Greenland is a beautiful nightmare
Greenland is a complicated topic here in Denmark. The former colony that is still treated a bit like a colony is something that inspires a lot of emotions. Greenland has been subjected to a lot of unethical experiments by Denmark, from taking their kids to wild experiments in criminal justice. But there is also a genuine pride a lot of people have here for the place and you run into Danes who grew up there more often than I would have guessed.
在丹麦，格陵兰是个复杂的话题。这块前殖民地至今仍多少被当作殖民地对待，能勾起很多情绪。丹麦对格陵兰做过不少不道德的实验，从把他们的孩子带走，到在刑事司法上的荒唐试验。但这里也有很多人对那地方怀着一种真切的自豪，你遇到在格陵兰长大的丹麦人的概率，比我原以为的要高。
When the idea of going to Greenland was introduced to me, I was curious. Having lived in Denmark for awhile, you hear a lot about the former colony and its 55,000 residents. We were invited by a family that my wife was close with growing up and is Danish. They wanted to take their father back to see the place he had spend some time in during his 20s and had left quite an impression. A few drinks in, I said “absolutely let’s do it”, not realizing we had already committed to going and I had missed the text message chain.
有人提出去格陵兰这个主意时，我挺好奇。在丹麦住久了，你会听到很多关于这块前殖民地和它五万五千居民的说法。邀我们的是一家丹麦人，我妻子从小和他们要好。他们想带家里的父亲回去看看——他二十多岁时在那儿待过一阵，那地方给他留下了很深的印象。喝了几杯之后，我说“当然去，走起”，没意识到我们其实早就定下来要去了，是我漏看了那一长串短信。
A few weeks before I went, I realized “I don’t know anything about Greenland” and started to watch some YouTube videos. It was about this time when I started to get a pit in my stomach, the “oh god I think I’ve made a huge mistake” feeling I’m painfully familiar with after a career in tech. Greenland appeared to have roughly 9 people living there and maybe 5 things to look at. Even professional travel personalities seemed to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. “There’s the grocery store again!” they would point out as they slipped down the snowy roads. I couldn’t tell any difference between different towns in the country.
出发前几周，我意识到“我对格陵兰一无所知”，于是开始看一些 YouTube 视频。大概就是这时候，我心里开始发沉——“天哪，我怕是犯了个大错”的那种感觉，在科技行业干了这些年之后，我对它痛苦地熟悉。格陵兰看上去大概住着九个人，也许有五样东西可看。连专业旅游博主都好像在硬凑内容。“杂货店又来了！”他们一边在结冰的路上打滑，一边这样指给你看。这个国家里不同的镇子，我一个也分不出区别。
It reminded me a lot of driving through Indiana. For those not in the US, Indiana is a state in the US famous for being a state one must drive through in order to get somewhere better. If you live in Michigan, a good state and want to go to Illinois, another good state, one must pass through Indiana, a blank state. Because of this little strip here, you often found yourself passing through this place.
这让我很想起开车穿过印第安纳的经历。不在美国的人可能不知道，印第安纳这个州出名之处就在于：你必须开车穿过它，才能到达某个更好的地方。你要是住在密歇根——一个不错的州——想去伊利诺伊——另一个不错的州——就得穿过印第安纳，一个空白的州。就因为这么一小条地，你常常发现自己在路过这个地方。
Driving through Indiana isn’t bad, it’s just an empty void. It’s like a time machine back to the 90s when people still smoke in restaurants but also there’s nothing that sticks out about it. There is nothing distinct about Indiana, it’s just a place full of people who got too tired on their way to somewhere better and decided “this is good enough”. The difference is that Greenland is very hard to get to, as I was about to learn.
