The most unusual places you ever stayed

The Icehotel in Swedish Lapland, with its extravagant rooms made entirely of ice, imaginatively redesigned and rebuilt from scratch every year since 1990, remains the original. But the list of unusual places to stay in Sweden is growing.

Harads, also a Swedish Lapland destination, adds Treehotel and Arctic Bath to the list. Every one of the treehouse rooms at Treehotel is spectacular, from the four square metre ‘Mirrorcube’ encased around a tree trunk to a giant bird’s nest reached by ladder.

The wonderful Arctic Bath hotel features a circular mesh of logs on a platform floating out on the river, with cabins elevated on poles and linked like satellites to the main building via wooden walkways.

For the more outward bound, Sweden offers ‘glamping’ options such as the luxury lavvu tents at the Aurora Safari Camp on the Råne älv river north of Luleå.

The unusual hotel idea has spread south too. In Västerås, on Lake Mälaren, you can stay in the Utter Inn, a floating hotel with an underwater room or, Hotell Hackspett, another tree hotel. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you could also try out a suite 155 metres below ground level at the Sala Silver Mine.

Close to the capital of Stockholm, you can even stay in a converted Boeing 747 jumbo jet at the Arlanda airport. Jumbo Stay has rooms in the jet casing and cockpit, as well as in other parts of the plane. Another notable option is the Island Lodge glamping in the Stockholm archipelago, where the tents are heated by wooden stoves.

In Dalsland, some two hours north of Gothenburg in West Sweden, the 72 Hour Cabin offers a selection of tiny glass cabins set amid nature. Near Falköping, there’s the Islanna Treehouse Hotel, which offers traditional Swedish-style wooden houses, complete with elaborate wooden embellishments, mounted on poles high up in the trees.

On the south-east coast, on Sweden’s largest island Gotland, Fabriken Furillen offers a stylish, minimalist hotel built in a former limestone crushing plant.