北极风云

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Arctic explorers

北极探险家

Northern exposure

北极风云

Icebound. By Andrea Pitzer.

《冰封》。作者：安德里亚·皮泽

When william barents, a Dutch navigator, sailed to the Arctic in 1594, he was pursuing the dream of a warm northern ocean first posited by the Greeks. The idea of a polar trade route to the Orient—above North America or the Russian Far East—enticed European explorers for centuries. Yet it proved a “lethal delusion”, and Barents’s missions a template for many harrowing trials.

威廉·巴伦支是一名荷兰航海家，于1594年航行到北极，他当时正在追寻由希腊人首次提出的温暖北部海洋的梦想。几个世纪以来，在北美或俄罗斯远东地区开辟一条通往东方的极地贸易路线的想法吸引了大量欧洲探险家。然而，事实证明这是一种“致命的妄想”，许多妄图以巴伦支的航行任务为模板的探险家都历经了痛苦的磨难。

Beyond the sea north of Scandinavia that bears his name, Barents and his tale are little known. Considered “the first true polar voyage”, his quest was eclipsed by the 19th-century exploits of Robert Peary and the ill-fated expedition led by John Franklin. Andrea Pitzer, an American journalist, recently sailed the same seas to Nova Zembla to recount this earlier, nail-biting feat of seafaring.

巴伦支和他的故事鲜为人知，就只有以他的名字命名的斯堪的纳维亚北部海域还有些名气。尽管他的探索被认为是“第一次真正的极地航行”，但与罗伯特·皮尔19世纪的伟绩和约翰·富兰克林领导的悲惨探险相比还是黯然失色。美国记者安德里亚·皮泽最近乘船穿越相同的海域前往新地岛，以讲述这一扣人心弦的早期航海壮举。

Backed by Dutch merchants keen to make their fledgling state a maritime power, Barents made three journeys north in the 1590s. Ms Pitzer relies not just on a 19th-century translation of the journals of Gerrit de Veer, who accompanied the voyages, but on a previously untranslated account by a merchant representative. The polar ice was insurmountable on the first two expeditions; they were largely uneventful and barely stir a reader’s blood. But once Barents heads for the northern tip of Nova Zembla for the third time in May 1596, the story becomes dramatic, and dire.

当时的荷兰商人们渴望新成立的荷兰成为海上霸主，在他们的支持下，巴伦支在16世纪90年代曾三次北上。皮泽女士的书不仅依赖于曾陪伴巴伦支航行的《新地岛日志》的19世纪译本，还依赖于以前从未被翻译过的一位商人代表的报告。在前两次探险中，极地冰层无法逾越；基本全程平安无事的两次探险经历几乎没有激起读者的热情。但当故事发展到1596年5月，巴伦支第三次前往新地岛的北端，情节就变得戏剧可怕了。

He and his crew break away from a companion ship to forge on alone, determined to be first to find the elusive passage. For weeks the 17 men fight off polar bears that rear up from nowhere, attacking until they are slaughtered or driven away. The ship tacks endlessly and desperately to escape floating “mountains of steel”: icebergs so impenetrable that the only way through is to drill holes and pray they will split apart. By mid-September the vessel is frozen fast, and the men resign themselves to overwintering “in great cold, poverty, misery and griefe”. Poorly clad and ravaged by scurvy, they are “phenomenally unprepared” for the ordeal, Ms Pitzer observes. Yet the remains of the shelter they managed to build stood for nearly 300 years.

巴伦支和他的船员们脱离了同伴的船只独自前行，他们下定决心第一个发现难以找到的通道。几周来，这17个人一直在与神出鬼没的北极熊搏斗，直到将它们屠杀或赶走。为了逃离漂浮的“钢铁冰山”，他们乘船无止境地拼命赶路。冰山太难穿越了，唯一的办法就是钻孔并祈祷它们会裂开。到了九月中旬，船被冻得严严实实，巴伦支和他的船员们只好“在极端寒冷、匮乏、苦难和悲伤中”过冬。皮泽女士表示，他们衣衫褴褛，饱受坏血病的折磨，而且对这些严酷的考验“毫无准备”。然而，他们设法建造的避难所的遗迹保存了近300年。

Of the men themselves, 13 live through this long polar night—eight months of what the author neatly terms “the monotony of survival”. They dig out from continual blizzards, scavenging for fuel and Arctic foxes whose meat contains just enough vitamin C to sustain them. Still, the journey is filled with wonders: optical phenomena and mysteries unravelled, such as where European songbirds go each summer. Ms Pitzer’s descriptions of the region sing. “Bits of floating ice released tiny bubbles of air, hissing like oil in a skillet,” she writes. “The many languages of water surrounded them day and night.”

他们这群人中有13个人活着度过了这漫长的极夜，作者巧妙地将这8个月称为“求生的单调”。他们从接连不断的暴风雪中挖掘物资，寻找燃料和北极狐（北极狐的肉中含有足够的维生素C来维持他们的生存）。尽管如此，这第三次的探险旅程还是充满了奇迹：有一些光学现象和谜团被揭开，例如，他们揭秘了欧洲鸣鸟每年夏天的去处。皮泽女士对该地区的描述令人赞叹。她写道：“漂浮的冰块会冒出微小的气泡，它们嘶嘶作响，就像是煎锅里的油。”。“他们身边日夜萦绕着各种各样的水声。”

Barents’s heroism helped make the Arctic explorer a mythically resilient figure. The fantasy that drove him, meanwhile, has nearly come to pass. Arctic ice has been shrinking for several decades, with a sharp drop-off after 2006. Human ingenuity, epitomised by expeditions like his, has in 400 years made the Dutchman’s dream a terrifying reality.

巴伦支的英雄主义使这位北极探险家成为一个具有神话般韧性的人物。与此同时，曾驱使他不断前进的幻想几乎实现了。几十年来，北极冰层在不断缩小，2006年之后急剧下降。巴伦支探险这样的历程充分展现了人类的足智多谋，并历经400年将荷兰人的梦想变成了可怕的现实。

来源：经济学人

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