Legendary Viking "sunstone" may have been discovered in shipwreck

[Rowdyboy]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/not-just-the-stuff-of-legend-famed-viking-sunstone-did-exist-believe-scientists-8521522.html

For centuries, it has been a crystal of legend locked in the verses of Norse myth with little or no evidence that it was ever real. Now it seems scientists at last have grounds for believing that the Viking “sunstone” used to navigate the seas did indeed exist.

Researchers who have spent three years poring over a cloudy crystal discovered in the wreck of an Elizabethan ship sunk off the Channel Islands believe they have proved that it could be the substance described by the Norsemen as helping to locate the sun when obscured by cloud. The so-called sunstone has long been the subject of scientific intrigue after it was described in one Icelandic saga as a magical gem which, when held up to sky, would reveal the position of the sun even before dawn or after sunset.

Such a navigational aid could be one of the secrets behind the Vikings’ reputation as remarkable seafarers whose prowess at heading into unexplored water means they may have beaten Christopher Columbus as the first European visitors to America by hundreds of years.

Scientists based at the University of Rennes in Brittany have studied the cigarette packet-shaped crystal found on board the wreck off Alderney and today publish evidence which suggests Tudor sailors may have used the stone to navigate in much the same way as their Viking predecessors. The stone, a calcite substance known as Iceland spar, was found by divers next to a pair of dividers, leading investigators to wonder whether it formed part of the navigational arsenal of the English vessel, which sank in 1592, some four years after the Spanish Armada.

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