CARVED STONE DISKS UNEARTHED IN UKRAINE MAY BE VIKING SUN COMPASSES:

 

Disk from Listven, Ukraine, pyrophyllite slate. Photograph by O. Veremeychyk, Figure 1.

And, while we are on the subject of carved stone disks - - the excavation of a number of interesting carved stone disks in Ukraine has been interpreted as having possible connections with Viking navigation tools.

Castle Hill, Liubech, Ukraine. Photograph by O. Veremeychyk, Figure 2.

“A total of eight pyrophyllite slate objects, sourced from outcrops near Ovruch (Ukraine), were analyzed. These disks have been previously interpreted as various items, including calendars, craft tools such as needle sharpeners and polishing stones, as well as components of hand-operated bow drills. Through measurements and surface analysis, three stone disks (Kyiv, Listven, Liubech) exhibit similarities to Vikings’ sun compasses, with a limited number of examples found in Greenland and the Baltic Sea region. The analyzed objects were dated to the period between the late 12th and mid-13^th centuries. The origin of the raw material suggests local manufacturing.” (Veremeychyk and Antowska-Goraczniak 2024:383) I seriously doubt ‘needle sharpeners’ or ‘polishing stones’. There are no apparent results of such activities – remember the shapes of sharpening grooves as a form of rock art. A bow drill weight is more possible, or perhaps even the weight from a drop spindle for spinning wool. All in all, however, the stone disks seem more like known Viking ‘solar compasses’ than any of these other possibilities.

Uunartoq disc, Greenland. Image from researchgate.com.

“Three of the disks, in particular, had characteristics reminiscent of Viking solar compasses: the central holes and engraved radial patterns may have allowed for temporary gnomonic lines to be drawn with erasable materials like chalk or charcoal. This flexibility would have been indispensable for observing and adapting to new latitudes as the user moved. Yet the lack of permanent markings of the equinox and solstice lines, common in Viking solar compasses, still gives one pause for skepticism. Supporting this hypothesis, the researchers pointed out that the diameter and design of the Ukranian disks are very similar to those of navigational instruments found at Woline in Poland and in Greenland. Such parallels hint at the possibility that the pyrophyllite disks could represent a local adaptation of Viking navigation instruments.” (Radley 2025) The historic Rus region had major interactions with, and cultural influences from Scandinavian Vikings. Although these stones were not recovered from locations near open ocean waters it is likely that Viking trading vessels would have routinely carried their accustomed navigational aids just in case, and Viking traders are known to have explored all the navigable river systems in that area.

Wolin Stone, Wolin, Poland. Internet image, public domain.

Viking presence in Rus can be dated to the ninth century AD. “The close connection between the Rus and the Norse is confirmed both by extensive Scandinavian settlement in Bel)arus, Russia, and Ukraine and by Slavic influences in the Swedish language. Though the dabate over the origin of the Rus’ remains politically charged, there is broad agreement that if the proto-Rus’ were indeed originally Norse, they were quickly nativized, adopting Slavic languages and other cultural practices. This position, roughly representing a scholarly consensus (at least outside nationalist historiography), was summarized by the historian, F. Donald Logan, “in 839, the Rus’ were Swedes; in 1043 the Rus’ were Slavs.” (Wikipedia)

The Greenland example of a disc had been discovered in 1948. “The remains of the supposed compass – known as the Uunartoq disc – were found in Greenland in 1948 in an 11^th-century convent. Though some researchers originally argued it was simply a decorative object, other researchers have suggested the disc was an important navigational tool that the Vikings would have used in their roughly 1,600-mile-long (2,500 kilometers) trek from Norway to Greenland.” (Poppick 2014)

The Vikings were inveterate travelers, having reached Greenland, Iceland, and North America by sailing the open ocean. They also reached Constantinople, not only by sailing down the Atlantic coast of Europe and through the Mediterranean, but by transiting rivers in the area known as Rus and through Slavic territories in eastern Europe.

Disks recognized hereto. Wooden - a,c; stone - b; whale bone - d. (Illustrated by O. Antowska-Gorączniak after a – Jagodziński 2015, fig. 37; b – Thrislund 1987, 27; c – Stanisławski 2000, fig. 4, 5; d – Jagodziński 2015, fig. 39) Fig. 5 from Veremeychyk and  Antowska-Goraczniak, 2024. 

“In the early medieval period, the utilization and advancement of  navigational instruments were ascribed to Scandinavians, who were believed to have been able to use such tools not only in coastal sailing but also undertake long voyages across open seas, eliminating the need to constantly observe the shoreline. Both constellations and the Sun played crucial roles in sea navigation during this era. Compasses utilizing sunlight have been recognized as a significant technological advancement of the time. Scandinavians, with their vessel construction, navigational skills, and compass usage, successfully reached distant islands in the northern Atlantic, such as Greenland, Newfoundland, and the shores of present-day Canada. The sagas also provide limited information on sea voyages and directional settings, indirectly suggesting the use of navigational instruments. In favorable weather conditions, a navigator ‘could then discern the quarters of heaven’, indicating the ability to find direction, and the radial lines on the disks might have facilitated such quarter division, aiding in staying on course.” (Veremeychyk and Antowska-Goraczniak 2024:395) Of course, navigational tools were not needed for coastal sailing, but between such compasses and Viking ‘sun stones’ they could navigate their longships across great distances of open ocean. ‘Sun stones’ were a form of calcite crystal known as Icelandic spar with unique optical properties that allow the user to detect the position of the sun, even on a totally overcast or foggy day to help navigate at sea. Icelandic spar is also a natural polarizer.

