譯/田思怡 Iceland, it seems, is full of hidden poets.
When they're not at their day jobs, a great many of the island's 330,000 inhabitants dabble in verse, including politicians, businessmen, horse breeders and scientists who study the genetic isolation of the island in pursuit of medical breakthroughs. Even David Oddsson, who was prime minister in 2002 (when Iceland's banks were privatized) and central bank governor in 2008 (when they collapsed), is a poet by training.
冰島似乎到處都是隱藏的詩人。
島上的33萬居民在從事正職之餘，有很多人寄情於詩，包括政治人物、商人、養馬的人，以及研究這個島的遺傳性隔離，以尋求醫學突破的科學家。連2002年（那一年冰島銀行私有化）時擔任冰島總理，並於2008年（那一年冰島銀行破產）時擔任中央銀行總裁的大衛．奧德松，都是科班出身的詩人。
Birgitta Jonsdottir, the leader of the anarchist-leaning Pirate Party, which did well in a recent general election, describes herself rather loftily as a "poetician." Her first published poem, "Black Roses," written when she was 14, is about a nuclear holocaust.
Kari Stefansson, one of the world's leading geneticists and the founder of Decode Genetics, recalled a poem he wrote in 1996, a few months after the birth of Dolly, the cloned sheep.
帶有無政府主義傾向的海盜黨在最近的選舉中表現很好，黨魁碧兒姬妲．楊斯多蒂爾頗為高傲地自稱為「詩治家」（poetician）。她發表的第一首詩、14歲時寫的「黑玫瑰」，是關於一場核子浩劫。
卡里．斯特方松是世界頂尖的遺傳學家之一，也是解碼遺傳學公司的創辦人，他回想起他在1996年複製羊「桃莉」誕生幾個月後寫的一首詩。
"I was a little bit depressed," Stefansson said in his office, which, with its slit windows and computer screens, looked a bit like the interior of a spaceship. "One of my ways to deal with that was to write a small poem," he said, before proceeding to recite it:「當時我有點憂鬱」，斯特方松在自己的辦公室裡這麼說，辦公室有些狹長的窗子和電腦螢幕，顯得有點像太空船的內部。他說：「我處理這種情緒的方式之一，就是寫一首小詩」，接著背誦起來：
迷失在陽光燦爛日子裡的明亮之中，我去何處尋覓，
一個不快樂男人的幸福，
還好這只是一個複製的他，
其餘一切糟透了。
Poetry is a national pastime, but not a particularly "specialist activity," said Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson, a professor of Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland.
"It's part of being an Icelander," he said. "Yes, it's charming, isn't it?"
In earlier times, verses were an integral part of social gatherings and were often improvised, he said. Poetry contests were held, with the prizes going to the wittiest, sharpest verses. The most popular verse form, he said, is called "ferskeytla," four rhymed lines that can be divided into two parts.
冰島大學冰島文學教授斯溫．尼格維．艾吉爾松說，詩是一種全民消遣，但不是特別的「專業活動」。
他說：「這是冰島人的一部分。是的，很迷人，不是嗎？」
他說，早年，社交聚會少不了詩，經常是即興創作。還會舉行詩賽，獎頒給最富機趣、最犀利的詩。他說，最風行的詩格是「四行詩」（ferskeytla），有四句押韻的詩句，可以分為兩部分。
Icelanders are unusually prolific readers and writers, and books of verse tend to sell well in Iceland. Poetry was the third-largest category of books published in the country in 2014, after fiction and the arts, according to figures from the national library. Far more poetry books were published in Iceland that year than books about economics or public administration. (There were apparently none at all about finance.)
The cold oceanic climate and long winter nights may also have something to do with it.
"People usually get bored, and they try to humor each other," Egilsson said. "One of those ways is poetry."
冰島人的閱讀量和寫作量都大得出奇，詩集在冰島通常賣得不錯。根據國家圖書館的統計，詩集是2014年出版量第三大的書類，排在小說和藝術類書籍之後。那一年冰島出版的詩集遠多於關於經濟學或公共行政的書籍（金融類書籍顯然掛零）。
這也許與這裡寒冷的海洋氣候與漫長的冬夜有關。艾吉爾松說：「人們往往會覺得無聊，想彼此取樂，詩是一種方式。」
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文/田思怡
本文提到詩時，有時用verse，有時用poem，有時用poetry，一般這三個字可以交替使用，若要細分，verse可以是一個詩節（a stanza）、一行詩（one of the lines of a poem），或是品質不太好的詩，例如，He is a writer of verse, not poetry.（他寫的詩稱不上詩。）
poem和poetry都是詩，前者可數，例如a poem（一首詩），後者是詩的總稱，不可數。
文中用了一個冰島字ferskeytla（四行詩），英文稱為quatrain（a poem consisting of four rhymed lines）。
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