This might just be the most intriguing hotel that’s currently in the pipeline…
Continue reading: Cool: Six Senses Svart, Glacier Hotel In Norway
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This looks unbelievably cool. I spent a few weeks in Norway a couple of years ago and it was fantastic, especially the Lofoten Islands, which are even farther north of here. At the time, I wondered why there weren't more luxury hotel options in Norway, given how beautiful it is.
Granted, we camped almost the entire time (one of the many great things about Norway is you can camp just about anywhere) and if I returned I feel strongly that it's the best way to go (at least in the summer), but a few nights in this hotel would definitely be a great break from sleeping in a tent!
This makes me think of the Arctic Bath Hotel (SLH) in Swedish Scandanavia... always nice to have high end hotels added to areas off the beaten path
This looks extremely cool but I can't ever read hotels' statements about their sustainability efforts without extreme irony. They are so focused on sustainability/eco-friendly/etc, but hey lets take this untouched area and put a hotel in where it requires waste management, water management, drainage, etc.
How exactly do they plan on "harvesting solar energy" during the winter? Or at least, enough to run a whole hotel?
There's going to be sufficient sunlight in the winter to run the hotel without outside power? I don't think that's likely. Looks pretty though.
I do agree with this. Not to mention, the carbon output of people traveling to get there. It likely takes multiple flights and then a drive (or helicopter ride?) for anyone not living in Norway to get to, given how remote it is. And probably not a particularly short drive given how long it takes to drive anywhere in Norway with all the fjords and ferries.
The hotel looks cool, but I have to say it does look like a blemish/scar on a really beautiful pristine natural landscape. If you care deeply and foremost about cool luxury hotels, you'll like this. But I can't help but feel that this ruins this fjord.
I hope Norway doesn't transform into a place where the beauty, natural wonder, and remoteness are just commodified into luxury experiences like this. A huge part of the charm, and the experience, of this part of Norway, is the quiet, the peacefulness, the non-resort, non-chain-hotel quality of it.
They don't; it's a marketing gimmick for suckers who don't want to feel bad about travelling first class across the globe to see the place. Within the Arctic circle, there will be days in the winter when the sun does not go up at all. Of course, all it takes for solar energy to fail is just a cloudy day.
They claim self-sustainability by planning to keep the net consumption negative, on average through the year. This means feeding power into the grid during summertime when the sun is shining. Obviously this does NOT make them "independent from the power grid" by any means. If they really were, they wouldn't hook up the property to the grid in the first place.
In any case, Norway relies mainly on hydropower, which is fairly sustainable compared to the alternatives.
No beaten path should be accessible only by backcountry. Such permanent structures do not belong in these settings. They ruin them.
If it was up to the so called environmentalists everyone would live in NYC or SF. They want to turn the rest of the world into a National Park with no thoughts on how that effects the rest of us who need to make a living. I live in Alaska and we are constantly battling this in regards to our fishing, mining, timber and energy production industries. I like seeing responsible developments that are environmentally conscious but some people are never satisfied!
No way this will be independent of the power grid in the winter. Not only will there be less sun to generate electricity but the hotel will need increased power for lighting and heating.
I live in NYC, and believe me, I want no more people here haha.
I don't have a problem with necessary industry so people can make a living. I actually think Alaska has done a good job of this. Alaskans are proud of their industry, but are equally proud of their natural beauty and want to protect the land.
My concern is less with the industry and tourism and keeping places "untouched," but with the way that beautiful remote places have a tendency to get turned into generic luxury experiences for people to consume, driving up costs of living, costs of visiting, and ultimately making certain places unaffordable and inaccessible to large swaths of people. I hope this doesn't happen in Norway.
the harsh weather in northern Norway also generates energy... or it only needs to theoretically to be sufficient, you can't forbid a building to use grid power
Won’t they be able to store the energy they harvest during the summer, for use during winter?
Point of clarification:
Solar generates electricity on cloudy days. So “all it takes for solar energy to fail is just a cloudy day” is nonsense. Don’t you ever wear sunglasses on a bright overcast day?
Will there be solar energy when the sun doesn’t shine at that latitude? No. But saying clouds negate solar completely is silly.
The problem with how non-Norwegian media outlets report on this hotel, is that they leave out some key details:
1. The project has been stuck in development limbo for nearly a decade now
2. IHG will only run the property; IHG is neither building this project nor in any other way investing money into the hotel to secure its completion, that is still up to original property developer, Svart Eiendom
Or more so that the developer behind is actually bankrupt, and in court for fraud proceedings…
Hate to break it to you, but there was a piece in the Norwegian news recently that the builder of the property is bankrupt.
Not sure whether it will by run by someone else though.
When the sun is covered by clouds, solar panels produce only a small fraction of their normal power output. But you are right, it was incorrect of me to say that a single cloudy day will lead to failure.
The reason for this is that typically, solar panel systems are equipped with a battery backup. An appropriately sized system will produce enough power to recharge those batteries even if they work optimally for just a few hours per day. However, without sunlight, a battery backup would last for days, but not the entire winter at that latitude.