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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Ancient records [academia.edu] tell us that the intrepid Viking seafarers who discovered Iceland, Greenland and eventually North America navigated using [sciencenordic.com] landmarks, birds and whales, and little else. There's little doubt that Viking sailors would also have used the positions of stars at night and the sun during the daytime, and archaeologists have discovered [arago.elte.hu] what appears to be a kind of Viking navigational sundial. But without magnetic compasses, like all ancient sailors they would have struggled to find their way once the clouds came over.

However, there are also several reports in Nordic sagas and other sources of a sólarsteinn "sunstone". The literature [vsnrweb-publications.org.uk] doesn't say what this was used for but it has sparked decades of research examining if this might be a reference to a more intriguing form of navigational tool.

The idea is that the Vikings may have used the interaction of sunlight with particular types of crystal [phys.org] to create a navigational aid that may even have worked in overcast conditions. This would mean the Vikings had discovered the basic principles of measuring polarised light centuries before they were explained scientifically and which are today used to identify and measure different chemicals. Scientists are now getting closer to establishing if this form of navigation would have been possible, or if it is just a fanciful theory.

Lagertha [history.com] teaches me all I need to know about Vikings.

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