The saga is the literature and history that tells about the Nordic people-how
they lived, where they traveled, and who they killed. The sagas are always
written as true stories.
In Grønnlendingesaga, the saga of the Greenlanders, we can read about
Eric the Red. He killed a man in Norway, became an outlaw, and fled with
his family to Iceland. But he killed another man and became an outlaw there
too. He set out west with his ship hoping to find new land, and he did!
He was the first European to visit Greenland. He named the place Greenland
to entice people follow him. They settled at Brattalid, which translates
into "the steep hills;" it was not far from where Julianehåb
is today.
The Vikings were the first known people to use the keel, which was necessary
to keep a stable course when they crossed the oceans. Their sailing route
was between the 61st and 62nd degree north on a due western course from
Norway to Greenland. We can read their sailing instructions in one of the
sagas. In the saga Landnåmabok it says: "From Hernam (near Bergen)
in Norway you must hold on to a due western course, and that will take you
to Hvarf in Greenland. On your way you will come so close to the Shetland
Islands that you can just see them in clear weather. And you will sail so
far from the Faroe Islands that you will see half of the hills in the water.
And you will be so close to Iceland that you will see whales and birds from
there."
Viking Navigation
Navigation before the Vikings was coastal, so how did the Vikings manage
to keep their straight course across this great distance? One of the theories
is that they used Icelandic feldspar to find the general direction. You
can use it as a polarization 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 knew the magnetic compass. They might have, but even
that is a problem because the deviation ever changes during the voyage.
What about the stars? Didn't the Vikings know about star navigation? North
of the Arctic Circle there is continuous daylight for months in the summer.
And even at 62 degrees north, there are very few stars in the middle of
the summer. And the Vikings voyaged as a summer occupation.
Did They Reach New York?
Were they there, at the North American continent? There is absolutely no
doubt that they were, but the only place where archeological evidence is
found is at L´Anse aux Meadows at northern Newfoundland, Canada.
When I look at the question "how far south did they go?", I approach
this from three different angles.
1. Compare with the other adventurous Viking voyages, and the social pressure
on the Viking captain.
2. What are the geographical descriptions in the saga.
3. What are the important pieces of astronomical information from the Vinland
Saga.
Vikings before Lief Eriksson went from Norway through Gibraltar and all
the way to the eastern Mediterranean. Vikings had crossed the Atlantic Ocean
and settled at Iceland and Greenland. We also know that they crossed the
much shorter distance over to the American continent. 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 a 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. In the saga we read that Bjarne Herjulfsson
in the year 986, on his way to Greenland, went into fog and lost his direction.
They turned south, sailing for two weeks with land on the port side of the
ship before reaching the latitude of southern Greenland. Years later in
Norway, Bjarne had to suffer a lot of teasing for being a coward because
he did not go ashore in this new land. But in the year 999 Leif Eriksson
was the one to continue. And he wanted to be sure that he went further south
than Bjarne did. Quite a few things surprised Leif and his men in this new
land. The most important to us are:
· The whole winter went by without temperatures below the freezing
point, and without snow.
· They found wild grain.
· There was hardly no brown grass, even in the middle of the winter.
· They found wild grapes.
One of Leif's men was originally from Germany. One day he was missing, and
when they found him again, his face was red, they did not understand him
when he talked, his eyes were rolling, and he did funny things with his
face as he talked. The explanation was that he had found grapes, and he
knew from Germany how to make wine of them. Leif named the land Vinland
the Good.
Astronomical Observations
The astronomical observation mentioned in the Vinland saga is as follows.
At skamdagr, the shortest day of the year, Leif observed the sun to be in
Eyktarstad and Dagmålsstad. Eykt, or in modern Norwegian økt,
means a period of work. Eyktarstad means that Leif had seen the sun in the
direction on the horizon where work was to finish in the afternoon according
to the tradition in Norway. In modern language he observed the sun above
the horizon 60° west of south at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Eykt at
sea is still today 4 o'clock. The saga does not say set in eyktarstad, so
it is to be understood "had not set in eyktarstad." The most radical
interpretation of the information from the saga gives us a northernmost
possible latitude of 37° north for Leif´s winter camp. Chesapeake
Bay in Virginia is in this area. The distance from Greenland to Chesapeake
Bay is the same as from Bergen in Norway to Gibraltar.
