雙語+MP3|美國學生世界地理42 極晝之地

     IN "Through the Looking-Glass" the story of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" starts this way:

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might: ...
　　And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

Sun shining at midnight! You probably think this can't be true and is only a joke, but it is true up at the top of Norway and Sweden. At the top of Norway is a great rock sticking out into the Arctic Ocean. It is called the North Cape, and although there is no town there, people make long journeys from other lands to the North Cape to see the sun shining on the sea in the middle of the night.
     You have always been told that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and probably you have never seen it do anything else; but the boys and girls in the north of Norway and Sweden know differently, for up there the sun doesn't rise in the east and set in the west. It goes completely round the house low down in the sky near the ground and keeps on going round and round this way every day for six months and in that time never sets-is never out of sight-there is always daylight for six months. But the sun gradually gets closer and closer to the ground as it goes round the sky and then at last sinks out of sight below the edge of the World, and there it stays out of sight for another six months and for six months it is night.
     How can such a thing be? Isn't it the same sun we see here?
     Yes, of course it's the same sun; there's only one sun. But we are living on the side of the World and we can't see the sun when it goes round to the other side of the World. If, however, we climb up the side of the World to the top where the North Cape is, we can see the sun go all the way round. It is as if you lived on the side of a hill and some one went round the hill and came back on the other side. You could see him go off one way and come back the other way, but you couldn't see him when he was on the other side. If, however, you went to the top of the hill you could see him all the way round.
     The land at the top of the World is often called "The Land of the Midnight Sun," because the sun shines at midnight. It might just as well be called "The Land of the 10-o'clock-at-night Sun," for the sun shines at every hour of the night as well as every hour of the day. And it also might be called "The Land of the Midday Night," for when the sun is going round out of sight below the edge of the World it is dark every hour of the day as well as of the night.


     This "Land of the Midnight Sun" is the land of the Reindeer-Santa Claus Land. In this land of snow and ice very little grows except moss, and the Reindeer is the only animal that can live on moss. The people that live there are called Lapps. They look something like Eskimos, and both look like the Chinese, so we think they probably were Chinese long, long ago. The Lapps and the Reindeer live together in the same hut-the Reindeer is like a horse, a cow, a sheep, and a dog all in one. The Lapp harnesses the Reindeer to his sled, he gets milk from her, he kills her and eats the meat, and then he uses her skin to make himself and his family fur coats and tents.
     But the people who live in the rest of Norway and Sweden are the same kind of people as you and I, only some of them are much smarter and better educated. I know a Swede who speaks twelve languages, I know of a Swede who invented a way of separating cream from milk without skimming it, and I know of two Swedish boys who invented a machine for making ice with heat.
     Sweden and Norway used to be one country with one king, but now they are separate countries and each has a separate king and a separate capital.
     In the geography your grandfather used, the capital of Norway was named Christiania, but the name was changed. You will find it on the map way down the throat of the whale. It is now called Oslo. The capital of Sweden begins with an "S," as Sweden does. It is Stockholm. Both Oslo and Stockholm are on the water, but they are not touched by the Gulf Stream, so the water in their harbors is frozen over nearly all winter and ships cannot go and come at that time. Stockholm is often called the Venice of the North, because like Venice it has many streets of water.
     Mary and John are our commonest names. The Scandinavians like some names for their children better than others. Ole is one name they like especially well. Hans is another, and Eric and Peter are others. We sometimes make a family name by adding "son" to John to make Johnson. The Scandinavians add "son" or "sen" to their names to make family names, as Ericson, Oleson, Hansen, Petersen, Nansen, Amundsen. If you were in Wisconsin or Minnesota and looked in the telephone book you would find thousands of such names. That is because many, many Swedes and Norwegians have come to our country and settled in that part of our country which is most like their country.
     Many common Norse words look like English words misspelled:
　　lamp is lampe
　　house is hus
　　cow is ko
They haven't copied us, we have copied them, for long ago Norse sailors settled in England, and after thousands of years we still use some Norse words changed very little.
     Long years ago the men of Scandinavia were fierce fighters, who drank a strong liquor called "mead" and used the skulls of their enemies for cups. They believed in fairy-tale gods and goddesses. Thor, they believed, was a god who made the thunder and lightning. Tiu was the god of war. So they named some of the days of the week after their gods; Tiu's day, Thor's day, Woden's day, Fria's day. Strange to say, four of the seven days of our week are still named after these Scandinavian gods, for those wild people who believed in those gods are the great-great-grandfathers of many of us. Tuesday is Tiu's day, Thursday is Thor's day, Friday is Fria's day and Wednesday is Woden's day-that's why we still have a "d" in Wednesday which we might forget in spelling, as we do not sound it now. Most people have forgotten that our week-days are named after heathen gods, but some think that we should not use such heathen names, so they use numbers instead of names for the days of the week, as in Bible times.
     Dynamite, you know, is something used to blow up things. It was invented by a man who lived in Sweden some years ago. When he died he left a lot of money and said that the interest from this money was to be given every year to the men or women who, no matter in what country they lived, had done the most for the World during that year. So each year judges go over all the things that have been done and choose those men or women who have done the most for the good of the World and give them the money. This man was named Nobel and the money is known as the Nobel Prize. Two of our Presidents-Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson-won the Nobel Prize for Peace and so did an American Negro, Ralph Bunche. You yourself could win the Nobel Prize if you ever did something big enough and fine enough. Do you think you ever will?