Vikings could have steered by polarized light (using sunstones)

[The Straight Story]

The Vikings are said to have been able to navigate with the aid of "sunstones" that allowed them to see the sun on cloudy or foggy days. Now scientists in Hungary and Sweden say the sunstones could have been polarizing crystals.

The Vikings were the dominant seafaring explorers of much of Northern Europe and Britain from around 900 to 1200 AD. They were able to navigate their way around the thousands of kilometers of the north Atlantic with great skill and without the help of the magnetic compass, which was not then known in Europe. In the long days of summer at high latitudes they would also have had limited or no views of the stars to help them navigate.

Legend has it that these great Scandinavian sailors used a "sólarsteinn," or sunstone, to help them, and stories mentioning the sunstone include the saga of King Olaf and Sigurd, the Icelandic hero. The king asked Sigurd where the invisible sun lay in the cloudy sky and then used a sunstone to check Sigurd’s answer.

Danish archaeologist Thorkild Ramskou suggested in 1967 that the sólarsteinn could have been a piece of Icelandic spar, which is calcite in the form of a transparent, polarizing crystal. These crystals are common in Iceland. Other candidates for sunstone include cordierite or tourmaline, both of which are common in Scandinavia.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-vikings-polarized.html

[Swede]

1. That's how we going sailing up the fjords!

nt

[MilesColtrane]

2. The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands.

[Cleita]

3. Or they could have used magnetic lodestones that they

floated on cork in a bucket of water. It makes a nifty compass.

http://www.madsci.org/experiments/archive/860218908.Es.html

[LiberalEsto]

4. Why didn't they use GPS systems?

:hide:

[xchrom]

5. The amethysts weren't plugged in. Nt

[BlueIris]

6. Or maybe the amys weren't...chevron?

:hide:

[Canuckistanian]

7. I heard this theory 10 years ago

Nothing new to me.