![]() Out at sea, when they were lucky, they had the sun and the predictable movements of migratory birds. Close to shore, Viking mariners relied on coastal landmarks, such as how the sun seemed to hang between two particular mountains. (That was how Columbus did it 500 years later.) The Norse sagas offer a few hints about how Vikings rowed and sailed along-but they are vague and incomplete. There was no map or chart to rely on, no sextant for celestial navigation, and no magnetic compass to help with dead reckoning. “If a boat got lost at sea, that would almost certainly prove fatal.” ![]() “The Vikings were superb boatbuilders, but that great skill would count for nothing if they could not navigate properly,” says Stephen Harding, a biochemistry professor at the University of Nottingham and author of Science and the Vikings. Their boats were sturdy, made from planks called strakes held together with iron rivets, but a swift and steady vessel was no guarantee of safe passage. It was a long voyage through the dicey water of the North Atlantic-three weeks if all went well-with land rarely in sight. How they found their way there? No one is exactly sure. They eventually ended up in Greenland, more than 1,000 miles away. Here is what we know: In the 10th century, some Vikings piled into boats and shoved off the shore of what is now Norway. ![]() This 1893 painting by Christian Krogh imagines Leif Erikson’s voyage to North America around A.D.
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