When we describe a hotel as being 'interesting', we mean it as the ultimate compliment. People tend to use the word ironically or with a raised eyebrow. Not us. All we can ask from a hotel, other than having good service, is that it’s interesting – that it catches and continually holds your attention. The most interesting hotels of the Nordic countries are exactly what you’d hope they’d be; they're influenced by the types of design the region is famous for – whether that’s Scandinavia’s iconic modernism; or the warm, rustic cosiness you’d expect from a place with permanent midnight; or the more recent trend of simple, stark interiors that won’t distract from the dazzling display of nature right outside your window. Here are a few of the hotels we find most wonderfully interesting across the Nordic region.
Juvet Landscape Hotel
Juvet Landscape Hotel
Valldal, NorwayThe word 'spectacular' barely begins to describe Juvet Landscape Hotel, an hour and a half’s drive inland along the fjords from Ålesund, Norway. From the outside these glass-and-wood cubes are stunning enough, but it’s from the inside that you begin to appreciate what it is to be a 'landscape hotel' – with one or two walls made of full-length glass, each cabin takes in a truly vast forest panorama. If you’ve seen the film Ex Machina, then you’ve already glimpsed a partial view of Juvet’s interiors and exteriors.
Storfjord Hotel
Storfjord Hotel
Alesund, NorwayIt doesn’t get much more picturesque than the Storfjorden, on Norway’s west coast, where the Storfjord Hotel sits surrounded by thousands of acres of protected woodland. It’s constructed in the traditional lafta style, with whole timbers, and the interiors are ruggedly elegant, furnished with antiques and classic Norwegian furnishings. Of course it’s not only the interiors you’re here to see, but the landscape as well, and each of the bedrooms has a balcony looking out over the fjord and the surrounding mountains.
Manshausen
Manshausen
Manshausen Island, NorwayEven by Norwegian standards, Manshausen Island is out there. This island in the Steigen Archipelago was once a traders’ outpost, and the hotel’s 1880s-vintage main house is a relic of this era. The sea cabins are quite a bit newer, however; these pared-down larchwood-and-glass structures perch right at the water’s edge, affording vertiginous views through full-length windows from living rooms furnished with mid-century reproduction furniture.
Eilert Smith Hotel
Eilert Smith Hotel
Stavanger, NorwayThe Eilert Smith Hotel is nothing if not unique. It’s a converted 1930s warehouse by an architect of the same name, whose early-modernist Functionalist style now stands in stark contrast to the traditional wooden houses and contemporary glass buildings that make up the rest of the cityscape. What makes it a compelling destination, though, isn’t the building so much as what’s inside: 12 quietly stylish rooms, yes, but most importantly, the Two Michelin-Starred RE-NAA.
Ett Hem
Ett Hem
Stockholm, SwedenEven if Ett Hem’s aesthetic isn’t strictly homegrown – designer Ilse Crawford is London-born, to a Danish mother – but the fact is, it’s probably the finest example anywhere of the current tendency in Scandinavian boutique hotel design: away from the kind of modernism that’s synonymous with 'Scandinavian' design and toward something much warmer, a luxe, stylish sort of cosiness, and an eclectic approach which makes use of mid-century modernism as just one element among many historical references.
ICEHOTEL
ICEHOTEL
Jukkasjärvi, SwedenSwedish Lapland’s famous Icehotel, it turns out, is open year-round. From December through April, guests check in to Ice Rooms made out of ice from the Torne River, or upgrade to Art Suites, which are like Ice Rooms but with unique ice and snow sculptures. But there’s also the all-season Icehotel 365, whose solar-powered building stays cool enough to house permanent ice suites. And there’s also the so-called Warm Accommodation, a selection of more traditional hotel rooms or chalet apartments, all housed in permanent wooden structures.
