Ryan Freiwald
History of Technology
MAJ Sook Ha
3/9/16
HCI Paper Final Draft
The Viking Sun Compass
In the late 7th century a new group of people hailing from the south western coast of Scandinavia began to earn a reputation as navigators, traders, and most famously, pirates. Scandinavia was a combination of Norway, Sweden, and Finland but as far as the people are concerned the focus will be Norway. Sometimes referred to as Viking and other times as Norsemen these people would have gone down in history as thugs if it hadn’t been for one piece of technology they produced that allowed them to navigate the Atlantic Ocean and Baltic Sea with precision that left only 5 degrees of error when going from place to place (History.com). This piece of technology known as the Viking sun compass used shadows from the sun to discover which direction true north was (in the same way that a sun dial uses the sun to predict the time). The Viking sun dial was crucial for the sea born life style of the Vikings but what is more interesting is how advanced this device was for the time at which it came(news.discovery).
Fragments of the Viking sun compass were discovered in Uunartoq, Greenland in 1948 but no one really thought anything of it being that only the a piece of the rotating disk known as the Uunartary disk was discovered. However, in 2013 off the coast of Alderney, a stone was discovered which gave rise to the theory that the Uunartary disk might have been coupled with this calcite stone when navigating the open sea. After many research efforts, this theory was proven to be plausible and became widely accepted by historians around the globe. More recently, the Viking sun compass is continued to be studied due to the mystery and innovation surrounding this device and the strange way that it works (lifescience.com).
As far as sea travel was concerned in the 8th century, the Viking had the monopoly most advanced technology to date. At this time, most European navigator were still using astrolabes, sextants, and star charts. Instruments that were both complex and time consuming. So what made the Sun Compass so special? To date, it was the only instrument with the ability to predict true north other than the magnetic compass which was not widely used until the end of the Viking reign of terror (Wikipedia/compass). Furthermore, the way that the compass worked was a technological breakthrough. The Sun Compass was comprised of four parts: the Uunartary disk, a central holding pin (known as a “gnomon”), a wooden plank, and two calcite crystals. The two calcite crystals would be placed in notches in wooden plank to hold them in place. Centered in front of these crystals, the Uunatary disk was held in place by the gnomon (which provided both a fixed position as the ability to rotate the disk). With this picture created, one might ask the question, how does it work? (ksl.com)
Notches in the Uunatary disk would show which way true north was based on a shadow cast by the sun at different times of the day. But what happened on days when the sun was hidden by cloud cover as was custom on most days in the Baltic Sea? This is where the crystals come into play. Calcite has a unique ability to capture polarized UV light (the same kind of light that is visible through cloud cover) and focus it to make it visible even when it was cloudy or partially dark (Wikipedia/sunstone).
So what was the effect of this technology? Histories for years have argued that the Vikings, not Christopher Columbus (a Portuguese explorer who was around in the late 1400s and early 1500s), who were the first to discover the “New World.” With this in mind, more concrete evidence about the Vikings could change what histories perceived as the past overnight. Furthermore, this technology was the first of its kind to allow intercontinental travel. The increased ability to travel opened up trade and the spreading of ideas. Being that the spread of ideas is one of the most important factors in advancing technology, the Vikings technology certainly had a big impact on the future.
Works Cited
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunstone_%28medieval%29
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass
- http://www.history.com/topics/exploration/vikings-history
- https://www.ksl.com/?sid=27804704
- http://news.discovery.com/history/secrets-of-the-viking-sun-compass-after-dark-140325.htm
- http://www.livescience.com/44366-vikings-sun-compass-after-sunset.html