“Sving til venstre.” Jurgen issued instructions in his pleasingly Nordic voice, firm but encouraging. From behind the wheel, David nodded his head, and turned the car to the left. We were only a mile outside Edinburgh, but thanks to David, my Norwegian-American boyfriend, and Jurgen, the Norwegian speaker on David’s GPS, I already felt deep into Viking territory.

“Sving til venstre.”（挪威语“左转”——译注）于尔根(Jurgen)用他悦耳的北欧嗓音发出一句指示。握着方向盘的戴维点了点头，将车向左转。我们离开爱丁堡才一英里，但因为有戴维——我的挪威裔美国男友，还有于尔根——戴维的GPS里那个说挪威语的男人，我感觉自己已经深入到维京腹地。

Scotland is perhaps not the most obvious place to look for traces of Nordic culture. But in the months leading up to the nation’s vote on independence from England last September, there was talk of it everywhere. Although it had been six centuries since any part of Scotland was in Norse hands, many nationalists were suggesting that Viking heritage formed part of the separate identity that lay behind an independence bid, which, although it failed at the polls, has grown stronger since the referendum.

一般人大概不会想来到苏格兰寻找北欧文化的痕迹。但在去年9月独立公投前的几个月里，举国上下都在谈论这个话题。斯堪的纳维亚人占领苏格兰的历史，最近的也要追溯到六个世纪前，然而许多民族主义者提出，维京文化的血脉是苏格兰身份认同的一部分，进而成为独立的依据，公投以失败告终，但这种认同在公投后却变得越来越强烈。

And it wasn’t all historic either: The Scottish Nationalist Party assured voters that Scotland’s similarities to its Scandinavian neighbors — its small size, its environmental awareness and its Norwegian-style oil reserves — would guarantee prosperity. And perhaps even justify membership in the Nordic Council, an intergovernmental body that fosters political, economic and cultural cooperation among the five Nordic nations and three autonomous regions.

历史并非唯一因素：苏格兰民族党(Scottish National Party)还希望选民们放心，苏格兰和斯堪的纳维亚邻国的相似之处——较小的规模，环保意识以及挪威式的石油储备——足以保障它的繁荣。甚至有资格进入北欧理事会(Nordic Council)，这个跨政府组织的职责是促进五个北欧国家和三个自治领的政治、经济和文化合作。

As a recent transplant to Denmark, I was still trying to figure out Scandinavian identity myself, so this claim intrigued me. What did it take, besides a penchant for bicycles, brooding television series and salted licorice, to become Nordic? To find out, David and I would start in the capital, then drive as far into Scotland’s formerly Viking lands as we could.

作为一个丹麦新移民，我还在努力寻找自己的斯堪的纳维亚认同，因此这样的主张对我很是吸引。要想成为北欧人，除了热爱自行车、郁郁寡欢的电视剧和咸甘草糖，还需要做什么？为了寻找答案，戴维和我将从首府开始，驱车一直深入当年维京人的土地，走得越远越好。

We began at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The first Viking invasions into the British Isles were recorded in the late eighth century; monks’ chronicles make frequent, terrified references to northerly marauders who raped and pillaged their way through the Highlands. But at the museum, the image of those rampaging Norsemen was changing: Not only were they not all raiding, bloodthirsty warriors, but they also weren’t even all men. Tools, jewelry and a reconstructed burial site on display all testified to the gentler side of Viking life, and proved that the Norse (male and female) set down roots in Scotland, engaging in agriculture, trade and family life. “Relations with local people,” read the optimistic text on one case, “weren’t always hostile.”

我们的起点是在爱丁堡的苏格兰国立博物馆(National Museum of Scotland)。据史料记载，维京人最早入侵不列颠群岛是在八世纪末；心惊胆战的修士们时常在编年史中提起这些北方强盗，他们一路奸淫掳掠，杀向苏格兰高地。然而在博物馆里，北欧人的残暴形象正在发生改变：他们并非全都是嗜血尚武的匪徒，甚至不全是男人。馆中展出的工具、珠宝和一座重建的墓葬都在证明，维京生活也有祥和的一面，还表明斯堪的纳维亚（的男人和女人）曾在苏格兰扎根，开展农耕、贸易和家庭生活。“和当地人的关系并非总是敌对的，”在某个陈列柜上可以看到这样充满正能量的文字。

On that day last August, they were rather the opposite. Near a barbershop full of men whose lumberjack beards marked them as either Scandinavian or Brooklynite, we found Timberyard. With its rough wooden floors and jars of fermenting vegetables on display, the restaurant would have fit as easily onto a lonely, windswept expanse of the Stockholm peninsula as it did in the Scottish capital. The food, too, was identifiably Nordic, from the chewy sourdough served with house-made butter and lovage salt that started the meal, to the foraged woodruff tea that ended it. In between came delicate dishes strewn with local herbs and flowers: nearly raw scallops shaved thin and adorned with wild garlic petals; mackerel grilled so that the char cut through the fish’s oiliness, served with yogurt and juicy nasturtium leaves.