开车穿过印第安纳不算糟，它只是一片空洞的虚无。像一台时光机，把你送回九十年代——那时人们还在餐馆里抽烟——但同时又没有任何东西让人记得住。印第安纳没有任何独特之处，它只是一个地方，住满了在奔往更好的地方的路上累坏了、然后决定“这样就够好了”的人。区别在于，格陵兰非常难到，这一点我很快就要领教了。
Finally the day arrived. Me, my wife, daughter, 4 other children and 6 other adults all came to the Copenhagen Airport and held up a gate agent for what felt like an hour to slowly process all of our documents. Meanwhile, I nursed a creeping paranoia that I’d be treated as some sort of American spy, given my government’s recent hobby of threatening to purchase entire countries like they’re vintage motorcycles on Craigslist.
出发那天终于到了。我、我妻子、女儿，还有另外四个小孩和六个大人，全都来到哥本哈根机场，把一个登机口的地勤堵了差不多一个小时，让她慢慢处理我们所有人的证件。与此同时，我心里悄悄地犯着一种妄想症：我会不会被当成某种美国间谍——毕竟我们政府最近迷上了一个新爱好，威胁要把整个整个国家买下来，好像它们是 Craigslist 上的老式摩托车。
The 5 hour flight is uneventful, the children are beautifully behaved and I begin to think “well this seems ok!” like the idiot I am. As I can look down and see the airport, the pilot comes on and informs us that there is too much fog to land safely. Surely fog cannot stop a modern aircraft full of all these dials and screens I think, foolishly. We are informed there is enough fuel to circle the airport for 5 hours to wait for the fog to lift.
五个小时的飞行平安无事，孩子们乖得不得了，我开始想“嗯，这好像还行！”——像我这种傻瓜才会这么想。就在我能往下看见机场的时候，机长广播说，雾太大，无法安全降落。雾总不至于挡得住一架满是仪表和屏幕的现代飞机吧，我愚蠢地想。我们被告知，燃油够绕着机场盘旋五个小时，等雾散。
What followed was three hours of flying in lazy circles, like a very expensive, very slow merry-go-round. After the allotted time, we are informed that we must fly to Iceland to refuel and then we will be returning to Denmark. After a total of 15 hours in the air we will be going back to exactly where we started, to do the entire thing again. We were obviously upset at this turn of events, but I noticed the native Greenlandic folks seemed not surprised at this turn of events. As I later learned, this happens all the time.
接下来就是三个小时懒洋洋地兜圈子，像一座非常昂贵、非常慢的旋转木马。到了规定时间，我们被告知，必须飞去冰岛加油，然后我们要返回丹麦。在空中总共待了十五个小时之后，我们要回到出发的原点，把整件事再来一遍。我们对这个转折显然很不爽，但我注意到，格陵兰本地人对这个转折似乎并不惊讶。后来我才知道，这种事天天发生。
The native Greenlanders on board seemed utterly unsurprised by this development, displaying the kind of resigned familiarity that suggested this was Tuesday for them. I began wondering if I could just pretend Iceland was Greenland—surely my family wouldn’t notice the difference? But the pilot, apparently reading my mind, announced that no one would be disembarking in Iceland. It felt oddly authoritarian, like being grounded by an airline, as if they knew we’d all just wander off into Reykjavik and call it close enough.
机上的格陵兰本地人对这个进展毫不意外，脸上那种认命的熟稔劲儿，仿佛这对他们不过是“又一个周二”。我开始琢磨，能不能干脆假装冰岛就是格陵兰——反正我家人也看不出区别吧？可机长仿佛看穿了我的心思，广播说在冰岛谁都不许下飞机。这感觉莫名地专断，像是被一家航空公司“禁足”了，好像他们知道我们全都会溜达进雷克雅未克，然后说一句“差不多得了”。
We crash out in a airport hotel 20 minutes from our apartment after 15 hours in the air and tons of CO2 emissions only to wake up the next day to start again. This time, I notice that all of the people are asking for (and receiving) free beer from the crew that they are stashing in their bags. It turns out soda and beer, really anything that needs to be imported, is pretty expensive in Greenland. The complimentary drinks are there to be kept for later.
