The presenter focused on three main ice hotels, the first one being the Jukkasjarvi Ice Hotel located in Sweden. This ice hotel opened up in 1990 and is 64,000 sq feet with a capacity of 100 overnight guests. All ice and snow is taken from the nearby Torne River and after the ice hotel has melted at the end of the year, it flows back to the very same river. This is a such a great use of the environment and I'm so happy to see that the people behind the project care enough about the environment.
Jukkasjarvi Ice Hotel Room (http://www.icehotel.com/uk/Magazine/Articles/Art-Design/ICEHOTEL-23---Art-Suites/)
The next location was the Hotel De Glace and is located in Quebec. This ice hotel is a popular wedding location in Canada and the building of it costs approximately $350,000. I did a little research online and the cost of staying at the ice hotel was much lower than I expected it to be (It was around $700/night in one of the theme rooms).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe5FgFOkxkI
This video includes a short tour around the Hotel De Glace.
http://www.hoteldeglace-canada.com/Fond%20Ercan/fond_ecran_1_800x600.jpg
The beautiful hotel!
Lastly, the presenter focused on the Sorrisniva Igloo Hotel, which is the most northern ice hotel. It is known for its ice sculptures and its different themes each year. According to its website, this is the 14th year that the Igloo Hotel has been built. This year's theme is Scandinavian literature, which I found to be quite interesting as we had learned about Scandinavian fairytales at the beginning of the semester and you could see the resemblances throughout browsing pictures in the Igloo Hotel.
http://www.sorrisniva.no/page.jsp?ref=igloo-hotel&lang=en
This presentation reminded me of when I went to Las Vegas at the beginning of January. Although I've never slept in an ice hotel (but let me tell you, that's going to be added to the bucket list now!), I got to go into an ice bar with my boyfriend in Vegas called "Minus 5". It was a pretty cool experience and there's actually quite a funny story behind us going in there. We didn't pack jackets for our trip and with it being pretty cold outside we wanted to go somewhere to warm up. This particular venue provided us with jackets to go inside the ice bar and it was actually warmer inside the ice bar than it was outside, which I found to be pretty ironic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKT_LYWO_IQ
Here is a look inside the Minus 5 Ice Bar in Las Vegas.
The next presenter up was my friend Courtny, who did her presentation on families in the North. She started out with a definition of family groups.
Family groups are:
- An important social unit in Inuit Culture
- Usually groups of 5-6 people
- In the past, between 6 and 10 families would live and hunt together.
In the winter, these families would stick together and hunt, and when summertime rolled around they would divide up in order to follow the hunt. Often, relationships between other non-relatives would occur and this is how band began to form. These bands shared a strong sense of community and food was always shared among everyone.
Looking at the past, a promise of a spouse for their son was often made to another family. These men would sometimes go to other settlements to look for their future wives. This is very different from the way that marriage takes place nowadays. People are now able to choose their own spouse.
Children in Inuit families were highly value and this illustrates the high regard of arranged marriages and traits that were held in high regard included generosity, mildness and gentleness and a bad temper was often frowned upon.
Courtny raised a good discussion question, asking "From your personal knowledge, what pressing issues surrounding family do you believe are present in today's Northern Environments? How is this impacting family life?". I believe that with kids leaving the community to go to university and the westernization are a pressing issue that families in the North are faced with. This overall affects the family dynamic.
The second discussion question raised was "If possible would you be willing to go back in time and live a traditional Inuit family lifestyle? Why or why not?". Personally, I don't think I would make it a week living a traditional family lifestyle. For one, I would not be able to eat the food that they eat (such as animals off of the land) and I also think that I am so accustomed to the way of living in Manitoba, that it would be hard for me to adapt to the traditional lifestyle of the North.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB4JGUzve6M
A video of a traditional Inuit family in the Arctic (1959).
The final presentation of the day was on Inuit Women. Inuit Women play a crucial role in the group, have most of the the responsibility, yet they never share equal power or influence in a family. Without women, families just wouldn't function as well as they do. Traditionally, Inuit women were responsible for all main aspects of child care. They show an incredible amount of warmth and affection for their children and raised both the boys and the girls. The men taught the boys to hunt and the women taught the girls to hunt. After modernization, women started taking on more of the man's role as well. They continue to seek more power for themselves and this has caused a complication in the relationship between Inuit men and women. The change in Inuit women over the years is similar to women in our very own culture, in that we used to be responsible for the same things such as childcare and cooking/cleaning around the house. Similary, women are getting out the world and trying to make a name for themselves!
Hope you enjoy the images/videos of the Ice Hotels as well as the Ice Bar! I think they are absolute breathtaking and I found this to be the most interesting presentation of the day!
Until next time,
Janelle
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