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After being stuff of legend for centuries, the mythical Viking “sunstone” may have existed and has been found, researchers claim.

A group of scientists from the University of Rennes in France were examining the wreck of a British ship sunk off the island of Alderney – in the English Channel – in 1592 when they came across an oblong crystal the size of a cigarette packet. The stone was next to a pair of dividers - suggesting it was part of the navigational equipment.

After further examination the researchers concluded it was the legendary “sunstone.” That is, the transparent crystal may have been used to locate the sun even on cloudy days, which could help to explain how the Vikings were able to navigate across large tracts of the sea - well before the invention of the magnetic compass.

The French scientists published their finding online today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

But some scholars remain skeptics.

The stone itself is made of Iceland spar - a form of calcite known for its property of diffracting light into two separate rays.

Testing a similar crystal, the scientists proved that by rotation it was possible to find the point where the two beams converge - indicating the direction of the Sun.
They say it works on cloudy days, and when the sun has set.

This particular piece of Iceland spar was found on the British vessel long after the Viking heyday in the ninth and 10th Centuries.

But the scientists conjecture that use of sunstones may have persisted for many centuries as a back-up to the often unreliable magnetic compass, which was introduced in Europe in the 13th Century.

There is only a sketchy reference in the old Viking legends to the sunstone.

Viking were the North Germanic explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century. They used longships to travel as far east as modern day Istambul and Russia, and as far west as Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland, and, some believe, even North America.