Kangaamiut village, in Greenland, is now more accessible thanks to affordable airfares / Simon Calder
Kangaamiut村，格陵兰，幸亏负担得起的机票价格，终于可以进入了/ Simon Calder（本文作者）
The world's biggest island is now more accessible than ever, thanks to more affordable flights. Simon Calder explores a country like nowhere else on Earth.
这座世界最大的岛屿，现在比以往任何时候都容易进入了。幸亏优惠了的航班。Simon Calder在这个地球上其他地方不会有的乡村开始了他的探幽之旅。
Greenland: twinned with Australia. 格陵兰：澳大利亚的“翻版”
Technically, that's not true. But it should be.
从法律意义上来说，这个说法当然是不正确的。但是，真的应该是。
The similarities go deep. Both have a coastal fringe wrapping around a vast emptiness, best appreciated from on high — between the UK and Vancouver, or from Singapore to Sydney. Each country has an aboriginal population with deep traditions, whose roots extend far further back than the very recent colonies established by Europeans.
澳大利亚与格陵兰有深入的相似性。两者都有一条海岸线环绕着一个巨大的广袤腹地，高空俯瞰的美景——从英国到温哥华之间，或者从新加坡到悉尼之间。两国都有一个传统深厚的土著民族，土著民族的足迹可以追溯回遥远的过去，远远早于近代欧洲人的殖民统治者。
Some say that Australia is the world’s biggest island, but if you subscribe to the idea that it’s actually a continent, then Greenland takes the title.
有人说，澳大利亚是世界上最大的岛屿，但是如果同意澳大利亚实际上是一个大陆的观点，那么，格陵兰就是世界上最大的岛屿了。
[Tourists at the ice sheet in Greenland (Simon Calder) 面对格陵兰冰盖的旅客]
And both have a difficult relationship with the “mother country”: Australia with Britain, and Greenland with Denmark. Indeed, Greenland is the country that went into the cold, voting in 1982 to leave the EU. But the monarch in Copenhagen is Greenland’s head of state, and the Danish krone is the national currency.
两国都与自己“宗主国”有着复杂的关系。澳大利亚与英国，格陵兰与丹麦。的确，格陵兰是一个“冷”静的国家，1982年通过投票退出了欧盟。但是，哥本哈根的君主是格陵兰的统治者，丹麦克朗是格陵兰的国家货币。
Having checked both locations, I can say with confidence that Australia is warmer and sunnier. Greenland begins where Shetland ends, at around 60 degrees north, and extends to just seven degrees short of the North Pole.
调查过两国的位置，我可以自信地说，澳大利亚要温暖得多，更加阳光灿烂。格陵兰岛起于设得兰群岛（英国苏格兰东北部一郡）的终端，从大约北纬60度，延伸向北，差7度到北极点。
Bizarrely, Australia has also traditionally been cheaper to reach despite being five times further away than Greenland, with the return airfare for the past 25 years or so starting at around £600 return to the main cities for deeply off-peak travel. Every time I’ve looked, Greenland has been a minimum of £850.
离奇的是，到澳大利亚比到格陵兰岛要远5倍的距离，但是去澳大利亚却是更便宜。过去25年里，若论双程飞行，或者600英镑就可以启动包含非高峰阶段的来回机票以及一些主要城市的深度游，每一次我都注意一下，到格陵兰的最低价格是850英镑。
But finally, thanks to some creative pricing by the national airline, reaching Greenland is no longer pricier than Perth.
但是，最终，幸亏国家航空提供了创新定价，去格陵兰再也不比去珀斯价格高了。
Looking ahead to next midsummer, the lowest return fare from Copenhagen on the excellent Airbus A330 of Air Greenland is £540, with connections from the UK to the Danish capital another £60 or so. It offers proper long-haul standards even though the longest flight on the network is barely over four hours. There’s lots of legroom and impressive inflight entertainment — including Coldplay，appropriately —— and for inflight reading, Suluk (Greenlandic for “wing”).
