Legendary Viking Sunstones Did Exist: Viking Sagas Were More Truthful Than We Realized

A. Sutherland  – AncientPages.com – Modern navigation instruments were unknown to Vikings, and they relied on own senses, celestial bodies, birds, swells, whales, chants, and rhymes to navigate the seas and discover new land.

During the Viking Age, people started to categorize ships according to their functions. There were two types. One was primarily suitable for transporting armed men. The other was suitable for transporting cargo. Pictured here is the Viking Ship Museum’s freighter Ottar, which is of the type that was used for navigating the North Atlantic islands. (Photo: the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde via Science Nordic

They even took advantage of the wind and the stars as clues to make their navigation easier.

Viking sagas handed down orally from generation to generation may have been more credible sources of this kind of navigation than we earlier realized. The success of the voyage depended on several factors.

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