在蘇格蘭尋找獨立的血脈依據(2)
“We’re steeped in Viking history, with all its fantastic stories, and if you have a story you can sell more,” said Patricia Retson, Highland Park’s brand heritage manager, after we had toured the distillery’s dankly atmospheric cellar and sleek tasting room. “But we’re also trying to make a real connection, and if it’s going to work, it has to be authentic.” To that end, the distillery’s Loki gets its mischievousness from an aroma that is all sweet apples, but turns to smoke and wood on the palate. Its Leif Erikssonis aged in 100 percent American oak barrels.
“我們是浸透着維京歷史的，有許許多多幻異故事，有了故事，東西就更好賣，”高原騎士品牌傳承經理帕特莉西亞·雷特遜(Patricia Retson)說，她剛剛帶着我們參觀了陰冷潮溼的酒窖和裝潢精美的品酒廳。“但是我們也在努力建立一種真正的聯繫，這種聯繫要想發揮作用，必須得純正才行。”爲此，酒廠出品的Loki（洛基）用甜蘋果的芳香構成了一種調皮的氣質，但嚐起來卻是煙燻和木味。而它的Leif Erikssonis（萊夫·埃裏克鬆）是在百分之百的美國橡木桶裏陳放的。
Yet in downtown Kirkwall, where the Romanesque cathedral, built of sandstone, houses the relics of St. Magnus Erlendsson, the Norse-descended Earl of Orkney who was martyred after an unsuccessful battle with a rival chieftain in the early 12th century, and where miniature Viking ships still cap the post office lintel, Donna Heddle had no doubt the connection went considerably deeper than mere marketing.
與此同時，在柯克沃爾市中心那座砂岩建造的羅馬式大教堂裏，存放着諾爾斯世襲的奧克尼伯爵聖·馬格努斯·厄林德孫(St. Magnus Erlendsson)的遺物，他在12世紀初被一個敵對的高地領主擊敗，後被冊封爲聖人，在這裏的郵局門楣上，至今還有維京人的船隻造型。在唐娜·黑德爾(Donna Heddle)看來，跟維京的關聯絕對不只是市場營銷那麼膚淺。
As the director of the Center for Nordic Studies, Dr. Heddle sees evidence of Norseness almost everywhere: in the Orkney dialect that puts its prepositions at the end of sentences; in a concept of social justice that emphasizes egalitarianism and spurns status or rank; in the fact, she said, that 66 percent of Orcadians’ DNA is Norwegian. And just as the Nordic presence helps explain the separate sense of identity that Scots feel from the English, so too does it explain the separate identity that Orcadians feel from mainland Scots. “Vikings are very sexy now,” she said. “But for us it’s more than that. You can see it in our knitting patterns and our sailing skills and in the can-do attitude. This is a living legacy.”
作爲北歐研究中心(Center for Nordic Studies)主任，黑德爾博士能在每個角落找到諾爾斯文化的痕跡：將介詞放在句子最後的奧克尼方言；強調平等主義、摒棄尊卑或等級的社會正義觀念；還有，她說奧克尼人有66%的挪威人基因。北歐特徵讓蘇格蘭人對英格蘭產生了身份認同上的隔閡，同樣也讓奧克尼人跟蘇格蘭大陸有了距離感。“維京人現在很時興，”她說。“但對我們來說不是那麼簡單。在我們的編織圖案、我們的航海技巧、我們的進取心裏都能看到。這是一份鮮活的遺產。”
Living, but also dead. After Kirkwall, we drove across windswept hills and muddy farmlands, before arriving at Orphir and the archaeological remains of Earl’s Bu. According to the medieval Orkneyinga saga, the nearly 1,000-year-old site was home not only to a round church built by Magnus’s murderous cousin Hakon, but also to a grand drinking hall, or bu. Like most Viking drinking halls, it was the scene of quite a lot of violence (proximity to a church came in handy; the brawlers could slip next door to repent of their drunken behavior, and, consciences cleansed, get back to guzzling mead). Maybe it was the film in the modest visitor center that recounted how one drunken slight had unleashed a massacre at the hall, or perhaps we had watched too much of “Game of Thrones,” but as David and I walked about the lonely ruins of the stone church (a third of its curved walls still standing), I suddenly found myself charging him with an imaginary battle ax. After a brief but virtual bloody fight, we collapsed on the grass in giggles.
