Overview

What the Absolut Icebar was

A franchise built on a single idea: a room held permanently below freezing, in which everything a guest touches — the bar, the seats, the artwork, the glass in their hand — has been carved out of river ice.

The concept

The site described the Icebar as "a total ice experience that evokes all senses." Everything in the room was built from naturally frozen Torne River ice: the walls, the bar, the stools, the artwork, and the glasses, in which drinks were served — the pun was the site's, not ours — "in the rocks."

The interior was not permanent. It was demolished and rebuilt to a new design on a regular cycle, with international artists and designers invited in to do the work. The English "About" page describes this as an annual change; the Swedish press release for the Factory theme says the interior was replaced twice a year. The dated release list settles it in practice — Stockholm was rebuilt in April and again in November of both 2008 and 2009 — so twice a year is what actually happened, whatever the About page said.

Who ran it

The Icebar was a franchise concept developed jointly by Icehotel, the hotel in Swedish Lapland that is itself rebuilt out of snow and ice every November, and Absolut, the Swedish vodka brand. Icehotel supplied the ice, the designers and the sculptors; Absolut supplied the name and the drinks. Every Absolut Icebar was attached to another venue — a hotel or a restaurant — rather than standing alone.

Where the ice came from

All of it came from one river. Ice was harvested each March from the frozen Torne River at Jukkasjärvi and stored in a refrigerated warehouse — the Factory press release puts the figure at 6,000 tonnes held in cold store each year — then shipped out to the bars as they were rebuilt.

The site made a point of the water chemistry: freshwater ice is harder and clearer than sea ice, and as water freezes, sediment and salt are pushed out of the crystal, so the block ends up cleaner than the river it came from. The site claimed the result was clean enough to be classed as drinking water by the Swedish Health Association.

The four bars

• Jukkasjärvi — the original, inside Icehotel, 200 km north of the Arctic Circle.
• Stockholm — Nordic Sea Hotel, Vasaplan 4, from 2002; the first permanent one, and the only one still trading.
• London — Heddon Street in the West End, beside the belowzero restaurant and lounge. Now closed.
• Mojave — a single-event bar in the California desert, December 2009.

A fifth, earlier one is mentioned only in passing in the site's own fact list: a temporary Absolut Icebar erected in the Niger desert in 1999 for a fashion show featuring Kenzo, Mickael Kra of Ivory Coast and Alphadi of Niger.

The design themes

From 2008 the rebuilds were given names and press coverage of their own — Jewellery, Street Art, 365, Factory, Aquatic, Subzero, and a Soundtrack tie-in. Each one changed what the room looked like and, in at least one case, what was playing in it: the Factory theme came with a mix of progressive electro, industrial noise and mechanical rhythms, and a conveyor belt carrying vodka drinks in ice glasses.

The themes, year by year

What happened to the name

The archived site stops being maintained around 2010–2011. In the years that followed the Absolut branding came off the bars. London closed. The Stockholm bar is still open at Vasaplan 4 under the name Icebar Stockholm by Icehotel, in the hotel that was the Nordic Sea and is now Hotel C. The Jukkasjärvi bar remains part of Icehotel.