Chapter 73 Icelandic Hermit

Finally going to Iceland. Chinese has always used transliteration of foreign place names, with only a few exceptions, Iceland is one.Iceland is just two words, and the coldness, loneliness and remoteness are all put into people's intuition.However, this exceptional translation method will also bring troubles. If readers infer the transliterated place names based on the text intuition produced by the free translation, it will cause many misunderstandings.If Germany and France are misunderstood as models of governing the country with morality and law, then Spain and Portugal will really grit their teeth.

At the beginning, the man named Eric the Red was exiled from Iceland because of murder, and crossed the sea to find Greenland. He gave up the place name Greenland (Greenland), which means Green Island. People are attracted to them.But in the hands of Chinese translators, Greenland still used transliteration, leaving Iceland alone.I think this is mainly because Iceland is too unimportant and much smaller than Greenland. It hardly enters the international audiovisual scene. Icelanders are not offended by this perpetually neglected marginal status.I once read a pamphlet written by an Icelandic scholar that began with this passage: A forgotten island nation, sometimes even omitted by some simple maps.Even the news media rarely mention it, unless there is a major natural disaster, or the head of state of another country happens to come.

Its history begins in the ninth century, thanks to pirates.Since it accepted immigrants from Norway, it has been isolated from Europe for a long time, so that today's Icelanders can read the ancient Norse script without difficulty, but the Norwegians themselves have been completely unable to do it. It cannot be attacked by foreign countries, so it has no army and cannot form a centralized power.It has always been out of the way of world development, and it has been said that human history would not have been affected in the slightest if Iceland had never existed. There is a coolness in speaking of one's own country in such language that we seldom enjoy.I thought at the time that the tranquility of the hermit is always tempting.How many people and how many things in the world can affect human history?Good guy or bad guy?good or bad?What's wrong with staying away from the hustle and bustle?It not only preserves a pure self, but also preserves the ancestral language for others. Iceland is like an old well in a distant mountain, a wasteland icehouse.

Much of the world's deliberate nonchalance is often a cover-up, but not in Iceland.This time we held a press conference in Beijing before our departure. Diplomats and journalists from various European countries came to attend, and the ambassador from Iceland came.Ambassador Olaf Egilsson is a scholar. He found me after the press conference. He was very sincere and said that he would give me a set of books.This set of books is called "Sakya Selected Works". It is two volumes thick and has more than a thousand pages. It weighs heavily in your hands.Saga is a kind of narrative prose from the Icelandic Middle Ages. I have heard a little about it before, but I don't know the details.At this moment, the weight in my hand reminds me again that many unassuming civilizations are silently thick in the distance.

Iceland doesn't want to compete for the best in the world, but just learned that someone is coming to conduct a cultural inspection. Without further ado, let me give you some voices of ancestors who have long gone.The supporters are ambassadors stationed abroad, and this is the first discourse of people's foreign exchanges.In contrast, some great powers can no longer find their own first words, and lose their true nature in the endless rhetoric. This set of Sakya was packed into my suitcase, and it has traveled dozens of countries in Europe.It is reasonable to bring some more books and materials as a reference for such a trip, but you can only pack lightly for a long journey, not to mention changing places every day, how much should you bring?Based on my experience of conducting tens of thousands of kilometers of ancient human civilization sites last time, I know that the lack of materials and equipment can awaken the bottom-level perception of life. Therefore, before leaving this time, I only picked a few booklets at random, and the whole weight is not worth it. This set of saga.I can't let go of Sakya because I'm too ignorant about Iceland and I can't find other information.As for what it said, I didn't read it because of the hard work all the way.I only expected that it was a strange world, and I couldn't easily disturb it.

When I arrived in Stockholm, another tension was quietly squeezed into the busy interview schedule: preparing for the trip to Iceland.Local friends have repeatedly dissuaded us: Even if you come to Iceland in summer, you have to bring enough warm clothes, why did you choose to go in the middle of winter?In winter, even the last bit of moss is gone, what are you looking at?Have you ever heard of an important person who went to Iceland in the winter? My opinion is just the opposite: if you don't go to Iceland, you must go to a world of ice and snow.Severe winter is its heyday, cold is its true nature, but summer is its time of confusion, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t go.

Then we can only say goodbye to our vehicles.Since we set off from Athens, we have all been in the car, and even crossed the sea several times with the car.Iceland is too far away, and it is the ice sea season, so we can only fly.We have to carry a lot of shooting equipment with us, and we can't carry much personal luggage. Fortunately, I still remember to bring the Sakya set. The vehicle and luggage were stored in a courtyard with bleak branches, and it was snowing. After we walked for a while, we reluctantly looked back, and they were all covered with snow, so we could hardly find them.

Well, even if the Nordic land is desperate for us, in order to go to Iceland. Flying from Stockholm to Iceland, you must first cross the Scandinavian Peninsula, and then you will see the Norwegian Sea looming under the cold fog.A few hours later, I finally found that the sky was pure white, and I knew it was the sky above Iceland.I have overlooked the snowfield on the plane many times before, but it was the first time I saw it so clean and wrinkle-free. I guessed in my heart that it should be the famous glacier with a thickness of more than 1,000 meters. After all, the wrinkles came out, and it was speculated that it should be the Icelandic highlands. If there is no heavy snow cover, this place looks like the surface of the moon.It is said that the American astronauts acclimatized here before setting off on the moon.Then, this is where there is no distinction between heaven and earth, and it is closer to heaven than to earth.

The wrinkles are gone, and it's pure white again.A very thin and light straight line gradually appeared in the pure white, like a pencil mark drawn by a primary school student, or a faint spider thread left on a white wall. I stared curiously at where it led, and finally saw clearly that it was a road. Extends from the airport.The airport was also covered in white snow, making it unrecognizable. There was an orange glow at the cut-off point of the thin line, and the plane landed there gently, trying not to make a sound. There was a shudder when I went down to the ground, I was really reluctant to step on the world of ice and jade.