鮮活的，但同時也是死的。離開柯克沃爾，我們駛過呼嘯的山間和泥濘的田野，來到奧弗爾以及“伯爵酒廊”(Earl's Bu)考古遺址。據中世紀的《奧克尼伯爵薩迦》(Orkneyinga saga)記載，這個有將近一千年歷史的遺址，不僅包括馬格努斯的那個殘暴的堂兄弟哈孔(Hakon)所建的一座圓形教堂，還有一座宏偉的酒廊，也就是bu。和大多數維京酒廊一樣，這裏發生過不少暴力事件（離教堂這麼近還是有好處的；鬥毆者可以溜到隔壁去懺悔他們的酒後行爲，滌淨靈魂後，回去繼續痛飲蜂蜜酒）。可能是因爲我們在簡樸的遊客中心看了一部電影，講到一句酒後的惡語導致一場酒廊大屠殺的事，或者就是我們看了太多的《權力的遊戲》，總之當戴維和我來到一片蕭瑟的石頭教堂廢墟（它的弧形牆壁尚存三分之一）時，我突然提起一把空想的戰斧朝他衝了過去。經過一場短暫但按設想應該相當血腥的打鬥，我們咯咯笑着癱倒在草地上。
All that Viking history will do that to you. There are similar archaeological sites all over Orkney, so we had plenty of opportunities to perfect our re-enactment skills. At Maeshowe, a grass-covered mound that encases a Neolithic tomb marked up with 12th-century Norse Runes, the sheep that stood between us and the burial chamber fell to our raiding swords. At the Brough of Birsay, accessible only by foot during the few hours when the tides recede, we sweated in the chamber marked the Viking sauna. But there was no fantasy involved at the nearby Barony Mill, where Brian Johnston, the miller, grinds bere, a landrace barley, with a flavor more pronounced than wheat. “Many people think the Vikings brought it here,” Mr. Johnston said as he showed us around the 19th-century mill, which is powered by a water wheel. “And the only other place it grows is in Norway.”
這麼多的維京歷史是會有這種影響的。奧克尼到處都是類似的考古遺址，所以我們有的是機會完善我們的歷史重現演技。在綠草遍野的梅肖韋(Maeshowe)地下有一座用12世紀的盧恩文字標出的新石器時代古墓，夾在我們和墓穴之間的那隻羊，成爲我們兩個劫匪的刀下鬼。在只有趁着每天退潮那幾個小時步行前往的博賽鎮(Brough of Birsay)，我們在一個標着維京桑拿浴場的洞穴裏出了點汗。然而附近的男爵磨坊(Barony Mill)是個沒什麼幻想的地方，磨坊主布萊恩·約翰斯頓(Brian Johnston)在那裏磨bere，一種味道比小麥還要鮮明的地方品種大麥。“很多人認爲它是維京人帶來的，”帶我們參觀這座19世紀水車磨坊的約翰斯頓說。“除了這裏之外，只有挪威能種這種麥子。”
There would be more culinary connections on the Shetland Islands. We landed early in the morning on the main island after an overnight ferry. Waiting for a cafe to open, we prowled the industrial-looking buildings and still-closed sweater shops in Lerwick, the capital and Shetland’s only real town. Once suitably caffeinated, we returned to Jurgen and headed south. Shetland is almost entirely treeless, with a terrain that veers mainly between the barren and the bleak, but is adorably dotted with the tiny ponies that take their name from the place. Rocky soil and near constant wind explain why the local diet is almost entirely lacking in fresh fruit and vegetables. But even that lack can only partly explain the peculiar dish known as reestit mutton.
烹飪上的聯繫，在設得蘭羣島上體現得更爲明顯。經過徹夜的輪渡，我們一大早在主島登陸。在設得蘭的首府、也是唯一的正經城鎮勒維克，我們趁着等待一家小餐館開門的當口，在工業味十足的建築和還沒開門的毛衣店之間閒逛了一會。在攝入適量咖啡因後，我們立刻跟于爾根會合，向南進發。設得蘭是個幾乎沒有樹的地方，整個地貌不是貧瘠就是荒涼，但期間點綴着幾匹可愛的小馬，那是當地特有的設得蘭矮種馬。多石的土壤和幾乎永遠不停的風解釋了當地的飲食特徵——基本上不存在新鮮水果和蔬菜。但即使這種匱乏也不足以完全解釋爲什麼會有“房椽羊肉”(reestit)這麼奇怪的菜。
“No, you wouldn’t expect to find this in a restaurant,” said Marian Armitage, the author of “Shetland Food and Cooking,” as she sawed off a few rocklike chunks of a fossilized slab of meat in her kitchen, where we had come to learn about the local cuisine. “Unless they were trying to do something quirky.” Through the windows of her enclosed porch, I could just make out the ruined walls of Jarlshof, another Norse settlement, in the distance. Ms. Armitage fried a bit of the mutton in a pan, and explained the process for making it: Raw meat was salted in brine, then hung from the rafters of the house, preferably over a peat fire, so that the smoke seasoned the meat. I put a bite in my mouth: Quirky was definitely one word for it. The mutton was fatty, salty and tasted, well, rotten. “Just what you want,” David said, “after a long day at sea.”
