Here is some news of Viking from a researcher, Dr Gabor Horvath of Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary that confirms an old Viking Legend

LEGEND

In the Sigurd Legend Holy Olaf, the king sent out somebody to find the sun in the sky but they couldn't locate it.

The saga releates: 'Sigurd grabbed a sunstone, looked at the sky and saw from where the light came, from which he guessed the position of the invisible Sun. It turned out that Sigurd was right.


SCIENCE

It was thought that the expert Vikings navigators like the ancient Mediterranean seafarers used sundials or simply hugged the coastline on long journeys, however new research indicates otherwise:


The researchers say: 'Some types of crystal create birefringence - a double refraction of light.

By splitting light into ordinary and extraordinary rays we were able to work out where the Sun was and navigate through sunlit fog.


Experiments and tests were run with 'sunstones' in the Arctic, Finland, Hungary and Tunisia.


Vikings undoubtedly often had to sail under totally overcast conditions, perhaps for days on end in the open water far away from land,' said Dr Gabor Horvath.

'Using the crystal,' he reported that, 'to our great surprise, the patterns of the direction of polarisation under totally overcast skies were very similar to those under clear skies.


SOURCES
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6338535.stm

Metro newspaper, London England

Despite VIking's similarities with Nord, it has nothing to do with Skyrim General Discussion.

Should be moved to community discussion.

Edit* Forgot to mention. That's awesome! svck it Christopher Co-dumb ass as I like to say. We can thank him for STILL calling native americans, Indians. "Hey, we're not in India... But you know what? Let's just keep calling the locals Indians." Moron <_<

that's fine by me - but I offer it as possible source material for the devs to consider

it can be discussed if folks want to in any forum but I thought that Skyrim devs would be more likely to read this in the Skyrim Forum

edit: True that Nords are not Vikings just as the 'beast races are not cats and reptiles, but things Elderscrolls tend to follow the patterns of science and everyday observation even when they tend to have metaphysical foundations rather than scientific. Anyways this is new researchand may have possibilities lore-wise as well as in-game for a shipboard Nord navigation system - assuming there are going to be Nord Ships and Coastlines - etc. WEven if not it offers a possible basis for an in-game Skyrim book

I think it's fine here, personally. You should just add something about Skyrim in the OP, like what you said in the followup.

wow that is actually really awesome.
shows that there is so much that we dont know, not only that which we have yet to discover, but that which we have forgotten aswell.

I'm pretty sure romans were here before the Vikings.

Bah America was "discovered" by Many other cultures befoure Vikings , like Romans and befoure Phoenicians ... plenty of proves of that..

Maybe its just me but I have never heared of Romans discovering America. And dont know who the hell the second people are.
Anyway.

Vikings are awesome.

They found a old viking boat off the coast of Maryland if I remember correctly...

There's no proof for that. There are hokerrs who think there is and that the "archaeological mafia" is trying to cover it up. Come on.

(if you're going to pull the Tucson swords or some nonsense like that, I'll know you're one of them. )

Its possible they did it that way. But its more likely they used a raven to find land. Thats how the vikings including the famous Eric the Red who discovered Greenland did it. They would pray to Odin or whoever and then they would let it loose and if it found land it would fly to it and then they would row in that direction if not it would return to the boat. Thats I think what Stephen Fry said on QI. That seems like a much more reasonable way to discover a country than some scientific use of crystals.

Yeah. 'cause dem vikings, they be stoopid dum men. Watch bird fly, no watch stone shine! Ha.

CONSPIRICY.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ylSJu1O6vA&feature=related
proof my darlings. 0:58 onwards. This crystal stuff IMHO is really just fanciful nonsense.

And that's proof, because Stephen Fry says it, correct?

While it may be a real usage of birds, why would it disprove the crystal hypothesis?

They both supposedly served a different purpose and the crystal thing sounds really plausible. It's simple observation, not sodding quantum mechanics.

Not just because Stephen said it, they do have a very good team of researchers at the BBC. Maybe it'll be in a new QI episode, who knows. I wasn't trying to disprove it, I just said IMHO its more likely they used birds. Sorry if I came off as arrogant I didn't mean to sound that way.

While it's a very well-researched show, QI is far from infallible. I've known more than one occasion when they've been dead wrong, and Fry has even had to make a correction or two on the air.

I find this sunstone method very fascinating, and it goes a long way to explain just how the vikings managed to travel across seemingly impossible distances. Ravens would only be useful close to land, and in foggy conditions stars and sundials would be useless - I have no doubt that the vikings employed as many methods for navigation as possible to account for all kinds of weather conditions.

Reminds me of a special I saw on the Discovery channel when they did a special on the Vikings and the remaining Templars comming to America due to the Templar Purge during the 12 century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia

They're Phoenicians, I remember studying them in history. Very important in Malta's history.

Right. THAT special. It's a bit of a recurring theme with the Discovery and History channel, but it's mostly rubbish.

(unbelievably stupid speculations, faked finds, hokerrs falsifying evidence etc.)

It wasn't that he was a moron. He thought he had landed in India. He had never seen it before and when he arrived was sure he had made it to the Indies. When he actually landed in the Bahamas. Europe had yet to find out about the massive chunk of land between Asia and them.

Definitely, but that is about as close as they ever got to America

I would think that the indigneous persons living in the Americas discovered it first.