I searched the site and could not find a post for this story; sorry if it's a rerun.
Viking 'Sunstone' Discovered - Business Insider
Viking 'Sunstone' Discovered - Business Insider
Don't forget your sun compass, too. :laugherOh hell!
Now the sextant and paper chart boys have something else that we Must Have to go to sea!
Mark
lol. one of the other things people don't know about the vikings. vikings were not a race or culture or a people. viking was a profession. a vikingr was someone wo went a viking. viking being the verb referring to raiding/piracy. while the vikings were primarily scandinavian ( norse ), being the last official wave of germanic migrations ( although i would certainly count the norman invasions as being part of the germanic migrations, myself ), they also included dutch and germans. they even gathered some irish, as well.Great article. As I continue to learn more about the Vikings, I am even more impressed by how awesome they were. I don't think most folks really know that much about them.
When people ask me about my background (I'm American), I tell them I'm 1/4-Swede (since my grandfather came over from Sweden when he was a teenager, expecting to find the streets actually paved with gold, according to family lore). Maybe I should tell them I'm 1/4-Viking instead, since it's better to be associated with the sunstone than the Vasa (which I had a chance to tour when I visited Stockholm).
I bet you Chuck Norris is part Viking!
that irked me, as well. ian anderson, of jethro tull, would have been the perfect bombadil.The vikings were members of a productive and highly creative culture. The superb artistry of their woodworking, metalsmithing, songmaking, shipbuilding and exploring talents deserve more notice.
I particularly enjoy their play with words. The riddle-poems and riddle-game are great fun, and the lore-poems a fine way for a non-literate people to keep ancient wisdom alive. Tolkien used them to great effect in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings".
(rant)
That's one of my pet peeves with the "Lord of the Rings" movies. Besides leaving out the Old Forest and Barrow-Downs episodes (I really wanted to see Old Man Willow and Tom Bombadil), Peter Jackson left out the poems and songs.
(/rant)
wow. that's great. when i write about this kind of viking age technological advancement people just laugh at me and say i am full of it....especially on sailing sites. thank you thank you thank youThirty of forty years ago, the "Sunstone" was still considered "just another Viking fairy tale" as much of the Norse writings have been considered for a thousand years. So unless someone was very up to date, they could easily see one--assuming a chunk of Icelandic Spar survives underwater better than beach glass does--and tossed it out as a piece of worn glass, or a quartz crystal, or some other bit of trash.
The Icelandic Sagas were long denigrated as works of fairy tales and rubbish because they were quite serious about things like sailing so far to the south that the pitch melted off the planking and the lands were full of BLUE men.
And then around 1970 someone figured out that the Vikings had different words for some colors, and "blue" men meant "blue-black, the color of raven feathers" and the blue men were, ahuh, simply very black Africans. And that perhaps the Vikings really had gone that far.
Apparently they founded Russia (named for the Rus tribe of Vikings) sacked and burned Constantinople, made it to just about everyplace where a warrior poet could have a good time sacking and burning and pillaging...and, yeah, were dead serious about being able to navigate with tools the Europeans didn't have.
Bear in mind that European navigators were a very secretive bunch, if they HAD obtained potentially ungodly tools from horrid pagans, they'd probably have been very quiet about having them or using them. Viking magic? The Inquisition would have put a fast end to that, too.
I think it was only ten? years ago that someone figured out the longboats would regularly exceed "hull speed" because the style of lapstrake construction they used actually works to perform a considerable amount of air injection. Bubbles are passed under the hull, reducing drag, increasing speed, the same way that we've banned them form modern racing boats for the same reason. But the Vikings apparently were using the same technology, accidentally of not, and then it got lost for a thousand years.
isn't there a longer, more detailed version of that....one with a more indepth coverage of the hull tank testing? i am sure i have seen one.Video about the Oseberg Viking Ship replica project
It includes tank testing the hull.
Stiftelsen Nytt OsebergSkip - YouTube
that's a pretty good documentary. it does contain a number of misconceptions about viking vessels, their development, and the reason for the end of the viking age. in fact, they give two different reasons for the end of the viking age; each seperated by quite a bit of time.I thought this video was pretty interesting. From "The Great Ships" series that ran on the History Channel.
The Vikings Ships - Documentary - YouTube
In one of the books in the Hellenic Traders series they mention how ships from many countries look alike, and the only way to tell them apart is by looking at how the crew dresses and details in the rigging.an interesting point of note: the replica of skuldelev 3 looks amazingly like the replica of anglo-sxon ship found at sutton hoo.
The "Incomplete Enchanter" only had about half the Harold Shea stories; then "The Enchanter Completed" carried the rest of them; then Science Fiction Book Club did a hardback collection with all of them & called it the "Complete Compleat Enchanter" and Baen Books does the paperback.Captain Jack: said:i thought that book was ' the incomplete enchanter'. i have read that. very good book. his depiction of Heimdal is very accurate, unlike the Thor movies. Heimdall, being 'the friend of man', is a jovial, friendly God; one that is warm and embracing. he's not stiff and cold.
that always sounds so like a stanza from Beowulf:The "Incomplete Enchanter" only had about half the Harold Shea stories; then "The Enchanter Completed" carried the rest of them; then Science Fiction Book Club did a hardback collection with all of them & called it the "Complete Compleat Enchanter" and Baen Books does the paperback.
I liked the question game between Heimdall & Harold, and the friendship between them. I haven't seen any of the Thor movies, but I suspect they're based on Marvel comics rather than the Poetic Edda. Too bad. Some of the comic stories in Edda would make great film.
Your verse from the Voluspa reminds me of Theoden's exhortation to the Rohirrim as they ride to the defense of Gondor (it's one thing he reads on the recording, in a stirring performance) :
Arise, arise, Riders of Theoden!
Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!
Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
A sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!
the ride of the rohirrim is my favorite part of the trilogy....the books. for obvious reasons, the rohirrim are my favorite people in middle earth. how could i not like the anglo saxons, right?Thanks for the photos & links, knute. Can you say "time sink"? :laugher
It is a wonderful thing that they can find trees big enough for replicating these ships. Early in "The Dory Book" John Gardner talks about riving planks for boatbuilding, with drawings by the great Sam Manning, but this is the first time I've seen it in 'real life'.
Sounds like a good plan. Personally, I wouldn't change any of it.. other than choosing a 30-something-foot gaff cutter, rather than a schooner.....Here's my plan:
1) Win the lottery.
2) Fly to England to cherrypick the A-S Books shelves.
3) Shop for a mid-30-foot gaff-rigged schooner.
4) Load boat with books, comestables and potables.
5) Read my way back across the Atlantic.
that's a rather odd rig. not only is it extremely high aspect but, outside of some victorian era paintings, i have never seen a vikingship depicted with a top sail. although the shape of the sail is debated, as we have discussed, it's a pretty well established fact that vikings used a single sail.Here in Minnesota people are quite proud of their Norwegian ancestry (we have some Swedes too, but let's not talk about them).
Back in the 70s some local people built a replica of a Viking ship found in a burial mound in the 1880s. They launched it in Lake Superior and sailed it to Oslo. During an Atlantic storm it developed a crack over 10' long, but they plugged it as best they could and carried on to Norway. It's now on display in a museum in Moorhead, MN.
Hjemkomst Center - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hjemkomst Viking Ship | Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County
that's ok sir. after all the information and inspiration you have imparted, to me, in your posts, in many different threads, it's good that i can return the favor friendships, even electronic ones, shouldn't be one sided, right?I can't keep up with you folks, but I certainly enjoy & appreciate your posts.