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Did this magical little crystal help the Vikings rape and pillage across the world?



Deep in the waters off Alderney, third largest of the Channel Islands, there lies the wreck of an Elizabethan warship.


Sunk there in 1592, it has surrendered many treasures to divers over the years. They include the armour, muskets and cannon proudly displayed in Alderney's museum.


But it is an almost forgotten object, long hidden away in the museum's storeroom, that may prove the most momentous find of all.




Magical crystal: New research suggests this is a fabled Viking sunstone, which has long been the stuff of legend

Salvaged from the depths in 2002, it looks like a bar of soap and is just as opaque, but only because its surface has been scratched and dulled by sand and seawater over hundreds of years.


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In its time, it was a gleaming crystal. And in what sounds like something out of a Harry Potter novel, new research suggests that it may be an example of a fabled Viking navigational aid known as a sunstone.

Said to have been able to pinpoint the location of the sun even when cloud or fog made it invisible in the skies above, sunstones were once thought to be the stuff of legend.



Mystery: Historians have long been puzzled by how the Vikings' nautical prowess in an age before the magnetic compass

The news that the Alderney crystal could be the world's first known specimen is likely to cause almost as big a stir as might the capture of a leprechaun, or the discovery of King Arthur's sword.


Yet the claim, about to be published in the Proceedings Of The Royal Society, a journal not known for its frivolity, is being made by respected physicists at the University of Rennes in Brittany.


They came across the Alderney crystal as they were puzzling over one of the great maritime mysteries: how to explain the nautical prowess of the Vikings in an age long before the invention of reliable magnetic compasses.


These seafaring warriors raped and pillaged their way from Scandinavia to reach not just British shores but also those of North America, where they are believed to have set up colonies as early as the 10th century.


This was all the more impressive given the speeds at which they sailed. With figureheads of fierce creatures to intimidate the spirits of the lands they invaded, their longboats were formidable vessels, holding up to 120 men and crashing through the waves at up to 15 knots — almost 20 miles per hour.


An error of just a few degrees could take them rapidly off course, and we know that they relied in part on observation of wildlife to tell them where they were.


If they saw gannets and guillemots, for example, this told them they were farther out to sea, while sightings of puffins indicated that they were approaching land.


It has even been said that a starving raven was kept aboard each vessel in a wooden box. If the crew were really lost, they released the unfortunate bird, knowing that its 'sat-rav' would lead it straight towards the nearest land in search of food.



Under the sea: The 'sunstone' was found among a shipwreck off the coast of Alderney, Channel Islands

But the most vital information of all was knowing where they were in relation to the sun. Historians have long wondered how they navigated on the days when weather conditions or the time of the day meant that the sun was out of sight.


However, an Icelandic legend about the travels of the Norwegian king Olaf in the 11th century refers to sunstones.



Warriors: The seafaring Vikings raped and pillaged their way from Scandinavia to reach not just British shores but also those of North America

One winter's day, Olaf met a farmer's son named Sigurour, who boasted that he could sense the position of the sun even in a snowy sky.

The story describes how the assembled company looked out of the window but 'could nowhere see a clear sky'. After asking Sigurour to tell him where the sun was, the king ordered his minions to fetch 'the solar stone' to test the young man's claims.


'He held it up and saw where light radiated from the stone and thus directly verified Sigurour's prediction.'


Sunstones are also listed in the inventories of several churches and one monastery in 14th-century Iceland. Yet none has been found and no one could explain how they might have worked.


That was until scientists began to investigate a crystal called Icelandic spar, which would have been quite common in the Vikings' homelands.


The crystal has a peculiar molecular structure, which means that light passing through it is split into two. Rotating the crystal eventually exposes the point where the two beams converge, and it is this angle that indicates the direction of the sun.

In 2007, an international study headed by Hungarian scientists showed that Icelandic spar could be used to detect the sun's position in exactly this way, even at twilight or in overcast conditions. In 2011, the Rennes researchers went further and demonstrated that the crystal could detect the sun's position to within one degree.


The problem was that there were no surviving examples of anything resembling a sunstone in the form apparently used by ancient sailors. Or so the scientists thought. They were unaware of the finds off Alderney, where the wreck was discovered in 1977 after a rusting Tudor musket became entangled in nets cast by a lobster fisherman.



Sail away: Vikings navigated on days when the weather or time of the day meant the sun was out of sight

The name of the vessel has never been established but historical documents describe just such a ship sinking en route to France, after being dispatched to dissuade the Spanish from renewing their sea-battle against the English following the defeat of the Armada in 1588.


In 2002, a dive to the wreck revealed, among many artefacts, the mysterious lump of crystal that is now the focus of international scrutiny. As nobody knew quite what it was, it was put in a safe place and little notice was taken of it until Professor Albert Le Floch, head of the research team, spotted a reference to it on the website run by volunteers of the Alderney Maritime Trust.



Navigation: Vikings also used starving ravens to guide them to land if they were really lost

He was further intrigued to discover that, in 2006, a set of brass dividers used for map-reading were also found in the wreck, just 3ft from where the crystal had been found. This encouraged the idea that it had been part of the navigational equipment.


Following a visit by Professor Le Floch to the island last year, a small specimen was taken from the rock. And, as the research paper is about to reveal, it has been confirmed as Icelandic spar — which, although common around Alderney, has never been found in blocks like this one, about the size and shape of a cigarette packet. This implies it was indeed with the stricken ship when it went down.


In turn, that raises the question of why the vessel's doomed sailors would have been using such a primitive device when trustworthy compasses had already been invented. Perhaps they were aware, even then, that magnetic compass readings can be affected by the presence of iron objects near by — for example, the huge cast-iron cannons found aboard the ship.


'A second, independent means of verifying the ship's course would have been comforting to these navigators,' says Mike Harrisson, director of the Alderney Maritime Trust.

'Perhaps the Alderney crystal had been handed down from father to son, or master mariner to master mariner, over the ages.'



Despite the worldwide headlines, he and the other residents of Alderney — population 2,111 — are not letting their crystal's sudden stardom turn their heads.

'There is no incontrovertible proof that this is a sunstone and we don't want to overstate the case,' Mr Harrisson says.




Looking back: Those who arrive in Alderney on boat might want to take a moment to gaze out to the horizon and imagine themselves lost on the empty expanses of ocean beyond

But he admits there are plans for a rejigging of exhibits at the museum in the island's capital, St Anne.


Currently languishing in a wooden box with only a purple velvet lining to dignify it as anything other than a nondescript piece of rock, the Alderney crystal may soon be retrieved from the storeroom and honoured with its own display cabinet. This, it is hoped, will attract many more visitors to the island.


Those who arrive by boat might want to take a moment to gaze out to the horizon and imagine themselves lost on the empty expanses of ocean beyond.


Today, they could rely on the latest technology to get them back to dry land. How different from the Vikings, those marauding mariners who found their way across the high seas with the help of Mother Nature alone — and perhaps those wondrous crystals known as sunstones.

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