Viking Navigation

How was the Norse Navigator able to shape his course across the North Atlantic long before the invention of the magnetic compass? This book tells the story of the Viking Sun Compass and how it allowed the Vikings to sail across the Atlantic.

In 1948, the Danish archaeologist C.L. Vebæk found the remains of a small wooden disc at the Viking Age site of Uunartoq in Greenland. Since then the Master mariners Carl V. Sver and Soren Thirslund have interpreted this find as a navigational instrument. This book is the essence of more than forty years of archaeological studies, discussions and practical sea-going experiments. The author gives a full account of the history of the find and demonstrates convincingly how Viking Age Navigators could make use of this and other simple devices in order to find their way across the vastness of the Northern Atlantic.

REVIEWS

...a useful source for those beginning study of Viking period navigation.[...] Thirslunds interdisciplinary approach to research yields positive results for evidence of Viking period navigation.' (Peter Campbell, East Carolina University Nautical Research Journal, Autumn 2008)

...to be recommended to all who would understand early Scandinavian navigation. The subject is lucidly explained and contains as much as is at present known about ancient sun-compasses.' (Owain T.P. Roberts, Amlwch, North Wales, UK Nautical Archaeology, 2009)

"For anyone who is interested in the problems of early navigation, or who would like to follow the logic of the sun compass's reconstruction and use, this will be a treasured volume." (Edward Von der Porten Ships in Scale, July/August 2013)