“這東西在餐館裏吃不到的，”《設得蘭食物與烹飪》(Shetland Food and Cooking)作者瑪麗安·阿爾米塔奇(Marian Armitage)一邊跟我說，一邊在一塊化石般的肉上切下幾個硬梆梆的肉塊，我們到她的廚房來是要學做當地的美食。“除非他們是有了什麼離奇的想法。”從她家的包窗門廊往外看，隱約能看到遠處的一些斷壁殘垣，那是雅爾邵夫(Jarlshof)，另一座諾爾斯殖民地。阿爾米塔奇把一些羊肉放到鍋裏煎，並跟我們介紹這種肉的製作工藝：生肉放在海水裏醃一下，然後掛在屋內的木椽上，最好下面用泥煤燒火，這樣可以給肉加入煙燻味。我吃了一口：說離奇絕對是合適的。肉味肥肥的，很鹹，像是……呃……腐爛的味道。“嗯，在海上辛苦了一整天，”戴維說。“回來當然就想吃這個。”
Still, I was thrilled to eat it. A couple of years earlier, I had tried something similar in the Faroe Islands, an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean, about halfway between Norway and Iceland, where they make raest, which is raw mutton hung to air-dry in open huts for months, without the benefit of smoke or salt. Surely, I asked Armitage, raest and reestit were versions of the same dish, and evidence of a Nordic connection? “Ah no,” she said. “For that you’d be wanting vivda.” It turns out that Shetlanders once ate the exact same preparation — and called it by the Norse word for leg meat— until salt became more widespread in the islands.
然而我還是很激動的。幾年前在法羅羣島——北大西洋上一個大約在挪威和冰島中間的地方，我試過一種類似的東西，那裏的人會做半乾風肉(raest)，就是把生羊肉掛在通風的小屋裏，在沒有煙燻或鹽漬的情況下風乾幾個月。於是我就問阿爾米塔奇，半乾肉和房椽肉肯定是同一道菜的兩個版本，並且是一種北歐親緣的證據？“不對，”她說。“你說的這個應該是vivda。”原來設得蘭人曾經也有完全相同的一種做法——只是用了諾爾斯語“腿肉”一詞來稱呼它——後來鹽在島上普及起來以後，就不這麼吃了。
After lunch, we turned around (“Snu rundt,” Jurgen said) and headed back north. We passed helpful signs that translated the islands’ Old Norse geographic names into English (“Tingwall, Field of the Parliament”) and stopped, incongruously enough, at a fjord-side food truck for pulled pork sandwiches. It required two more ferries, but we finally arrived in Unst, the northernmost of the Shetland Islands, and hence, the northernmost in Scotland.
午飯後，我們調頭（“Snu rundt，”于爾根說）向北行駛。一路上有一些很有幫助的路牌，把島上那些古諾爾斯語地名翻譯成了英語（“Tingwall，議會之地”），最後我們很不合時宜地在峽灣邊的一輛小吃車前停了下來，吃了個手撕豬肉三明治。接着我們又乘了兩趟輪渡，終於來到設得蘭羣島最北端、也就是蘇格蘭最北端的安斯特島(Unst)。
Unst has a higher density of rural Viking sites than any place else in the world, including Scandinavia, with 60 longhouses on a 46-square-mile island. For our first stop, at Hamar, we skirted some curious sheep and a watchful bull to walk among the low, grass-carpeted walls of one (David was saved from another re-enacted vanquishing only because the preponderance of dung at our feet made things especially messy.) From what would have been the front door, I gazed down the length of the shimmering fjord, before I looked down to find the fragments of a broken beer bottle. The idea that local teenagers might use this ancient home as a hangout for drinking, flirting and communing with their Viking past pleased me.
安斯特的維京鄉村遺址是全世界——包括斯堪的納維亞——最密集的，在這個46平方英里的島上有60座長屋(longhouse)。上島後的第一站是哈馬爾(Hamar)，我們繞過一羣好奇的羊和一頭警惕的公牛，沿着其中一座長屋留下的矮牆走了走，牆上長滿了情操（這次戴維躲過了一場被敵人征服的歷史戲，因爲腳下到處是糞便，打起來會很難看。）站在應該是房屋正門的地方，我俯瞰着波光粼粼的峽灣，然後低頭，看到一堆啤酒瓶碎片。想到本地的孩子也許把這座古老的宅邸當成了飲酒聊天、調情、和自己的維京過去聯絡的場所，我感到很欣喜。
But at the Skidbladner, a reconstructed Viking ship up the road, the volunteer who showed visitors around had a much more prosaic explanation for how past and present came together: economic necessity. Clad in a woolen dress fastened with brooches that approximated what a Viking woman would have worn once she was back on dry land, the volunteer divided her time between welcoming visitors to the site and doing a bit of nalebinding, a Nordic form of needlework that predates knitting. As she showed us around the Skidbladner, a full-size replica of a ship found in a Norwegian Viking burial mound in the 19th century, she told us about the Royal Air Force base that once formed the basis of Unst’s economy. “But they shut that down some years back, and that left a terrible hole,” she said. “Viking tourism is meant to fill it.”