Copperhill Mountain Lodge
Copperhill Mountain Lodge
Åre, SwedenA naïve observer might expect a five-star ski hotel in the mountains of northern Sweden to be a stark, stimulating, modernist sort of place, where the drama of the cutting-edge architecture and stylish, urbane interiors is only heightened by the sublime alpine landscape. This is one of those times when the naïve observer is exactly right. Mount Åreskutan is by some measures Sweden’s top ski town, and it’s here that you’ll find the stark, stimulating, modernist Copperhill Mountain Lodge.
Steam Hotel
Steam Hotel
Västerås, SwedenThe lakeside inland city of Västerås has never seen anything like the Steam Hotel. Here a beautiful old red-brick power plant has been expanded and transformed into an 18-story, 227-room luxury hotel whose 'industrial-romantic' interiors would be the talk of many a much larger town. The Voltage Lounge features an indoor pool heated by one of the power plant’s old turbines, and there’s also an indoor water park, complete with waterslides, spanning eight of the structure’s floors.
Treehotel
Treehotel
Harads, SwedenWe’re happy to report that this is exactly what you would hope a hotel called Treehotel would be. Just south of the Arctic Circle, in Swedish Lapland, a young couple took over a Thirties guest house, which travellers more or less ignored in favor of the single treehouse suite. So with the help of seven different Swedish architecture firms, they built seven more, from the vertiginous Cabin to the dizzying Mirrorcube and the whimsical UFO.
ION Luxury Adventure Hotel
ION Adventure Hotel
Selfoss, IcelandThe otherworldly landscapes of Iceland, we reasoned, were crying out for the full Patagonia treatment – which is to say, they were crying out for a rural escape that’s at once a building of real architectural distinction and a thoughtfully luxurious hotel as well.
Umi Hotel
Umi Hotel
Hvolsvöllur, IcelandFor quite a long time, Iceland’s spectacular beauty was rather let down by its relatively ordinary hotels. Lately, however, a new movement is afoot, complementing this island nation’s sublime, unearthly landscapes with some equally inspiring modern architecture and design. And it doesn’t take much more than a glance at Umi Hotel to identify it as an example of exactly what we’re talking about.
The Retreat at Blue Lagoon
The Retreat at Blue Lagoon
Grindavík, IcelandIceland’s famous Blue Lagoon is also the site of the incredibly stylish and unmistakably high-end Retreat Hotel. It’s got its own guests-only lagoon, so that you can skip the very busy public pool, as well as a lavish day spa that makes the most of Iceland’s unique volcanic resources. The suites are by a considerable distance the country’s most luxurious, with views of the private lagoon or the lava fields in the middle distance — some even open directly onto the water.
Hotel Ranga
Hotel Ranga
Hella, IcelandHotel Ranga is located on the southern coast of the island, a little more than an hour east of Reykjavík – which, in Iceland, means you’re in pretty much the middle of nowhere. With a volcano behind it and the sea in front of it, it’s not hurting for scenery, but it’s at night that the Ranga really shines – during the Northern Lights there’s hardly a better place on earth from which to see them.
Hotel Sanders
Hotel Sanders
Copenhagen, DenmarkCopenhagen is certainly one of the world’s capitals of design, as well as the epicentre of hygge – that distinct cosiness that’s become the hallmark of Nordic hospitality. But until recently its hotel scene was somehow less than the sum of its parts. Among the hotels that are changing that, however, is the Sanders, a 54-room luxury boutique hotel owned and operated by the celebrated Danish ballet dancer Alexander Kølpin.
Zoku Copenhagen
Zoku Copenhagen
Copenhagen, DenmarkZoku’s hybrid home-office lofts and compact rooms aim to provide a stylish residential work-life experience for travellers in town for days, weeks, or more. It’s set in Amager Vest, an up-and-coming district on the island just to the south of the city centre. And its accommodations, sensibly, are geared towards the kind of creative work that takes place here – and to the youthful leisure travellers who gravitate here.
Hero image: Manshausen, Manshausen Island, Norway