在空中待了十五个小时、排放了一吨吨二氧化碳之后，我们瘫倒在一家离我们公寓二十分钟车程的机场酒店里，第二天醒来又从头再来。这一回我注意到，所有人都在向机组要（而且要到了）免费啤酒，往包里塞。原来汽水、啤酒，其实是任何需要进口的东西，在格陵兰都相当贵。那些赠饮，是留着以后喝的。
Finally we land. The first thing you notice when you land in Greenland is there are no trees or grass. There is snow and then there is exposed rock. The exterior of the airport is metal but the inside is wood, which is strange because again there are no trees. This would end up being a theme, where buildings representing Denmark were made out of lots of wood, almost to ensure that you understood they weren’t from here. We ended up piling all of our stuff into a bus and heading for the hotel in Nuuk.
我们终于降落了。降落在格陵兰，你注意到的第一件事就是没有树，也没有草。有雪，然后是裸露的岩石。机场外墙是金属的，内部却是木头的，很奇怪，因为——再说一遍——这里没有树。这后来成了一个反复出现的主题：代表丹麦的建筑用了大量木头，几乎像是要确保你明白，它们不是这地方的产物。我们最后把所有行李堆上一辆巴士，前往努克的酒店。
努克（Nuuk）
Nuuk is the capital of Greenland and your introduction to the incredible calm of the Greenlandic people. I have never met a less stressed out group of humans in my life. Nobody is really rushing anywhere, it’s all pretty quiet and calm. The air is cold and crisp with lots of kids playing outside and just generally enjoying life.
努克是格陵兰的首都，也是你认识格陵兰人那种惊人的从容的开始。我这辈子从没见过一群比他们更不焦虑的人。没人真的在赶去哪里，一切都相当安静、平和。空气又冷又清冽，很多孩子在户外玩，就那样单纯地享受生活。
The city itself sits in a landscape so dramatically inhospitable it makes the surface of Mars look cozy. Walking through the local mall, half the shops sell gear designed to help you survive what appears to be the apocalypse. Yet somehow, there’s traffic. Actual traffic jams in a place where you can walk from one end to the other in twenty minutes. It’s like being stuck behind a school bus in your own driveway.
这座城市本身坐落在一片荒凉得夸张的地貌里，荒凉到让火星表面都显得温馨。在当地的商场里走一圈，一半的店铺卖的都是帮你在某种末日里活下来的装备。可不知怎么，这里居然有交通。在一个二十分钟就能从这头走到那头的地方，真真切切地堵车。就像在你自家车道上被一辆校车堵住。
To put this map into some perspective, it is only six kilometers from the sorta furthest tip to the airport.
给这张地图一点参照：从大致最远的那一端到机场，也就六公里。
But riding the bus around Nuuk was a peaceful experience that lets you see pretty much the entire city without needing to book a tour or spend a lot of money. We went to Katuaq, a cultural center with a cafe and a movie theater that was absolutely delicious food.
不过坐公交绕努克转一圈是个安宁的体验，不用订什么旅行团、也不用花很多钱，就基本能把整座城看遍。我们去了 Katuaq，一个文化中心，里面有咖啡馆和电影院，食物好吃得不得了。
But again even riding the bus around it is impossible to escape the feeling that this is a fundamentally hostile to human life place. The sun is bright and during the summer its pretty hot, with my skin feeling like it was starting the burn pretty much the second it was exposed to the light. It’s hard to even dress for, with layers of sunscreen, bug spray and then something warm on top if you suddenly got cold.
但同样，哪怕只是坐公交转悠，你也逃不掉这样一种感觉：这地方在根本上是与人类生命为敌的。太阳很亮，夏天相当热，我的皮肤几乎一见光就开始有灼伤的感觉。连怎么穿衣服都难：一层层防晒霜、驱蚊液，再在最外面套点保暖的，以防你突然又冷了。
The sun, meanwhile, has apparently forgotten how to set, turning our hotel rooms into solar ovens. You wake up in a pool of your own sweat, crack a window for relief, and immediately get hit with air so cold it feels personal. It’s like being trapped in a meteorological mood swing.