The calculations can be done in spherical astronomy, and they are not very
complicated, but it is very well suited for presentation with a planetarium
projector as a part of a program. If we instead of the most radical interpretation
of the observation use the most conservative, we will still find Leif´s
camp at 42° north.
Other captains followed: Leif's brother Torvald, a captain called Torfinn
Karlsevne and Leif´s sister, Frøydis, who was the leader of
the last of these expeditions. We know this about the last expedition: Because
of the favorable winds, they had such a fast journey back to Greenland that
it is specially mentioned in the saga. Early in the spring the ships were
made ready, and they were back already early in the summer. These ships
made 6 - 8 knots under good conditions.
How did they find their way back from New York? We have to keep in mind that most of their navigation was coastal navigation. It took place in the summer, and preferably around summer solstice. In the case of ocean navigation, they sailed on a course due west or due east along latitude 62° north. To manage this, they did navigate by star, the star-the sun. Two simple but amazingly accurate devices helped them with that. The first one was a "solskuggefjøl" - a sun shadow board. This was a circular board with a tip in the middle, and the board was allowed to float in a bucket of water. Concentric circles represented different dates. When the shadow of the tip was observed around noon it was supposed to reach the circumference of the right circle, and they knew they were on the right latitude. Another possibility was to move the tip in the middle up and down according to different dates.
The Sun Compass
The other instrument was the real amazing one: The sun compass. 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 you have the hyperbola representing 62° and the four weeks around
summer solstice, you don´t have to know the time of the day in order
to find the general directions. 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 should choose the wrong
gnomon curve and get a course that is a little too much north in the morning,
this will be corrected in the afternoon by a slightly south bound course-and
your average direction will be correct.
The only archeological evidence for this Viking compass was found in Greenland
by the archeologist 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 done already by the Vikings, before the magnetic
compass was in use in Europe.
References:
Almar Næss: Hvor lå Vinland, Dreyers Forlag, Oslo 1954.
S. Thirslund & C. L. Vebæk: The Viking Compass, Handels og Søfartsmuseet
på Kronborg 1992, ISBN 87-981869-8-1.
Kåre Prydtz: Lykkelige Vinland, Aschehoug, Oslo 1975. ISBN 82-03-06540-6.
Saga: Flateyabok
Saga: Landnámabok
The Viking Compass can be ordered from the Danish Maritime Museum,
Kronborg Castle, 3000 Helsingør, Denmark.
This article was originally presented as a paper at the IPS Conference in
Utah in 1992.
The bearing-dial from Uunartoq Fjord placed in a compass-card
of today, divided into both compass points and 360 degrees. The straight
line passing through 82 degrees and 278 derees in the modern compass card
is the line followed by the sun's shadow at the equinoxes, also marked
on the find. If the notch number 13A was removed deliberately, the division
of the bearing-dial is correct within 15 degrees.
Compass card with accessories which was sent with the yachtsmen
competing in the two great races Round Zealand and Round Fynen. They were
made to be placed on top of a beer bottle, which should be held with two
fingers near the top.
The solskuggerfjol (sun shadow board) mentioned in the
History of the Faroe Islands, was used for determining latitude. It was
a circular wooden board about 250 to 300 millimeters in diameter. In the
center was a gnomon, the height of which could be set to the time of the
year. To keep it level, the board was placed in a bowl of water. The shadow
of the noon sun was observed. A circle on the board gave the line the shadow
should reach if the ship was on the desired latitude. If the shadow was
beyond the line the ship was north of this latitude; if inside, the ship
was south of it.
Reproduced from the Planetarian, Vol. 22, #1, March 1993. Copyright
1993 International Planetarium Society. For permission to reproduce please
contact Executive Editor, Sharon Shanks.
