2021年经济学人 北极风云(2)（在线收听）

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。