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........from the West Coast of Norway in a tiny, shallow draft boat powered by a single rudimentary sail and a few oars. Their first trip, or raid as they came to be known, took them as far as the tiny island of Lindisfarne off the North Coast of England. The ancient monastery on Lindisfarne had already been in existence of over 150 years and provided rich pickings for the men from the North. The Viking era had begun.
Viking Exploration
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In the beginning, the Vikings made the short but hazardous trip across the North Sea to the coasts of Scotland and Northern England. Very quickly their range extended to Northern France and all around the island of Ireland. Still later, they passed to the far North sweeping through the Shetland and Orkney isles, established themselves in such bleak and tiny outposts as the Faroes and Lofotons, and beyond to Iceland. Further South they conquered large parts of England and Northern France. The medieval England with its vast French possessions was actually a reuniting of originally Norse (or Norman) territory. To the East, they spread widely through the Baltic, Poland Ukraine and Russia West of the Urals.
Eventually their travels would take them as far South and East as great Byzantium and all the way West to Vinland, what we now call North America. Nor were these occasional adventurers or stray outcasts. Vikings established trading settlements throughout this range, left artefacts of their civilisation and language all across Europe and Newfoundland and maintained a presence for upwards of 300 years. There is some evidence that at least one Native American travelled East with them back to Iceland. |
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The Sunstone in the Viking World
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Yet their "ships", actually tiny, shallow draft, barges by today's standards, had no complex sails and masts, only sufficient oars for inshore manoeuvring, not cover or facilities and perhaps most amazingly no compass, sextant or timepiece with which to navigate. How did they do it? Academics studying history and old Norse literature have known for years of the solarsteinn or sunstone briefly described in obscure corners of the Icelandic sagas. Hrafins Saga tells how King Olaf consulted Sigurd to find the position of the sun during a snowstorm. When Sigurd answered, the King raised a sunstone to the sky and checked his answer by studying the light in the stone. Other verses describe how the mariners of old used the sunstone to find their way across seas and along rivers through much of the Northern hemisphere. The savant could use the legendary device to find the sun in cloud or beyond the horizon during the long twilight hours of the Northern summer. With a strong sense of time and an undocumented knowledge of the basics of wind and current, this was enough to find their way.
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The sagas are age-old manuscripts, themselves transcriptions of oral legends from time immemorial and are the principal source of historical knowledge of Viking society and culture. Despite this, for many years historians have been sceptical of this amazing crystal's very existence. In the sixties and seventies this started to change. Scandanavian archaeologists such as Thorkild Ramskou and Leif Karlsen published research which showed how it might have worked and which material, readily available to the Vikings might have provided the stones. Ramskou developed his ideas from the polarising Twilight Compass then used by SAS pilots to navigate during the Northern skies during the lengthy summer daylight. He even carried out experiments on a DC-8 flight from Sondre Stromfjord to Copenhagen and succeeded in showing how it could have worked.
Dig deeper and the sagas also provide some idea on how the technique might have worked. For example, when voyaging to Iceland, the Viking navigator would sail up the coast of Norway until the pole star was at the same level in the sky as it was at his destination and then endeavour to sail due West for many days. Finding the sun would have been critical to the cross ocean part of the trip.
Dig deeper and the sagas also provide some idea on how the technique might have worked. For example, when voyaging to Iceland, the Viking navigator would sail up the coast of Norway until the pole star was at the same level in the sky as it was at his destination and then endeavour to sail due West for many days. Finding the sun would have been critical to the cross ocean part of the trip.
How did it work?
Even more evidence emerged when French researchers led by Dr Guy Ropars from the University of Rennes examined artefacts from an Elizabethan ship originally wrecked off the Channel Island of Alderney in 1592. The team carried out experiments on a piece of Iceland Spar, an opaque crystal made of Calcite which was found in the shipwreck. In 2011 they published their results in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The experiment showed that the sunstone could identify the direction of the sun within one degree through cloud and within a very few degrees even when the sun was below the horizon.
So how does it work? It depends on the polarisation of light. In certain types of crystals, light is refracted and split into two. When the rock is turned so that both sides of the double image are of equal size and intensity the direction of the sun can be discerned. There is a further effect on the human eye. Once lined up, if the user suddenly pulls the stone away there will be a faint glimpse of a yellowish, elongate pattern known as Haidinger's Brush. This elusive trick on the retina may well be the source of the accompanying Viking legend of a sixth sense which some navigators were able to use in conjunction with the sunstone. Naturalists already know of a similar but much stronger effect through which many insects, cephalopods and amphibians use the polarisation of light to navigate.
Not every crystal produces this effect but the Icelandic Spar calcite does and there are a number of other formations including iolite and cordierite which have similar properties. Importantly these seem to have been available widely in the homelands of the Vikings, especially Norway.
So how does it work? It depends on the polarisation of light. In certain types of crystals, light is refracted and split into two. When the rock is turned so that both sides of the double image are of equal size and intensity the direction of the sun can be discerned. There is a further effect on the human eye. Once lined up, if the user suddenly pulls the stone away there will be a faint glimpse of a yellowish, elongate pattern known as Haidinger's Brush. This elusive trick on the retina may well be the source of the accompanying Viking legend of a sixth sense which some navigators were able to use in conjunction with the sunstone. Naturalists already know of a similar but much stronger effect through which many insects, cephalopods and amphibians use the polarisation of light to navigate.
Not every crystal produces this effect but the Icelandic Spar calcite does and there are a number of other formations including iolite and cordierite which have similar properties. Importantly these seem to have been available widely in the homelands of the Vikings, especially Norway.
Navigating Mobile and Digital Seas
It seems very probable that the legend has at least some basis in truth. Perhaps it is surprising that the skill was lost to history for so long. The Vikings were very widespread and traded, settled, intermarried and governed across most of the known and some of the unknown world for 300 years. Clearly we can see traces in the Elizabethan ship mentioned above and the twilight compass idea used by pilots. References exist to sunstones held in the inventories of Nordic churches and cloisters during the Middle Ages. In the 19th Century Charles Wheatstone developed a sky compass incorporating Iceland Spar in 1848 and illustrations of his idea were published in some papers on polarised light by W Spottiswoode in the journal Nature in 1874. Beyond these traces, little has been found since the time of the sagas. Like much else in Norse culture it was either lost or subsumed completely.
Today we face a world like those Northern adventurers of old. It is exciting. Whole new lands are waiting to be discovered. Everywhere we travel is new and full of hope. Let's build the Sunstone which will show us the direction of travel and help us use our instincts and courage to make new discoveries.
Today we face a world like those Northern adventurers of old. It is exciting. Whole new lands are waiting to be discovered. Everywhere we travel is new and full of hope. Let's build the Sunstone which will show us the direction of travel and help us use our instincts and courage to make new discoveries.
