Viking sun compass and sunstone
Brújula solar y piedra solar vikingas
- Date
- c. 1000-1200 (muy aproximado) · confidence low
- Place
- Uunartoq, Greenland
- Credited to
- Norse navigators of Greenland and Iceland
- Field
- Movement
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A wooden disc with bearing lines found in a Greenlandic convent, interpreted as a sun compass for finding direction by a gnomon's shadow. The sagas mention a 'sunstone' that may have allowed the Sun to be located under overcast skies through light polarisation.
The Uunartoq disc (found in 1948) is a fragment and its reading as a compass is disputed; the sunstone appears only in a late text and material evidence is thin (a crystal from an Alderney wreck).
What it led to
- Norse navigation across the North Atlantic without a magnetic compass
- the hypothesis of orientation by polarisation (calcite, cordierite)
- modern experimental archaeology