预计到下一个夏季，从哥本哈根乘坐格陵兰航空公司的A330航班，双程费用将是540英镑，再加上从英国到丹麦首都的60英镑花费。这是一个正常的长途旅行规格，虽然网上显示的最长的飞行航班很少有超过四小时的。飞机上空间宽敞，设施良好，包括“冷娱乐”——我其实要说的是“酷玩乐队”的音乐，当然了——机上的阅读物《Suluk》（格陵兰语“翅膀”的意思）
The inflight magazine for a national carrier can tell you a lot about the country. Air Greenland’s publication is the only one I have seen with advertisements for quad bike repairs.
这本国际航空行程中的机上杂志可以告诉你很多关于这个国家的事情。格陵兰航空公司的这个出版物是我唯一看到的刊登摩托车维修广告的飞机杂志。
The editorial is intriguing, too. One feature was about a new issue of Greenland stamps featuring local delicacies: fish heads and raw whale skin. There’s even an Inuit recipe page, featuring this month a whale in its own blubber. (“Cut the whale meat into slices, not so thin that they risk getting dry, and place them on the stone with the melted whale blubber.")
杂志编辑得也很有趣。有一个内容是关于最新发行的格陵兰邮票，介绍的是格陵兰当地佳肴：鱼头和生鲸鱼皮。杂志上甚至还配上因纽特人的食谱，介绍说，这个月鲸鱼会有鲸油。（食谱上说：把鲸鱼皮切成片，不要切得太薄，以防变干，把它们放在石头上，让鲸油融化）
You may, of course, feel that the world’s biggest mammal needs to be protected rather than devoured, but in so precarious a land the whale has long been seen as salvation.
Nature has not been generous to Greenland. There are just seven terrestrial mammals: the stoat and its prey, the lemming, the Arctic fox and the Arctic hare, the caribou, the musk ox and the polar bear.
你可能自然地以为，这个世界上最大的哺乳动物应该被保护，而不是被吃掉。但是，在这个生存艰险的岛上，鲸鱼已经长期被视为救星。
Those creatures, like the human population, endure on the coastal fringes. Most of Greenland is an ice sheet, a geographical feature almost inconceivable in its scale.
那些生物，就像人类，常期生活在海岸边。大部分的格陵兰是一个冰盖，显示着不可思议的神奇地理特征。
The bottom layer fell as snow more than 100,000 years ago. It contains one-11th of the world’s freshwater. The weight of all that frozen water depresses the surface by 1,000 feet below sea level; were it to melt, oceans around the world could rise by perhaps 20 feet.
最底层覆盖着10万年以前的积雪，储存着世界上1/11的淡水。冰块的重量使它们沉在海平面1000英尺以下；如果这些冰块融化了，世界的海平面可能要提升20英尺。
You can wonder at such statistics as you fly across the ice sheet (and arguably contribute to the warming of the planet).
当你飞过这些冰面的时候，你可能对这些统计数字感到好奇（毫无疑问，飞行增进了地球变暖）
A nation nine times the size of Britain is divided into just four regions, whose names in Greenlandic may make you shiver. The area around Cape Farewell, on the tip of Greenland’s icy tongue, is known as Kujalleq (“South"); Sermersooq ("Much Ice") is the region around the capital Nuuk; Qeqqata ("Centre") runs from north of the capital along the Davis Strait; and the far north-west is known as Qaasuitsup, meaning ”Darkness”.
这个四倍与英国的地方，分成了四个地区。四个地区的格陵兰名称可以让你发抖。围绕费尔韦尔海角，在格陵兰冰舌的尖端，被称为“Kujalleq”（格陵兰语中“南边”的意思）；“Sermersooq”（格陵兰语中“很多冰”的意思）是首都努克（Nuuk）地区；“Qeqqata”（格陵兰语中“中心”的意思）从首都北延伸到戴维斯海峡（Davis Strait，在加拿大巴芬岛和格陵兰岛之间的海峡）；最西北的地带称为“Qaasuitsup”，意思是“黑暗”。
Most of Greenland’s population lives on the western coast, facing across to Canada, and enjoy the most corrugated coastline in the world: for a fjord focus, the island is even better than Norway.
