Sweden

The world's original ice hotel, rebuilt each winter from 5,000 tonnes of ice harvested from the Torne River, the Icehotel at Jukkasjärvi is a genuine architectural achievement — each suite designed by a different artist using ice and snow as their medium, creating chambers of extraordinary sculpture around beds made of compressed snow covered with reindeer hide. The permanent warm suites, the ice bar, and the ice chapel for winter weddings complete one of the world's most genuinely unique places to stay.

Situated in a rain shadow that gives it the clearest skies and longest aurora seasons in Scandinavia, Abisko's Aurora Sky Station — accessible by cable car at night — is the best place in Europe to watch the northern lights. The Kungsleden trail begins here, and the park's position above the Arctic Circle makes it extraordinary in summer for midnight sun hiking in a mountain landscape of remarkable emptiness.

Sweden's most celebrated long-distance hiking route, the Kungsleden ('King's Trail') stretches 440 kilometres through the mountains of Swedish Lapland between Abisko and Hemavan, passing through some of the most spectacular and least-visited mountain scenery in Europe. The section between Abisko and Kebnekaise is particularly fine, crossing Tjäktja Pass at 1,140 metres in a landscape that feels genuinely remote even in the summer hiking season.

A chain of over 30,000 islands, islets, and rock outcrops extending 80 kilometres east of Stockholm into the Baltic, the archipelago is the finest natural asset of the Swedish capital — a world of red wooden summer houses, sailboats, and wild swimming in calm, island-sheltered water. Private boat charters from the city allow you to reach outer islands of complete tranquillity in under two hours.

One of Europe's last true wilderness areas and the most remote national park in Sweden, Sarek is a mountain park of 2,000 square kilometres without a single marked trail, maintained hut, or road — accessible only to experienced mountain walkers. The park contains six of Sweden's thirteen highest peaks, over 100 glaciers, and deep valleys carpeted in cloudberry and dwarf birch, with wolverines, lynx, and golden eagles as the only regular presences.

The northernmost city in Sweden and the site of the world's largest underground iron ore mine, Kiruna is undergoing the most extraordinary urban relocation in history — the entire city is being moved three kilometres east because the mine has expanded beneath its foundations. The Space Camp Sweden nearby, and the city's Sámi cultural heritage centre, add dimensions to Kiruna that make it one of the most unusual and compelling destinations in the Nordic countries.