与此同时，太阳显然忘了怎么落山，把我们的酒店房间变成了太阳能烤箱。你在自己的一摊汗水里醒来，开条窗缝透透气，立刻被一股冷得像是针对你个人的空气糊了一脸。就像被困在一场气象学意义上的情绪波动里。
So after a night here, we went back to the airport again and flew to our final destination, Ilulissat.
于是在这儿住了一晚，我们又回到机场，飞往最终目的地，伊卢利萨特。
伊卢利萨特（Ilulissat）
My new favorite airport ／ 我新的最爱机场
The flight to our final destination revealed Greenland’s true nature: endless, empty hills stretching toward infinity, punctuated by ice formations that look like nature’s sculpture garden.
飞往最终目的地的这趟航班，揭示了格陵兰的真面目：无尽的、空荡荡的山丘一直延伸到无限远，中间点缀着冰的造型，看上去像大自然的雕塑花园。
Landing in Ilulissat felt like victory—we’d made it to the actual destination, not just another waypoint in our Arctic odyssey. Walking through the tiny airport, past Danish military recruitment posters (apparently someone, somewhere, thought this place needed defending), I felt genuinely optimistic for the first time in days.
降落在伊卢利萨特有种胜利感——我们到了真正的目的地，而不只是这场北极漫游里又一个中途站。走过那个小小的机场，经过丹麦军队的征兵海报（显然在某处有某个人认为这地方需要保卫），我几天来第一次感到真心的乐观。
Well you can sleep easy Danish military, because Ilulissat is completely protected from invasion. The second I stepped outside I was set upon by a flood of mosquitos like I have never experienced before. I have been to the jungles of Vietnam, the swamps of Florida and the Canadian countryside. This was beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.
丹麦军队大可放心睡觉，因为伊卢利萨特绝无被入侵之虞。我一踏出门，就被一大群蚊子扑了个满脸，前所未有。我去过越南的丛林、佛罗里达的沼泽、加拿大的乡下。这次的阵仗，超出我经历过的一切。
There are bugs in my mouth, ears, eyes and nose almost immediately. The photo below is not me being dramatic, it is actually what is required to keep them off of me.
几乎一瞬间，我的嘴里、耳朵里、眼睛里、鼻子里就都是虫子。下面这张照片不是我夸张，那真的是把它们挡在身外所必需的装备。
In fact what you need to purchase in order to walk around this area at all are basically bug nets for your face. They’re effectively plastic mesh bags that you put on.
事实上，你要想在这一带走动，基本上必须买脸部防虫网。说白了就是往头上套的塑料网袋。
那些狗
Our hotel, charming in that “remote Arctic outpost” way, sat adjacent to what I can only describe as a canine correctional facility. Dozens of sled dogs were chained to rocks like some sort of prehistoric parking lot, each with a tiny house they could retreat to when the existential weight of their circumstances became too much.
我们的酒店，带着那种“偏远北极前哨站”的迷人劲儿，紧挨着一个我只能称之为犬类劳教所的地方。几十条雪橇犬被拴在石头上，像某种史前的停车场，每条狗都有一个小屋子，等它们处境的存在主义之重变得难以承受时，可以躲进去。
Now, I’d always imagined sled dogs living their best life—running through snow, tongues lolling, living the Disney version of Arctic life. I’d never really considered their downtime, assuming they frolicked in meadows or something equally wholesome. The reality was more “minimum security prison with a view.”
