

Where the word comes from

The phrase is ordinary English and the hotel uses it in its own material. It sits alongside the older word chapel, which the hotel also uses; ceremony hall covers services that are not religious as well as those that are.

How the house uses it

Ice takes carving, so the hall's detail is cut rather than fitted: the benches, the altar end, the walls. It stands cold, guests keep their coats on, and it comes down with the building in spring when the river takes the ice back.

An igloo, in English, is a shelter built of snow: blocks cut and laid in a rising spiral until the dome closes on itself. The material is what defines it. Inside, the temperature holds a little below freezing whatever the weather does outside, which is the whole point of the form.

What it names here

At this resort the word names the snow and ice rooms, which stand apart from the glass apartments on the same site. The rooms are built of snow and ice and kept just below freezing; guests sleep in bags rated for it. The resort also runs a snow restaurant and an ice bar on the grounds.

Where the word comes from

English borrowed igloo from Inuktitut, where the word means a house of any kind, and narrowed it to the snow-built one. Dictionaries record both senses. In Finnish Lapland the English word is the one used for the snow rooms sold to visitors.

How the house uses it

Because snow melts, the rooms are made again each winter and are gone by spring. There is no plumbing in them: washing, luggage and warm rooms sit in the heated buildings, and the snow rooms hold only the bed and the cold.