Details of the suites’ themes and designs are kept a well-guarded secret until the hotel’s opening: all that is known so far is that some of the artists hail from France, Argentina and the United States.

Ambitious sculptures in the past have included a pinball machine with coloured lights inside the ice, a man sitting on a toilet in a bathroom, a female Buddha, a rocket ship, and the inside of a refrigerator.

The hotel also has 49 standard rooms with less elaborate decor, some of which will feature scenes of northern lights, a spectacular phenomenon also known as aurora borealis in which streams of coloured lights streak across the night sky, a show some visitors will be lucky enough to see during their stay.

As in the suites, all of the regular room beds are made of ice blocks covered with reindeer skins. Visitors spending the night are given thermal sleeping bags when they check in — and a diploma when they check out to prove they survived a night at minus seven degrees Celsius (19 degrees Fahrenheit).

The hotel — copies of which are now erected in several other countries — has no stars the way other hotels do.

But that doesn’t mean it’s for budget travellers: the cost of a room ranges from 2,200 to 7,000 kronor (between 255 and 810 euros) per night.

Alternately, tourists can pay 325 kronor a head to tour the hotel, which also makes money off the weddings and christenings it hosts, as well as the popular ice bar where drinks are served in glasses made of ice.