Inside Sweden's Icehotel, which features a frozen forest and 'the coldest sauna in the world'

The Icehotel's exterior.Martin Smedsén

• Sweden's legendary Icehotel has unveiled its latest collection of ice suites including a beautiful frozen forest, a giant dog sculpture made of snow, and an ice sauna.
• The Icehotel is made up of two sections: Icehotel 31, with temporary suites made from ice and snow, and the permanent Icehotel 365 which has a mix of warm rooms and ice suites.
• Icehotel 31 will be available to stay in between December and April, after which the rooms will be left to melt away.
• The Icehotel has also launched a virtual reality tour for those who cannot visit due to the pandemic.
• "The artists have created amazing fantasy worlds which will make our guests forget for a while that 2020 was a difficult year for each of us," creative director Luca Roncoroni told Insider.

Icehotel Sweden has unveiled the designs for its latest collection of suites made from ice and snow that guests can stay in this winter.

Tucked away in the idyllic town of Jukkasjärvi, 200km above the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden, the hotel originally started as an art gallery in 1989. It quickly became a tourist hotspot that developed into a hotel, now in its 31st year.

The hotel is made up of two sections - the permanent Icehotel 365, consisting of regular "warm" rooms and ice rooms that are open all year round, and Icehotel 31's art suites which are designed by different artists and rebuilt yearly after melting away.

Six new ice suites have been added to the year-round Icehotel 365, as well as 12 temporary new art suites that will be open from December 2020 until April 11, 2021.

Because of the pandemic, the hotel invited only local artists to participate this year, which has been "a wonderful opportunity to showcase Swedish art" for the hotel's creative director Luca Roncoroni.

Travel to Sweden for international travelers, including US citizens, has been temporarily banned until March 31, 2021. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, Sweden has recorded 428,533 coronavirus cases and 8,484 deaths so far.

For guests who cannot travel due to the pandemic, the hotel has also launched an AR tour via its Instagram for virtual visits.

Here's what this year's Icehotel looks like inside.