我一直想象雪橇犬过着最好的日子——在雪地里奔跑，舌头耷拉着，过着迪士尼版本的北极生活。我从没真正想过它们不干活的时候是什么样，只当它们在草地上撒欢儿，或者做点同样阳光健康的事。现实更像是“有景观的低戒备监狱”。
The dogs are visited roughly twice a day by the person who owns and feeds them, which was quite the party for the dogs that lost their minds whenever the car pulled up. Soon the kids really looked forward to dog feeding time. The fish scrapes the dogs lived on came out of a chest freezer that was left exposed up on the rock face without electricity and you could smell it from 50 yards away when it opened.
养狗、喂狗的人大概一天来两次，对这些狗来说这可是一场盛大的派对，每次车一开过来它们就疯了。很快孩子们也真心盼着喂狗时间。这些狗赖以为生的鱼下脚料，是从一个大冰柜里拿出来的——那冰柜就露天搁在岩壁上，没有电，一打开，五十码外都闻得到。
During one such performance, a fellow parent leaned over and whispered with the casual tone of someone commenting on the weather, “I think that one is dead.” Before I could process this information, the frozen canine was unceremoniously launched over a small cliff like a furry discus. A second doggy popsicle followed shortly after, right in front of our assembled children, who watched with the kind of wide-eyed fascination usually reserved for magic shows.
有一次这样的“表演”进行到一半，一位同行的家长凑过来，用一种谈论天气般随意的口气小声说：“我觉得那条死了。”我还没消化完这条信息，那条冻僵的狗就被毫无仪式感地扔下了一道小悬崖，像一只毛茸茸的铁饼。紧接着第二根“狗冰棍”也跟着飞了下去，就在我们那一群孩子面前——孩子们瞪大眼睛看着，那种入迷的劲头通常是留给魔术表演的。
We stopped making dog feeding time a group activity after that and had to distract the kids from ravens flying away with tufts of dog fur.
那之后我们不再把喂狗时间当集体活动了，还得想办法转移孩子们的注意力，别让他们看见渡鸦叼着一撮撮狗毛飞走。
鲸鱼吃着像海带
Obviously a big part of Greenland is the nature, specifically the icebergs. Icebergs are incredible and during the week we spend up there, I enjoyed watching them every morning. It’s like watching a mountain slowly moving while you sit still. The visual contrast of the ice and the exposed stone is beautiful and peaceful.
格陵兰很大一部分魅力当然在自然，尤其是冰山。冰山不可思议，我们在那儿的一周，我每天早上都爱看它们。就像你坐着不动，看一座山缓缓移动。冰与裸岩之间的视觉对比，美丽而宁静。
Finding our tour operator proved to be an exercise in small-town efficiency. The man who gave me directions was the same person who picked us up from the airport, who was also our tour guide, who probably doubled as the mayor and local meteorologist. It was like a one-man civic operation disguised as multiple businesses—the ultimate small-town gig economy.
找到我们的旅行社，是一堂小镇效率课。给我指路的那个人，就是从机场接我们的那个人，也是我们的导游，多半还兼任镇长和本地气象员。像是一个人的市政机构，伪装成好几家企业——终极版的小镇零工经济。
The sea around Greenland is calmer than anything I’ve ever been on before, perfectly calm and serene. All around us whales emerged, thrilling my daughter. However the biggest hit of the entire tour, maybe the entire trip, was a member of the crew who handed each of the kids a giant rock of glacier ice to eat. I had to pull my daughter away to observe the natural beauty as she ate glacier ice like it was ice cream. “LOOK AT MY ICE” she was yelling as they slipped and slid around the deck of this boat.
格陵兰周围的海，比我以前坐船去过的任何地方都平静，完美地平静、安详。鲸鱼在我们四周浮出水面，我女儿兴奋坏了。不过整趟旅程——也许是整个假期——最大的爆点，是船员里有个人给每个孩子发了一大块冰川冰吃。我女儿把冰川冰当冰淇淋一样啃，我只好把她拽开去看自然风光。“看我的冰！”她大喊着，孩子们在船甲板上滑来滑去。
So if you’ve ever wonder “what is a glacier”, let me tell you. Greenland has a lot of ice and it pushes out from the land that is covers into the sea. When that happens, a lot of it breaks off. This sounds more exciting than it is. On TV in 4K it looks incredible, giant mountains of ice falling into the ocean. Honestly you can go read the same thing I did here.
