Vikings 'used crystals' to navigate

[Ian Pegler]

According to this BBC report, vikings may have used sun-stone crystals to navigate in poor weather.

CLICK HERE to read the report.

Ian.

[Grahame]

The sunstone theory has been around for 40 years, but some academics have treated it with extreme scepticism.

Says it all really... I heard about this theory years ago, and I have even seen a Viking sunstone in a museum somewhere (although I can't for the life of me remember where). And now, because some scientist has put his name to it, it becomes an acceptable theory. Rather like that recent archaeological 'revelation' by an academic that Brynn Celli Dhu in Anglesey is astronomically aligned... again, something that has been known about for years.

However, this does get me wondering if the Vikings (or other seafaring folk) might have used dowsing for navigational purposes as well? That's probably something we can only speculate about though - it's hard to see how you would find evidence of that.

[Frog]

To find evidence of that would be indeed a really hard task.
However, I came accross historical accounts on dowsing which mentionned dowsing used for navigationnal purposes.

I remember to have read that Egyptians of the Antiquity are supposed to have used pendulum-dowsing to navigate.
A lot of pendulums were indeed found in Pharaoh's tombs.

I remember also a Chinese emperor - during the Antiquity, too - who was a specialist of the Y-rod dowsing and used this process to navigate. Chinese archives also seem to indicate that this emperor led his crew to Central America and 'visited' the land known today as Mexico.

Olivier

[SussexJim]

On a similar thread.... it is possible to trace from a leaf which particular tree it was removed from; seeds from many species of trees are known to be moved by the oceanic currents several miles. Perhaps sea-faring peoples may have also used a similar technique?

Minerals from the Earth's crust have partiular 'signatures' which apply only to the exact location in which they are found.. spectrum analysis from ash of volcanoes has been used as dating features archeaologicaly.

However, it is possible to trace a mineral back to the lode site, or use that mineral to find similar ore lodes. ???'Stone memory, perhaps???

Try matching leaves to parent-tree, with someone's help as a blind test.

Do be warned though: ensure the sample is a good one for your purposes.

[Helen-Healing]

Apparently, mention of this mysterious 'sun stone' is made in a book by Robert Temple - The Crystal Sun; Rediscovering a Lost Technology of the Ancient World published by Arrow Books in 2000.

What did your Viking sun stone look like, Grahame? I'm very interested to know.

[Grahame]

Thanks for that reminder, Helen. I actually have The Crystal Sun - it's one of Temple's better works - and the only mention of the Viking sunstone is...

"From a large book in Swedish entitled Vikingen (Vikings) by many authors, published by Tre Tryckare, Cagner & Co., Goteburg, Sweden 1967, p14:

One doesn't know whether the Vikings were familoiar with the comp[ass. It began to be known historically around 1300. In the Icelandic sagas there is mention of a navigation instrument, a solsten, 'sun-stone'. In one of the epics (a minor Icelandic saga), King Olav the Holy (Olav den helige) was on board a shop with the chieftain Sigurd Syr and '...asked him if he knew where in the heavens the sun was, as it was cloudy. Sigurd replied that he knew, and indicated the location. The king then held his sun-stone (solstenen) up high and observed the manner in which the light streamed from it. And he this confirmed that the suyn was indeed where Sigurd had said.'
One doesn't know whether this 'sun-stone' instrument of Sigurd may have been a primitive compass with a magnetic piece of iron floating on water...

As to the one I saw, it was a long time ago and I only have the vaguest recollection, but I think it was like a dark smoky quartz.

[Ian Pegler]

Four years later, another news report on this...from the Telegraph...

Magical Viking stone may be real

A Viking legend which tells of a glowing "sunstone" that, when held up to the sky, disclosed the position of the Sun on a cloudy day may have some basis in truth, scientists believe.

CLICK HERE for the article.

Ian

[Helen-Healing]

(I can't find the way to embed a youtube vid here.) (You can now! - GG 12/18)

[mike]

Some of the islands of the South Pacific have sacred ground, spots where powerful earth forces exist and spread out from that position, so once you know and have experience of these places you could sail hundreds of miles in open ocean, and still know the way home/back. And if you compare the sacred sites to those on New Zealand, and the other islands you could triangulate your position from hundreds of miles away...So the Vikings may have used dowsing perhaps to sail hundreds of miles with knowledge of the their position day or night by the position of the sacred sites around them, both to the east or west, I havent checked for any sacred sites in Iceland yet, so perhaps to the north as well.Certainly sacred sites exist all across Scotland and the north, and both Norway and Sweden, so you have plenty of places to use as way points.And these can be used for hundreds of miles away as reference points in an empty ocean day or night, so do you need a compass/GPS even today ?

[Ian Pegler]

from Sciencemag.org...

Sunstone Unearthed From Shipwreck

In 1592, a British ship sank near the island of Alderney in the English Channel carrying an odd piece of cargo: a small, angular crystal. Though cloudy and scuffed up from 4 centuries at the bottom of the sea, its precise geometry and proximity to the ship's navigation equipment caught the eye of a diver exploring the wreckage.

CLICK HERE to read the article.

This is the same news story yet again !!!!

Ian

[Ian Pegler]

recent story from Mysterious Universe...

Vikings Never Asked for Directions – Even at Night

Based on their reputation and looks, the Vikings would not have had any trouble getting directions, maps or even just fingers pointed in the right direction from terrified people encountered on their trips. Now new evidence suggests they wouldn’t have needed to … even at night.

CLICK HERE to read the article.

Ian

[mike]

Something any dowser should try is when your out and about try dowsing true north, I find I can get a correct reading most times, or at least W S E from first finding N.So would any early Viking who could dowse use his skill to plot a course from dowsing at sea, or picking up powerful Sacred Sites which dot the globe around him to work from those points on the sky line ??

[Maggie]

This is such an interesting thread! We know so little of ancient technologies and skills and their applications, especially if no written record was left. Concerning navigation and understanding the sea, I found the book "How To Read Water" by Tristan Gooley gobsmacking. We have such a tendency, even though we may try not to, to think of ancient peoples and cultures and even modern ones, if they don't have all kinds of fancy tech, as 'primitive' and therefore inferior. It would take a lifetime to become able to read the ocean as described in this book, and you might even shake your head and say, "No way!", but apparently it's possible. But like so many skills, it's dying out and not something psychic, but rather a cultivated skill.

The book isn't much in the way of teaching you, but more just illustrating how much water in various forms can reveal. I found the ocean reading section amazing, and it helped open my eyes even more to how if you connect with and learn to read natural phenomena, you will know more than tech can ever reveal.

I should think using dowsing to navigate would be much the same.