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| Sergei Chernikov, my guide, had a bolt-action rifle slung over his shoulder — in case we came across any polar bears, he said, or in case they came across us. | 我的导游谢尔盖·切尔尼科夫(Sergei Chernikov)肩膀上挂着一支栓动步枪，以防我们遇到北极熊，或者它遇到我们。 |
| We were standing at the rudimentary dock in Pyramiden, a ghost town on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, in the High Arctic. I’d heard that in 1998 the Russian government had tricked the town’s 1,000 residents into taking a holiday on the mainland, only to close the mine and forbid them from returning. According to the rumor, it had been abandoned ever since, frozen in time at the top of the world. Was it true? I asked. | 我们站在挪威高北极地区斯瓦尔巴群岛的一座幽灵小镇皮拉米登的简陋码头上。我听说1998年俄罗斯政府诱骗该镇的1000名居民去大陆度假，竟是为了关闭矿场并禁止他们返回。据传言说，这个位于世界极地的小镇此后一直被废弃，冻结在过去。这是真的吗？我问。 |
| Sergei shook his head before I’d even finished my question. | 我还没说完我的问题，谢尔盖已经开始摇头。 |
| Not so, said Sergei, who offered a less sinister explanation: The town was deserted — mainly for economic reasons — in the wake of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. No such tricks were employed to usher out its residents. | 谢尔盖说，并不是这样。他给出的解释没有谣言里那么邪恶：由于苏联解体，这个小镇被遗弃了——主要是出于经济原因。没有用那样的诱骗招数赶走居民。 |
| “They say we made that, too,” he said, waving a hand up at the distinctive peak that gives this old coal town its name, in a dismissal of the various rumors that surround this place. With several concentric layers of rock diminishing into the cold sky, the pyramid-like mountain looked quite peculiar. But then, so did almost everything else at this extreme latitude. | 他否认了围绕这个地方的各种谣言。“他们还说那也是我们造出来的，”他说，朝着独具特色的山峰挥了挥手，这个老旧的煤炭小镇因这个山峰而得名。几层同心的岩石逐渐延伸到寒冷的天空，犹如金字塔形状的山看上去很奇特。但是，在这种极端纬度地区，几乎一切都很奇特。 |
| Norway has sovereignty over Svalbard, according to the terms of the Svalbard Treaty of 1920. But two of the archipelago’s most intriguing tourist draws — the mining towns of Barentsburg, which is still functional, and Pyramiden, long since empty — are Russian settlements. | 根据1920年《斯瓦尔巴条约》(Svalbard Treaty)的规定，挪威对斯瓦尔巴群岛拥有主权。但是，群岛上两个最吸引人的旅游胜地——仍在运作中的巴伦支堡矿业小镇和早就空着的皮拉米登都是俄罗斯人的定居点。 |
| The presence of Russian settlements stems from the fact that the Svalbard Treaty granted signatories — including Russia — rights to Svalbard’s natural resources. Eventually, Trust Arktikugol, a Russian state-owned coal company, took ownership of both Pyramiden and Barentsburg. | 这是因为《斯瓦尔巴条约》将使用该群岛自然资源的权利授予了包括俄罗斯在内的缔约方。最终，俄罗斯国有煤炭公司北极煤炭信托(Trust Arktikugol)获得了皮拉米登和巴伦支堡的所有权。 |
| Pyramiden would go on to outlast the Soviet Union, finally shuttering its doors over a series of months in 1998. In truth, the place had been in pretty steep decline for years. Accidents in the mine, financial turmoil in Russia and a 1996 charter plane crash that killed 141 people combined to seal its fate. | 皮拉米登在苏联解体后继续存在，最终在1998年的几个月里逐渐关闭了大门。实际上，这个地方多年来一直处于急剧下降的状态。矿山事故、俄罗斯的金融动荡以及1996年致使141人丧生的包机坠毁事件决定了其命运。 |
| At over 78 degrees north, Pyramiden is a place of records and extremes. When the sun disappears below the horizon each fall in late October, it isn’t seen again until mid February of the following year. Conversely, in summer, the sunlight is unyielding for more than three months. | 在北纬78度以上，皮拉米登拥有极端气候和许多世界之最。每年10月下旬，太阳消失在地平线以下，直到次年的2月中旬才再次出现。在夏天，太阳三个月都不落山。 |
| And yet, walking around with Sergei, I couldn’t help but sense that things had moved quickly in the end. Manuals sat open, bottles of vodka were left on windowsills. There were scattered journals, photographs of men with impressive mustaches, a typewriter — even an old basketball, burst at the seams. | 然而，和谢尔盖一起四处走动，我总感觉最后那段日子是在急匆匆中度过的。说明书是打开着的，几瓶伏特加酒留在窗台上。还有一些零星的日记本，一张照片上的男人的胡须令人印象深刻，一台打字机——甚至有一个接缝处破裂的旧篮球。 |
| Perhaps most poignant were the children’s toys, scattered among what was once a schoolhouse. | 也许最让人心酸的是孩子们的玩具，散落在曾经是一所学校的地方。 |