大多数的格陵兰人口住在西岸，正对着加拿大，享有世界上最长的波状海岸线：作为海湾，这个岛甚至优于挪威。
Kangerlussuaq where the plane touches down, is at the head of the largest incision of all. Indeed, Kangerlussuaq means “big fjord”. It curves around the airport and feels like a disused military base, which is what it mostly is.
Kangerlussuaq，飞机着陆地，是所有飞机到此后的首要分散地。事实上，Kangerlussuaq的意思就是“大海湾”。它弧线型绕着飞机场，感觉就像一个废弃了的军事基地，而事实上它确实曾经是。
The American military boosted the population of Greenland by around one-fifth when they set up a series of bases for the DEW (“distant early warning”) line in preparation for nuclear Armageddon. In the conflict between the US and the USSR, this was the place that put the “cold” in Cold War.
美国军队以1/50的比例提高了格陵兰的人口的数量。他们在这里建立了一系列远程雷达预警基地，目的是为核世界末日战争做准备。在美国和前苏联的冲突中，这是为冷战加入“冷料”的地方。
Since the US military went home, the town has diversified into tourism. A local guide with aa 4x4 will drive you out to the ice sheet; this is the place with easiest access to the frozen heart of Greenland. The first sight, though, as you drive out on a dusty track, is a crashed US warplane, its metallic entrails scattered across the rock beside the road.
美国军队回国后，这个城市开始了旅游业务的多种经营。当地的导游会驾驶4x4带你去冰盖，这是进入格陵兰冰川腹地的最容易的进入口。当你在尘土飞扬的路上行驶的时候，最先看到的是，会是一架坠毁的美国军用飞机，金属零件就散落路边礁石上。
Man is enfeebled in such a wild, desolate and extreme place. The landscape, sculpted over 60 million years since Greenland broke away from the North American tectonic place, is a demonstration of nature’s might.
在这样偏远的、荒凉的和极端的地方，人类显得很弱小。这里的地貌是在格陵兰岛从北美地理板块分裂后形成的，已经超过6000万年（60 million），是大自然力量的一个代表作。
Ancient rocks, twisted and jagged, tell of the earth’s restlessness, while the edge of the ice sheet creaks and shudders. And yet this is not an entirely alien environment: tough grasses soften your steps, while in the distance musk ox forage beside a river filled by melting ice.
古老的岩石，蜿蜒崎岖，嶙峋交错，伴随着冰盖吱嘎噼啪和震动战栗，仿佛在诉说着世界的焦躁不安。这还不是全部的奇观异景：顽强生存的杂草，远处有麝牛正在融化的冰水河边搜寻食物，这些情景让你脚步缓慢下来。
The scene may leave you breathless——as will the exercise of pronouncing the town’s name correctly. The “rl” in the middle of Kangerlussuaq requires your mouth to adopt the position for the sound of a short “l” and then exhale: a breathy “thwl” is the best I can get to the sound. To master the "q" at the end I shall refer you to Greenlandic for Travelers by Birgitte Hertling, which recommends this easy procedure: “Just as one might create air pressure to hold a gargle liquid from running down one’s throat before gargling, press, hold and then release the air to produce this special throat sound.”
这个景象也许让你喘不过气来——就像你试着想正确读出这个城市名称的发音时的感受。“Kangerlussuaq”中间的“rl”，需要你的发出短的“l”的声音，然后呼气：一个带气息音的“thwl”是我能做到的最佳结果了。要掌握结尾的“q”的发音，我要向你推荐Birgitte Hertling著的《旅游用格陵兰语》一书，书中介绍了“q”的简易发音过程：“就像你口里含着漱口水时，利用气压的作用让漱口水在喉咙里来回的运动，加压，控制，然后放松，体会这个过程，才能发出这个特殊的喉音”。
Time to leave town. To explore more widely, you need either a boat or a plane. Some hardy yachties sail into the big fjord, as do expedition ships. Alternatively Air Greenland has a fleet of 16 helicopters, augmented by Dash-8 propellor planes. The latter aircraft fly as frequently as the weather allows to the capital, Nuuk - pronounced as in “nuke”.
