Page "Longship" Paragraph 39

Archaeologists have found two devices which they interpret as navigation instruments.

Both appear to be sun dials with gnomon curves etched on a flat surface.

The devices are small enough to be held in the hand at 70mm diameter.

A wooden version was dated to about 1000AD.

It was found in Greenland.

A stone version was also found at Vatnahverfi, Greenland.

By looking at the place where the sun shadow from the rod falls on a carved curve, a navigator is able to sail along a line of latitude.

Both the Gnomon curve devices shows the curve for 60 degrees north very prominently.

This was the approximate latitude that the Vikings would have sailed along to get to Greenland from Scandinavia.

The Wooden device also has north marked and had 32 arrow heads around the edge that may be the points of a compass.

Other lines are intrepreted as the solstice and equinox curves.

The device was tested successfully, as a sun compass, during a 1984 reenactment when a longship sailed across the North Atlantic.

It was accurate to within + or-5degrees.