| In its heyday, Pyramiden provided its 1,000 residents with urban facilities and a high standard of living. The town’s offerings included a school, a library, an ice hockey rink, a sports hall, dance and music studios, a radio station, a cinema that doubled as a theater and a cemetery for cats. | 在鼎盛时期，皮拉米登为1000名居民提供了城市设施和高生活水平。该镇提供的设施包括学校、图书馆、冰球馆、体育馆、舞蹈和音乐工作室、广播电台、兼作剧院的电影院以及一个猫的墓地。 |
| If something exists in Pyramiden, then it is very probably the northernmost example in the world. (The settlement is around 500 miles farther north than Utqiagvik, Alaska, the northernmost community in the United States.) | 存在于皮拉米登的一切都有可能是世界上最北的。（该定居点比美国最北端的社区阿拉斯加的乌特格维克更向北约500英里。) |
| The old cultural center houses what’s likely the northernmost grand piano and gymnasium. Nearby, Sergei and I walked around inside the long-emptied swimming pool — once heated, and the envy of the residents of Longyearbyen, the much larger Norwegian settlement to the south. | 旧文化中心可能有世界上最北的三角钢琴和体育馆。在附近，谢尔盖和我一起在一个空荡荡的游泳池里走来走去——这里曾经是个加热游泳池，让南部大得多的挪威人定居点朗厄尔比的居民羡慕不已。 |
| On a plinth outside that remarkable building stands an enormous statue of Lenin, his cold head sternly surveying the town, the sole remaining witness to the emptying of Pyramiden. | 在那座引人注目的建筑外的基座上，立着一个巨大的列宁雕像，他冰冷的头颅严厉地注视着这个小镇，是被遗弃的皮拉米登唯一留下的见证者。 |
| There’s real beauty here, too: the shimmering fur of a family of arctic foxes living under the hotel; sapphire blues laser-beaming out of the nearby Nordenskiold Glacier; low sun catching cracked windows in the canteen, kaleidoscopic light dancing on the floor; sunrise and sunset washing that extraordinary mountaintop in pinks and golds. | 还有一些美轮美奂的东西：酒店下面住着一家子毛发光亮的北极狐；附近的诺登舍尔德冰川发出如炬的宝石蓝光芒；低平的阳光照在餐厅的破窗上，五彩斑斓的光在地上起舞；日出和日落把那不同寻常的山峰染成了粉色和金色。 |
| While much of the town now lies dormant, very slowly decaying, the Pyramiden Hotel — likely the northernmost in the world, of course — and the cultural center have been revived in recent years. | 整座镇子基本上处在休眠状态，慢慢地走向腐朽，但皮拉米登酒店——当然可能也是世上最北的酒店——和文化中心近年重获新生。 |
| These are the only buildings in town that are still regularly used. While shifting permafrost has warped some of the wooden buildings, their sturdy structures stand firm. | 它们是镇上仅有的仍在经常使用的建筑。一些木建筑已经被冻土包围，不过这两个地方仍然傲然挺立着。 |
| It’s in the hotel that a small community of Russians and Ukrainians live and work, welcoming day trippers and adventurous travelers looking to spend the night. | 酒店是一个小型俄罗斯和乌克兰人社区生活和工作的地方，他们在这里招待着一日游的客人和打算过夜的探险旅人。 |
| During my visit, Dina Balkarova worked the bar. “Normally I live in Barentsburg,” she said. “But in Russia I don’t work in bars — I’m really an opera singer.” She told me that when she had time to herself, she’d ask one of the armed residents (no one can be without a gun this deep in polar bear country) to accompany her down to old oil drums by the dock. There, she’d test out her voice against the rusting metal. | 我去的时候，在吧台值班的是蒂娜·巴尔卡洛娃(Dina Balkarova)。“我平常住在巴伦支堡，”她说。“不过在俄罗斯的时候我不在酒吧工作——我其实是歌剧演员。”她跟我说，有空的时候她会让这里的居民带着枪（在有熊出没的深山老林，谁也不敢不带枪出门）陪她去码头的废弃油桶边。她会对着那些生锈的金属练练嗓子。 |
| This was the sort of eccentricity I’d hoped to find when, cruising around Svalbard earlier that summer, I’d first heard about Pyramiden. If anything, though, the place was less strange than I had imagined — the people were warm and proud of the town’s history, as they might be anywhere else in the world. | 那个夏天早些时候我在斯瓦尔巴四处游走，听说皮拉米登这个地方的时候，我就是想看看有没有这样的稀奇事。不过它并没有我想象的那么怪异——这里的人性情温和，对镇子的历史感到自豪，跟在别的地方没什么不同。 |
| The few Russians and Ukrainians who have returned in recent years don’t dream of reviving Pyramiden as a functioning town. Instead, they told me, they’re hoping to preserve its heritage, which had so nearly been lost. | 近年来返回这里的俄罗斯和乌克兰人不指望让皮拉米登整个镇子恢复运转。事实上，他们告诉我，他们是希望保住几近消失的遗存。 |
| The buildings, they say, may be cold and lifeless, but at least they aren’t entirely abandoned. | 他们说，建筑虽然冷冷清清，但至少还没有完全被废弃。 |
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