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How Did the Vikings Navigate the Open Ocean? - Reading the Sea: Norse Wayfinding in the North Atlantic | Sleepy Facts About History
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Before the magnetic compass reached Northern Europe, Norse sailors were crossing hundreds of nautical miles of open water to settle Iceland and Greenland. They undertook these dangerous voyages without charts or any single indispensable tool. This episode examines how they accomplished such feats, looking past the modern myths of magical crystals to understand the practical, sensory world of Viking Age mariners.
The system they relied on was built on careful observation and communal…
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