"'Viking sunstone' found in shipwreck" Topic

Interesting BBC article, and a lot of "ifs"; this 'sunstone' was found in a later 16th Century wreck.
link

read this last night

I think there is still a lot of discussion about if they were ever used at all

I think there is still a lot of discussion about if they were ever used at all

"Sunstones" are mentioned as a navigational device in a saga. To me, that implies some credibility, especially now that we know they actually work, and know that they were indeed used in later periods. I would expect archaeological evidence to be sketchy simply because such a tool would be highly prized during the period of use, and so kept and passed on rather than discarded. Paradoxically, when later advances reduced the need for the stones, they would just become curiosities or, frankly, "useless rocks," and thus be discarded haphazardly in a manner where their previous function would not be easily discernible. A good analogy is a slide rule— once highly prized and ubiquitous in engineering fields, now completely supplanted by computers and programmable calculators and thus more objects of nostalgia than anything else. Compound that situation with a "device" which is simply a chip of naturally occurring stone— how would anyone know that a bit of stone found in an excavation was anything more than a knickknack (if they didn't just ignore it as being "only another rock")?

So, while none of that is definitive proof, I think the concept is entirely plausible.

And the "sunstone" degrades in the sea. But it gives all Dark Ages skirmish gamers a maguffin to fight over in a scenario now.

Sunstones obviously were used historically since they showed up in the History Channel's new Viking series.

Indeed!