而在8月底的那一天，我看到的根本是敌对的反面。一间理发店里满是蓄着伐木工大胡子的男人，这说明他们要么来自斯堪的纳维亚，要么是布鲁克林人士。在理发店的附近，我们找到了林场餐厅(Timberyard)。粗犷的木地板，一罐罐正在发酵的蔬菜，让人很容易把这里想象成风声鹤唳、满目寂寥的斯德哥尔摩半岛，而不是苏格兰首府。至于菜式，从餐前嚼劲十足的酸面包配自制黄油和欧当归盐，到餐后的野生车叶草茶，都是明显的北欧风味。中间是洒满当地花草调味料的精致菜肴：几乎全生的扇贝薄片，装点着野葱花瓣；鲭鱼的表面炙烤成焦黑，瓦解了鱼肉的肥腻，再佐以酸奶和多汁的旱金莲叶。

“It’s hard not to be influenced by it,” Ben Radford, the chef, said of the northerly elements in what he calls his “modern Scottish” cuisine. “Culturally, we’re very similar. And we’re working with the same ingredients, letting them shine through, so that each flavor is apparent, crisp and clean.”

“很难不被影响，”本·拉德福德(Ben Radford)大厨这样评价本餐厅的北方元素，他称之为“现代苏格兰”菜。“文化上我们很相近。我们用一样的食材，让它们发挥自己的本色，这样一来，每一道调味都是鲜明、清脆、干净的。”

In Glasgow, two recent graduates take the affinity even further. Through their consulting firm Lateral North, Graham Hogg and Alex Hobday help towns in the upper reaches of Scotland develop their Nordic potential as transportation and green energy hubs. “We have the same climate, the same landscape, even the same dark sense of humor, so we can take the Nordic countries as a model for economic development,” Mr. Hogg said. “We’re trying to get people to think of Scotland not as the end of Europe, but as the gateway to the North.”

在格拉斯哥，两个刚刚大学毕业的年轻人将这种文化亲缘又往前推进了一步。格雷恩·霍格(Graham Hogg)和阿历克斯·霍布戴(Alex Hobday)创办的咨询公司Lateral North正在帮助苏格兰北部地区的城镇开发自己的北欧潜能——成为一个运输和绿色能源枢纽。“我们有一样的气候，一样的地貌，连黑色幽默都一样，”霍格说。“我们希望大家不要把苏格兰当作欧洲的尽头，它应该是北欧的入口。”

It was time to head toward that gate. There are a number of Viking-related spots in the Western Highlands. But Mr. Hogg had said we would find the most striking examples of Scandinavian-style Scotland in Orkney and Shetland, so we fired up the GPS and headed north. “Rett frem,” Jurgen said, directing us straight ahead with what I interpreted as approval.

那么，该去门口瞧瞧了。在西高地有一些维京文化相关的去处。但是霍格说，要在苏格兰寻找最强烈的斯堪的纳维亚风，得去奥克尼(Orkeny)和设得兰(Shetland)，于是我们打开GPS向北行进。“Rett frem，”于尔根指示我们向正前方行驶，在我看来这是在认可我们的决定。

Several hours later, Norway appeared on the horizon. In truth, it wasn’t really Norway, just a series of Nordic-style houses — pointy, clean-lined and painted in bright, saturated colors that stood out against the churning North Sea — that wouldn’t have been out of place in Bergen. We had reached John O’Groats, the purportedly northernmost (there is some contention) point of mainland Scotland. It consists of little more than a few souvenir shops and a parking lot big enough for all those tour buses to turn around in.

几个小时后，挪威出现在地平线上。事实上并不是挪威，只是一些北欧风格的房子——尖顶、线条清晰、粉刷了明亮、鲜艳的颜色，跟涌动着的北海形成巨大反差——这一派景色，放到卑尔根也没人会觉得有什么异样。我们抵达了约翰欧格罗兹村，号称苏格兰大陆最北端（尚存争议）。除了几爿纪念品商店和一片大小够旅游大巴掉个头的停车场，这里什么都没有。

But Natural Retreats, a hotel development company, has made the place much more appealing by taking a Gothic-style inn and adding several Nordic-style wooden houses onto the side. Each building is called a toft, a Norse-derived word for farmhouse or homestead. The tofts are painted different colors and contain apartments, which comprise the accommodations. The rooms are spare and tasteful, with the streaming light and clean lines that are the hallmarks of Scandinavian design. “It’s quite straightforward,” said Adam Gough, Natural Retreats’ head of technical services, when asked about Nordic style. “There is a lot of history and strong links with Scandinavia.”

