Recalculate..Recalculate!

           Recalculating....Recalculating....

The winter season is slowly coming to an end and people are beginning to make plans to enjoy the warm outdoors.Travelers are anxious to get under way, while students are plannng their spring-break.
              The question is: “Where and how do we get there?”

While birds and other wild-life seem to have built-in guidance systems, we humans must develope and depend on artificial intelligence. Road-maps are now ancient documents, due to the fact that no one could
master refolding them. Then, there was Map-quest, a computer-generated program displaying the possible routes to the chosen destination.This proved too rigid while on the road when plans would change. Along comes Mrs. Garmin, the electronic female voice that, once given the destination, had the ability to guide us block-by-block. But even the skillful Mrs. Garmin would become confused if the driver made a wrong turn. While this system remains very helpful, there must be a better way. The modern GPS system depends upon contact with approximately

twenty-four satellites, triangulated to determine the traveler’s location. This seems like a lot of technology to help us get from point A to point B. Our ancestors managed to sail across open waters for a month without the aid of electronics. How did they do it? They used the sun, stars and ocean currents when conditions were favorable. Fog, storms,  heavy winds and long nights might have caused many changes in routes.

                    They might have had a “Secret Weapon” for their navigational needs!  A “Stone”.

Viking legends tell of an “sunstone” or sólarsteinn that, when held up to the sky, revealed the position of the sun, even on overcast days or below the horizon. One Icelandic saga describes how, during cloudy, snowy weather, King Olaf consulted Sigurd on the location of the Sun. To check Sigurd's answer, Olaf "grabbed a sunstone, looked at the sky and saw from where the light came, from which he guessed the position of the invisible Sun".
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Viking explorers travelled far and wide based upon evidence of Viking settlements  excavated in North America. In remembrance of Scandinavian immigration,  The state of Minnesota has maintained Kjemkomst Center, a Moorhead, Minnesota museum and tourist attraction.  Residents decided to build a Viking Ship capable of the trans-Atlantic voyage and sail to Norway. One hundred oak trees were selected and cut for the construction of  the Kjemkomst Viking Ship. The voyage was to commemorate the Kjemkomst Expedition that originated from Norway to North America. Built in Moorhead, the replica of the long boat and it’s American crew set out in June, 1982 for their oceanic voyage. Soon, problems arose, including malfunctioning of their VHF radio that was essential for communication. After 34 days and 4700 miles, the crew had battled  storms and mechanical difficulties to reach their destination in Bergen, Norway. Their voyage was difficult, even with modern communications. How could “King Olaf” and his crew navigate this route successfully?

   Legends claim he used the  “Sunstone” as his navigational guide.

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 The Viking routes in the North Atlantic were often subject to dense fog, and the stone could  be used to locate the sun on very cloudy days.Apparently, these legends may be true!  Researchers have determined such sunstones could have helped the Vikings in their navigations from Norway all the way to America before the discovery of the magnetic compass in Europe.  They would have relied upon the sun's piercing rays reflected through a piece of the calcite. The trick is that light coming from 90 degrees opposite the sun would be polarised, so even when the sun is below the horizon, it is possible to tell the location of the sun if they used the “sunstone”.

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Scientific experiments have shown that a crystal, called an Iceland spar could detect the sun with an accuracy within one degree – allowing the legendary seafarers to navigate thousands of miles on cloudy days and during long nordic nights, even when the sun was below the horizon.  This crystal can help in detecting the  distance of some object that is viewed through it ,and that is why Iceland spar was even used during World War II  by bomb squads .

An Iceland spar, which is transparent and made of calcite, was found in the wreck of an Elizabethan ship discovered thirty years ago off the coast of Alderney in the Channel Islands after it sank in 1592, just four years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

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Early voyagers used the double refraction of calcite to pinpoint the sun by rotating the crystals until both sides of the double image are of equal intensity. A light ray falling on calcite will be divided in two, forming a double image on its far side.  Vikings could have used a device like this to navigate.  By rotating the apparatus and determining the direction at which  two images were equal in brightness, voyagers managed to pinpoint the sun’s position on a cloudy day .

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The Vikings might have had  a “compass in a box”. As the available light was beamed into the box, rotation focused the double polarized images into one, determining the sun’s location.
                             Perhaps the Vikings had the first GPS!

 At that time, the Viking sailors would be able to re-calculate.

Have a nice trip!