所以如果你曾经好奇“冰川是什么”，我告诉你。格陵兰有很多冰，它从被覆盖的陆地上往海里推。推的时候，大量的冰断裂脱落。这听起来比实际刺激。4K 电视上看着惊人，巨大的冰山轰然坠海。老实说，你可以去读我读的同一篇东西。
However that doesn’t happen very often. So in order for us tourists to be able to see anything, we had to go to a very productive glacier. This means there are constantly small chunks breaking off and falling into the sea. Practically though, it kinda looks like you are a boat in a slushee. It’s beautiful and something to see, but also depressing to see along the rock face how much more ice there used to be.
然而那种事并不常发生。所以为了让我们这些游客能看到点什么，我们得去一条“高产”的冰川。也就是说，不断有小块的冰断裂、落进海里。可实际上，看起来有点像你坐着一条船，泡在一杯思乐冰里。它很美，值得一看，但沿着岩壁看到从前的冰曾经多出那么多，又让人沮丧。
Back in town, we hopped on the “bus”. Now the bus here is clearly a retrofitted party van, complete with blue LED lights. The payment system is zip tied to a desk chair that is, itself, wedged in the front. However the bus works well and does get you around. The confusing part is that you will, once again, sometimes encounter a lot of traffic. People are driving pretty quickly and really seem to have somewhere to go. You also see a lot of fancy cars parked outside of houses here.
回到镇上，我们跳上“公交”。这里的公交明显是一辆改装过的派对面包车，蓝色 LED 灯一应俱全。收款设备用扎带绑在一把办公转椅上，那把椅子本身又卡在车头。不过这公交挺好用，确实能带你四处走。让人困惑的是，你还是会——又一次——时不时碰上大堵车。人们开得挺快，真像是有地方要去。你还会看到很多豪车停在这里的房子外面。
Which begs a pretty basic question. If there was almost nowhere to drive to in Nuuk, where in the hell are these people driving. The distance between the end of the road and the beginning of the road is less than 6 km. Also the process to make a road here is beyond anything you’ve ever seen. Everything requires a giant pile of explosives.
这就引出一个相当基本的问题。既然在努克几乎哪儿都开不到，这些人到底要开去哪儿。路的尽头和路的起点之间不到六公里。而且在这儿修一条路的过程，超出你见过的任何东西。每一步都需要一大堆炸药。
Where did these vehicles even come from? Why does one ship a BMW to a place accessible only by plane and boat? More importantly, where was everyone going with such determination? It was like watching a very expensive version of bumper cars, except everyone was committed to the illusion that they had somewhere important to be. Everyone had dings and scrapes like crashes were common.
这些车到底是从哪儿来的？谁会把一辆宝马运到一个只能靠飞机和船才到得了的地方？更要紧的是，大家这么一脸决绝地要开去哪儿？就像在看一个非常昂贵的碰碰车版本，只不过每个人都全心投入地维持着“我有个重要的地方要去”的幻觉。每辆车都有磕碰刮痕，好像撞车是家常便饭。
从海里来的杂货店
Anyway, as I dodged speeding cars filled with people heading nowhere, I decided to hop off the bus and head to the grocery store. Inside was less a store and more the idea of a store. There was a lot of alcohol, chips, candy and shelf-stable foods, which all makes sense to me. What was strange was there wasn’t a lot else, including meat. Locals couldn’t be eating at the local restaurants, where the prices were as high as Berlin or Copenhagen for food. So what were they eating?