然而，从事酒店开发的自然疗养(Natural Retreats)公司给这里增添了不少吸引力，他们建了一座哥特式旅馆，在旁边又加了几座北欧式木屋。这些小屋叫做toft，一个自北欧的“农舍”或“家宅”变化而来的词。所有toft都刷了不同的颜色，里面有提供食宿服务的公寓。这些房间既宽敞又有品味，良好的采光和清晰的线条彰显着斯堪的纳维亚设计的特质。“很直截了当，”自然疗养公司技术服务主管亚当·高夫(Adam Gough)这样评价北欧风格。“有很悠久的历史，跟斯堪的纳维亚有着紧密的联系。”

But neither Scandi chic, nor the newer, kinder version of the Vikings had made it to the nearby town of Wick, which gets its name from the Old Norse word for bay. Asked why the hotel where she worked was called the Norseman, the receptionist admitted that she wasn’t sure. “Because they came here raping and rampaging through the hills?” she asked. “You know, doing Viking things.”

然而，无论是斯堪的纳维亚流还是更新潮、柔和的维京风，都没有影响到附近的威克(Wick)，这个地名取自古诺尔斯语“海湾”一词。在一个叫Norseman（北人）的酒店，我们问前台为什么叫这么个名字，她说她也不太清楚。“因为他们曾经到这些山里来奸淫掳掠？”她说。“就是维京人常干的那些事。”

It wasn’t hard to see why she persisted in that image. Wick, which Robert Louis Stevenson once referred to as “the meanest of mean towns,” has little in the way of tourist attractions except for a ruined castle that was probably built in the 12th century, presumably by the Norse earl, Harald Maddadson. One of the oldest and best preserved in Scotland, the castle’s tower still reaches four stories up, and its defensive ditches and perilous cliffs keep it cut off from the mainland. It is a stirring place, desolate and imposing, and not at all hard to imagine as the kind of stronghold from which one might have set out marauding.

不难看出为什么她会保持这种印象。在曾被罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森(Robert Louis Stevenson)称为“世上最破的破镇子”的威克，唯一值得游客驻足的是一座古堡废墟，可能是在12世纪由诺尔斯伯爵哈拉尔德·马达逊(Harald Maddadson)所建。这是苏格兰最古老、保存最完好的城堡之一，至今仍有四层楼高，防御壕沟和险峻的峭壁将城堡和大陆隔开。这是个让人心潮澎湃的地方，荒凉而威严，不难想象它作为劫掠者的据点的样子。

Did people in this part of Scotland feel Viking? As we stood on the ferry to the Orkney Islands, watching mainland Britain disappear, we pondered the question. “What I can’t tell,” David said, “is whether they actually identify with their Nordic past, or if it’s just a marketing ploy.” We had our first answer of a sort after landing at St. Margaret’s Hope, a pretty, stone-clad town that was a welcoming entry to Orkney’s main island. Rebooting Jurgen after his stay in the ship’s hold, we drove to Highland Park distillery in the market town of Kirkwall, the Orcadian capital. The northernmost whiskey distillery in Britain (there would be many claims to the northernmost on this trip), Highland Park makes a line of high-end Scotch whiskies named after Vikings real and imagined: Eibar, Thor, Loki.

生活在这一带的苏格兰人，会觉得自己是维京人吗？当我们站在前往奥克尼岛的渡轮上，望着渐渐消失的不列颠大陆，心里想着的就是这个问题。“我说不好的是，”戴维说，“他们究竟是真的对自己的北欧历史有认同，还是只是一个营销伎俩。”在圣玛格丽茨霍普登陆后，我们算是找到了第一个答案，作为奥克尼主岛的入口，这个满是石壁房屋的漂亮小镇十分招人喜欢。我们重新启动了刚从船上下来的于尔根，向集市城镇、奥克尼群岛首府柯克沃尔的“高原骑士”酒厂(Highland Park)进发。那是不列颠最北的威士忌酒厂（我们此行会经过很多号称“最北”的地方），出品顶级的苏格兰威士忌，皆以真实或虚构的维京人物为名：Eibar、Thor、Loki。