Icelandic rocks could have steered Vikings

BBC ^ | November 1, 2011 | Jennifer Carpenter

[decimon]

Vikings used rocks from Iceland to navigate the high seas, suggests a new study.

In Norse legends, sunstones are said to have guided seafarers to North America.

Now an international team of scientists report in the journal the Proceedings of the Royal Society A that the Icelandic spars behave like mythical sunstones and polarise light.

By holding the stones aloft, voyaging Vikings could have used them to find the sun in the sky.

The Vikings were skilled navigators and travelled thousand of kilometres between Northern Europe and North America.

But without a magnetic compass, which was not invented until the 13th Century, they must have relied on other navigational aids.

[SunkenCiv]