Mid music file...Stranger on the shore
The Vikings were probably the first truly International seafarers. They were certainly the first International traders, with purpose-built, wooden-constructed trading ships.
Starboard Side
These vessels were wind powered by square shaped sails, and as the Vikings never perfected the centreline rudder, vessels were steered with the aid of an oar lashed to the right hand side (looking towards the bow) of the stern. To increase its effectiveness, the steering oar was broadened to become the "Steering board". Steering the boat during winter months required navigation by the stars. Hence, it is believed that the steering board became today's "Starboard".
Port Side
To protect the "steering board" from damage, the vessel was always docked with the left-hand side (looking towards the bow) nearest to the dockside. So the Port side became the left-hand side of the vessel (looking towards the bow). On today's modern ships, "Port and Starboard" become essential when trying to find your way around below decks.
International Travel Vikings sailed from Norway through the Straits of Gibraltar, and all the way to the eastern Mediterranean. Vikings also crossed the Atlantic Ocean, settling in Iceland and Greenland. We also know they crossed a much shorter distance over to the North American continent.
Did They Reach New York?
Did the Vikings discover North America?. Did The Vikings reach the North American continent?. There is absolutely no doubt that they did, but the only place where archaeological evidence is found is at LŽAnseaux Meadows at northern Newfoundland, Canada.
The Vikings in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland knew about these voyages. There is no reason to believe that they stopped at Newfoundland, but rather that they went much further south. The distance from Newfoundland to New York is only one fifth of the distance they sailed in Europe.
Having reached Newfoundland, there was pressure on the next Viking captain or Viking chief to go further south to explore new lands to prove that he was a man, and that he was a skilled navigator and explorer.
Navigation
Navigation before the Vikings was coastal, so how did the Vikings manage to keep their straight course across these great distances? One of the theories is that they used Icelandic feldspar to find the general direction. You can use it as a polarisation filter to find the area of the sky 90 degrees from the sun. This theory only holds water if you can accept a navigation with an error of plus or minus 30 degrees from the set course.
Another theory is that the Vikings used the magnetic compass. They might have, although there is little evidence to support this. Even using a magnetic compass would have created problems because deviation changes during a voyage.
North of the Arctic Circle there is continuous daylight for months in the summer. Even at 62 degrees north, there are very few stars in the summer months. Since the Vikings were summer voyagers, star navigation also seems unlikely.
The Sun Compass
The Viking's main navigation instrument was truly amazing: the sun compass! The only archaeological evidence for this Viking compass was found in Greenland by the archaeologist C. L. Vebæk of Denmark. Later it was interpreted by Captain Sølver and by Søren Thirslund at the Nautical Museum at Kronborg Castle, and by professor Curt Roslund at the University of Gøteborg.
The Viking compass that was found had different hyperbolas or gnomon curves, and the north direction is clearly marked with 16 small cuts crossing a long line. If we count the spikes from north and to the right we have 90° or due west, at spike number 8. This also indicates that dividing the compass into 32 directions was accomplished by the Vikings before the magnetic compass was in use in Europe.
This instrument draws on the fact that the sun's shadow from the tip in the middle of a disk describes different hyperbolas at different times of the year.
When the hyperbola represents 62° and four weeks around summer solstice, you don't need to know the time of the day in order to find the general direction. All you have to do is rotate the disk until the shadow of the tip falls on the hyperbola, and the general directions are given with an accuracy of a few degrees.
One of the ingenious things about navigating with this instrument is that if you chose the wrong gnomon curve and got a course too far north in the morning, this would be corrected in the afternoon by a slightly south-bound course. Your average direction will now be correct.
A replica of the Viking sun compass was recently used, to good effect, by Robin Knox-Johnson to navigate a replica Viking trading ship from Norway to the Shetland Isles in approximately 40 hours. Here the vessel was unloaded, on the North Sea coast, dragged overland for approximately 100 yards, and then floated in the Atlantic Ocean. It is felt that this would have been preferable in the Viking era to sailing around the dangerous Shetland coastal waters. This would have given the Vikings easy access to the Atlantic Ocean.
All the pictures/diagrams of the Viking sun compass are copyrighted and cannot be duplicated here. However inputing "Viking Sun Compass" into your browser will link you to many superb web sites which will explain the instrument much better than I can.
By the way, Vikings did not have horns on their helmets. This is a Hollywood invention and has no foundation in fact. Not a lot of people knows that.... as Michael Caine would say