离开这个城市的时间到了。要想进行更深广的探索，你需要船或者飞机。有的船艇可以驶入大海湾，也有考察船。或者，格陵兰有16架直升飞机，Dash-8螺旋桨飞机。只要天气允许，Dash-8螺旋桨飞机频繁飞往首都努克（Nuuk）。
“An Arctic metropolis,” claims the tourist board of Nuuk. It looks like no other capital city I have seen, scattered across a headland that juts out from the entrance of a complex of fjords. One in four of Greenland’s entire population of 60,000 people lives here. A Danish pastor, Hans Egede, founded the settlement in 1728, and a huddle of cottages from that era still remains.
“这是一个北极大都会”，努克旅游局这样介绍努克。它不像我见过的任何一个首都城市。散落建在从一个复杂的峡湾进口处伸出的海峡口。6万格陵兰人的四分之一居住在努克。Hans Egede在1728年在这里建立了定居点，那个年代的狭小的村舍仍然有保留下来的。
But the modern town strikes me as a good definition of the word “bleak”, with a bitter breeze blowing down a glum main thoroughfare. The national museum, excellent though it is, actually reinforces the notion that this is a land unfit for human habitation. The early settlers depended on driftwood from northern Siberia, while for metal they had to rely on outer space — scraping iron from meteorites that had fallen in the far north-west of the nation.
但现代的城市给我的印象，则是一个对“单调”这个词的很好的定义，刺骨的风吹着一条沉闷的主干道。国家博物馆虽然非常棒，但它实际上却也强化了一个概念：这是一个不适合人类居住的地方。早期的定居者靠着来自西伯利亚北部的浮木，而对于金属他们不得不依赖于外层空间——从遥远的西北方向降落的陨石的碎铁片。
A few fjords north of Nuuk, the fishing village of Kangaamiut takes you closer to the soul of Greenland. It is a deliciously colourful place, with primary-painted cottages tumbling down to the water's edge. The Arctic Umiaq Line, the ferry lifeline along Greenland’s coast since 1774, calls here with 21st-century essentials.
Yet evidence around the village provides an insight into heroic endurance on the edge of an unforgiving land. Down at the harbour, the water turns scarlet as a seal is skinned. Drying cod dangles from hooks nailed to walls of cottages.
努克北面的几个小海角，是叫Kangaamiut的小渔村，这里可以让你更贴近格陵兰的精髓所在。这是一个美妙的色彩丰富的地方，有倒塌在水边的依然保留着古旧颜色外墙的农舍，北极木架蒙皮船，沿着格陵兰海岸有着从1774年起就在那里的渡口救生索，与21世纪的各种要素交相辉映。
村庄周围各种迹象仍然展示着在这块不宜居住的土地上史诗般的忍耐力。港口下面，被掉皮的海豹的血把水面染成红色。风干的鳕鱼悬挂在农舍墙上的钩子上。
Yet even with the daily struggle for survival, there is room for the spirits to soar. Heavenly voices of a local choir drift from the tiny church, bestowing a delicacy at odds with the landscape.
是的，即使每天都为生存在战斗，这里仍然有灵魂提升的空间。当地唱诗班的圣神的声音从小教堂里飘荡出来，给偏僻奇异的环境增添了一丝美妙。
Climb beyond the chapel, by way of the local dump, complete with a few rusting quad bikes. You reach a summit that reveals a magnificent congregation of land and sea; the best possible conclusion to a journey along the raw edge of the world.
走过小教堂，往高处走，路上是当地的垃圾场，堆放着几辆生锈的摩托车。你到达顶点时，岛子和大海的风景尽收眼底。这是你在沿着世界边缘的旅途中能够得到的最好的结束。
【注1】因为自己住在格陵兰，很想给朋友们介绍一下这个偏远地方的风貌风情等。可惜我没有好的摄影设备和技术，自己的生活也比较单调。所以，就想翻译些英语资料。如果配图，一般也会取自原文配图或者可能需要从网上搜索。译文和配图并不做商业用途。所以如果图片来自哪位网友，请告知，也请谅解。
【注2】我试着翻译，学习阶段。发到网上，同时也为了寻求得到翻译上的指教。先致谢！
希望得到您的帮助和支持。
（文中插图选自原文配图）