总之，一边躲着那些坐满了哪儿也不去的人的飞车，我决定下公交去杂货店看看。里面与其说是一家店，不如说是“一家店”这个概念。有很多酒、薯片、糖果和常温保存的食品，这些我都能理解。奇怪的是没什么别的，包括肉。本地人不可能都在本地餐馆吃饭——那里的食物价格跟柏林或哥本哈根一样高。那他们吃什么？
When I asked one of my bus drivers, he told me that it was pretty unusual to buy meat. They purchased a lot of whale and seal meat. I had sorta heard this before, but when we stopped the bus he pointed out a group of men hauling guns out into a small boat to go shoot seals. The guns were held together with a surprising amount of duct tape, which is not something I associate with the wild.
我问其中一个公交司机，他告诉我，买肉是相当少见的事。他们买很多鲸肉和海豹肉。这个我之前多少听说过，但那次停车时他指给我看：一群男人正把枪搬上一条小船，去打海豹。那些枪是用多得惊人的胶带勉强粘在一起的——“野外”这个词，我不会跟胶带联系在一起。
I had assumed, based on my casual reading of the news, that we were mostly done killing whales. As it turns out, I was wrong. They eat a lot of whale and it is, in fact, not hard to find. If you are curious, whale does not taste fishy. It tastes a little bit like if you cooked reindeer in a pot of seaweed. I wouldn’t go out of your way for it, but it’s not terrible.
基于我随手看的新闻，我一直以为我们基本上已经不杀鲸鱼了。结果我错了。他们吃很多鲸肉，而且事实上，一点都不难找到。你要是好奇，鲸肉吃着不腥。有点像你把驯鹿肉放进一锅海带里煮出来的味道。我不会专门为它绕路，但也不算难吃。
The argument I’ve always heard for why people still kill whales is because it’s part of their culture and also because it’s an important source of protein. When you hear the phrase “part of their culture” I always imagined like traditional boats going out with spears. What I didn’t imagine was industrial fishing boats and an industrial crane that lifts the dead whale out of the water for “processing”. Some of the illusion is broken when your boat tour guide points out the metal warehouse with the word “whale” on the side. “Yeah the water here was red with blood for a week” the guide said, counting the cigarettes left in a pack he had.
关于人们为什么还在杀鲸，我一直听到的说法是：这是他们文化的一部分，也是重要的蛋白质来源。听到“他们文化的一部分”这句话，我总是想象传统的小船带着鱼叉出海。我没想象到的是工业化渔船，还有一台工业起重机，把死鲸从水里吊出来“处理”。当你的观光船导游指着一座侧面写着“鲸鱼”二字的金属仓库时，这层幻象就破了一部分。“是啊，这儿的水红了一个星期，全是血，”导游说，一边数着他那包烟里还剩几根。
你该去格陵兰吗？
It’s a wild place unlike anywhere I’ve ever been. It is the closest I have ever felt to living a sci-fi type experience. The people of Greenland are amazing, tough, calm and kind. I have nothing but positive experiences to recount from the many people I met there, Danish and Greenlandic, who patiently sat through my millions of questions.
这是个荒蛮的地方，跟我去过的任何地方都不一样。这是我这辈子最接近“活在科幻里”的一次体验。格陵兰的人了不起——坚韧、从容、善良。我在那儿遇到的许多人，无论是丹麦人还是格陵兰人，耐着性子听完了我千千万万个问题，我能讲的关于他们的经历，全是正面的。
However it is, by far, the least hospitable to human life place I’ve ever been to. The folks who live there have adapted to the situation in, frankly, genius ways. If that’s your idea of a good time, Greenland is perfect for you. Maybe don’t get emotionally attached to the sled dogs though. Or the whales.
不过，它是我去过的地方里，对人类生命最不友好的一个，遥遥领先。住在那儿的人已经适应了这种处境，说实话，用的是些天才的办法。如果这就是你心目中的好时光，那格陵兰太适合你了。不过也许别对雪橇犬动感情。还有鲸鱼。
原载于作者博客（matduggan.com），2025 年 9 月。译文为本站自译；配图取自原文。