Vikings Used Crystals to Cross Atlantic. Or Not.

HERE IS WHAT WE KNOW: In the 10th century, some Vikings piled into boats and shoved off the shore of what is now Norway. They eventually ended up in Greenland, more than 1,000 miles away. How they found their way there? No one is exactly sure.

It was a long voyage through the dicey water of the North Atlantic—three weeks if all went well—with land rarely in sight. 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. “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. “If a boat got lost at sea, that would almost certainly prove fatal.”

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