Experiments in Viking Navigation Viking Sun Stone

Description

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The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

one of guys I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters in the Pathfinder school and what I thought we'd do today is take a look at a piece of Icelandic spar also known as the Viking Sunstone and I've done a lot of research over the last couple of years really on the Viking Sunstone and how people speculated that it may have been used because it was really never written down exactly how it was used other than generally they might have had multiples of these in boats so they could triangulate the position of the Sun and really that's not to find a southern bearing although we know that Sun travels in a southern arc in the northern hemisphere but if you understand the angle of the Sun and the time of day or how many hours the sun's been above the horizon it gives you a much better general direction or bearing once you find or determine the location of the Sun and this crystal was used to find that Sun during overcast conditions and today we have fairly overcast conditions so I want to show you what I feel is the proper way to use this Sunstone and really a piece of Icelandic spar is nothing more than a crystal for lack of a better word and you can get this type of calcite crystal other places besides just Iceland although that's where they speculated most of them came from that the Vikings used obviously but what I've done is I've taken and I've put a block dot with a marker on this crystal on the front side so on the long side I've got it on the short side here so you got a long side a short side and what happens with these crystals is they refract light so they kind of our prismatic they put colored light in there so when you cut this in your hand and you look at it on the horizon or just above the horizon what happens is because of light entering here you get an image from the backside looking through it like a telescope in your hand of two dots one of them being purple and one of them being black or the color of the dot that you put on the front side and from what I see using this thing and experimenting with it what happens is you move this across the horizon and I don't mean up in the air I mean across the horizon you see two dots and once you get to the point where you're directly below the Sun you get a very purple prismatic light that comes through here and pretty much obliterates the purple circle and only shows the black and then you're pretty much directly in line or below the Sun and I've experimented with this several times even on overcast days and even on some sunny days just to see how it worked but today we have a pretty overcast day so I want to show you I shot some footage earlier that was at about 9 o'clock now it's about 10:30 so the sun's moved quite high in the sky and if I know about how many hours the sun's been up so let's say in my location the Sun rises at about 7 o'clock and I know it's been approximately three hours or so since the Sun rose then I can speculate or I can theorize so that with the Sun moving 15 degrees every hour at 10 o'clock it's moved 45 degrees from east rising in the east and setting in the West so 45 degrees off of that is going to be a southeasterly bearing so let's look at that and I'll see if I can get some footage inside this thing out of there holding it up so you can see that dot disappear and turn to one solid black dot and then maybe you'll understand a little bit more about what I'm talking about

stay with me trying to follow this with my hand so you can see it but on this one you've got a green dot and you've got a purple dot depending on how you're looking at it depending on the light that's refracting in there but what happens is whatever color that second dot is it'll disappear and you're only gonna see the one dot because the other one's gonna be obliterated by the refraction in the Sun which is right there so if we come straight down from that you can see how that refraction obliterates everything but the one dot but that doesn't happen over here you can still see two dots in the crystal and I hope you guys can see that with the naked eye you can definitely see two dots in the crystal even right here or you've got some green light in there you can still see two dots in the circle or inside the crystal excuse me okay guys I apologize if you couldn't see very well inside this crystal when I was trying to hold it up in front of me it's a little difficult to hold the camera at the right angle and hold the crystal at the right angle at the same time but I wanted to shoot a little bit of a vlog today to kind of show you how that works at least that's how I theorize that it works and I feel like I said I've tried it several times and really you have different colors of light that come through that prism just like a normal prison that you had when you experimenting with science in school and one dot will be one color and the other dot will be a very dark color and that's the one that you drew on the front size that darker color dot and what you're trying to do is effectively move the crystal and tell the color saturation within that crystal from the prismatic effect of that a crystal obliterates the secondary dot and you can only see the one that you drew on there that will tell you that you're directly below the Sun on the horizon line I appreciate your views I appreciate your support I thank you for anything you do for our school for our family for our business follow our sponsors instructors affiliates and friends and I'll be back with another video as soon as I can thanks guys