但是在斯基德普拉特尼(Skidbladner)——路邊的一艘復刻版維京船，一位志願導遊對往昔與當下的交匯持有一個更乏味的解釋：經濟所需。志願者身穿一件羊毛裙，上面扣着飾針，這大概就是回到陸地上的維京女人的打扮，她一邊招呼着訪客，一邊手上還幹着針織活，這種北歐式的單針環織是比棒針環織更古老的技藝。她帶我們參觀了斯基德普拉特尼，這是一艘19世紀在一座挪威維京墓穴中發現的船的全尺寸複製品，她說安斯特的經濟基礎曾經是皇家空軍基地。“但是幾年前他們關閉了基地，這就留下了一個可怕的窟窿，”她說。“維京旅遊就是打算用來填補它的。”
We were back to the same question, with little of Scottish territory left. Luckily, just as we neared Shetland’s northern edge, we spied Valhalla. It looked more like a warehouse than the Norse god Odin’s grand hall for fallen warriors, but that may have been because on Unst at least, Valhalla is a craft brewery. The name wasn’t the founder Sonny Priest’s idea. “The Viking thing has been done to death, so I was dead against it,” he said, but more prescient minds on the regional council prevailed. These days, Mr. Priest sells his Old Scatness (named after a Shetland Viking settlement) and Simmer Din (from the Shetland phrase for summer’s long twilight) ales as far as Glasgow and Oslo.
眼看已經快到蘇格蘭國土的盡頭，我們又回到了最初的問題上。幸運的是，就在我們即將到達設得蘭北端時，我們發現了瓦爾哈拉(Valhalla)。它看上去更像個倉庫，而不是諾爾斯神奧丁爲陣亡將士準備的靈堂，不過那可能是因爲，至少在安斯特，瓦爾哈拉是一家精釀酒廠。這個名字不是創始人桑尼·普利斯特(Sonny Priest)想出來的。“維京那一套已經被用濫了，所以我是很反對的，”他說，但他輸給了地區委員會裏的一些比他更有遠見的人物。如今普利斯特的Old Scatness（因設得蘭一處維京殖民地遺址而得名）和Simmer Din（設得蘭人用這個短語形容漫長的夏日暮光）牌愛爾啤酒遠銷至格拉斯哥和奧斯陸。
He wasn’t sure what to make of his ancestors’ past. “When I was a kid, the ties to the Norse felt stronger,” he said as he stopped to stick his nose in a bag of hops. “There were all these words we used, and the whalers would take our men because they knew our seafaring skills went back to them. Now sometimes I think it’s just for the tourists. But everybody in Shetland is still proud of their Viking heritage.”
他不知道該如何看待自己祖先的歷史。“在我小時候，跟諾爾斯文化感覺要更親近一些，”他話說一半，低頭聞了聞一袋啤酒花。“那時候我們在用很多這種詞，捕鯨的會來僱我們的人，因爲他們知道，我們的航海技巧是祖上傳下來的。現在呢，有時候我覺得只是給遊客看的。但是維京傳統依然是讓每一個設得蘭人很自豪的東西。”
In the end, neither its Viking past nor its imagined Nordic future would be strong enough to sever Scotland from England. But at our final stop, David and I could see why it came close. After hiking through the heather at Saxa Vord, we arrived at the northernmost cliff on Shetland’s most northerly inhabited island. To the east, some 200 miles in the distance, was Norway; to the north, past the rocky outcrop of Muckle Flugga, was the Arctic. We watched the sun set, then got back in the car. “Reisen slutt,” Jurgen said. It was, as he said, journey’s end.
到頭來，無論是那段維京歲月，還是想象中的北歐未來，都不足以讓蘇格蘭跟英格蘭一刀兩斷。但是在我們的最後一站，戴維和我終於看到，爲什麼分裂差一點就成功了。在設得蘭羣島中最北的一個有人煙的島上，我們徒步走過薩克撒-沃德(Saxa Vord)的石楠花叢，來到北邊的海崖。往東200英里是挪威；往北越過馬克爾-弗拉加(Muckle Flugga)就是北極。我們看了日落，回到車中。“Reisen slutt，”于爾根說。沒錯，這就是此行的盡頭。