Historic core of Rus' territory. Map by professor A. Motsya. Internet image, public domain.

“The pyrophyllite slate disks, as discussed above, likely originated as a local product, manufactured in the territories of southern Rus’ given the proximity of the raw material outcrops. However, if their function as compasses is acknowledged (a plausible scenario), it can be speculated that the inhabitants of the region acquired knowledge about such instruments from the Scandinavians, who had a presence in the area from the early 10^th century. Considering the locations where these stone disks were discovered, particularly Kyiv, Listven, and Liubech situated along the significant communication and trade route ‘from Varangians to the Greeks’ it is conceivable that the skill of using navigational instruments, such as sun compasses, in this part of Europe might have been imparted by Scandinavian traders and sailors.” (Veremeychyk and Antowska-Goraczniak 2024:395-396) Another piece of evidence that the stone disks might be a product of Viking influence is the locations wherein they were found. Viking traders explored the ‘southern Rus’ area and even reached Constantinople by following waterways through that region. With their ‘sun stones’ and ‘solar compasses’ Viking sailors could determine the position of the sun which gave them the ability to make their amazing voyages. I believe that even if they were only traversing a river in southern ‘Rus’ their navigational instruments would have been on board the boat as standard equipment. Just because they were found a long distance from the sea does not mean that they are not Viking navigational instruments.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Poppick, Laura, 2014, Forget GPS: Medieval Compass Guided Vikings After Sunset, 25 March 2014,  LiveScience online, https://www.lovescience.com. Accessed online 1 May 2025

Radley, Dario, 2025, Medieval stone disks found in Ukraine could be Viking solar compasses, 11 January 2025, Archaeology Magazine online, archaeologymag.com. Accessed online 12 February 2025.

Veremeychyk, Olena, and Olga Antowska-Goraczniak, 2024, New medieval sun compasses? The problem of the function of stone disks from southern Rus, Sprawozdania Archeologiczne 76(2), pp. 383-398. DOI:10.23858/SA76.2024.2.3290. Accessed online 12 February 2025.

Wikipedia, Kievan Rus’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27. Accessed online 11 June 2025.

 

A SMALL STONE CARVED WITH A VIKING SHIP MAY BE THE OLDEST PICTURE IN ICELAND

Carved sandstone showing Viking ship in full sail, from Stöð, Iceland. Credit, The Landnámsskáli group in Stöð.

Iceland had no native indigenous population before European discovery and settlement by the Norse in the second half of the 9^th century, approximately 874 CE. Now archaeologists have found a small round piece of sandstone carved with a picture of a Viking ship. “The stone was found at the archaeological site of Stöð in East Iceland in a longhouse that is believed to predate the permanent settlement of the island.” (Ciric 2023) This means, of course, that there should be no prehistoric rock art.

Viking longhouse excavation, Stöð, Iceland. Photograph Bjarni Einarsson.

“The first exploratory digs at Stöð were made in 2015 and archaeologists have returned every summer since to continue excavating the site, where they first focused their efforts on a settlement-era longhouse. ‘The longhouse is among the largest found in Iceland, 31.4m [103 ft] long. In Scandinavia, only chieftains’ farms had longhouses larger than 28m [92 ft]. It is also the richest longhouse ever excavated in Iceland. We have found 92 beads and 29 silver objects, including Roman and Middle Eastern coins,’ Bjarni F. Einarsson told Iceland Review for a 2020 article on the archaeological site.” (Ciric 2023) This provides a striking illustration as to how cosmopolitan the Vikings really were. Even in this out-of-the-way place there were artifacts from varying cultures throughout much of the known world.

 One of the longhouses excavated at the site, Stöð, Iceland. Photograph Bjarni Einarsson.

“What makes the site still more significant is that archaeologists discovered an even older longhouse underneath the settlement-era longhouse, estimated to date back to around 800 AD, some 75 years before permanent settlement of Iceland. The most striking feature of the older structure is the conspicuous absence of the bones of domesticated animals. ‘My theory is that the older longhouse was a seasonal hunting camp, operated by a Norwegian chief who outfitted voyages to Iceland to gather valuables and bring them back across the sea to Norway,’ Bjarni told Iceland Review. One of these valuables may have been walrus ivory: in 2019 DNA analyses and radiocarbon dating confirmed that Iceland was previously inhabited by a North Atlantic subspecies of walrus, now extinct.” (Ciric 2023)

Much of the ivory used in Medieval Europe was walrus ivory supplied through trade with the Vikings. “New finds of walrus bone and ivory in early Viking Age contexts in Iceland suggest exploitation of nearby walrus for meat, hide and ivory that appears to have driven local Icelandic walrus populations to extinction.

Current evidence suggests that walrus hunting and ivory extraction was a significant activity for early settlers in Iceland, and was probably not limited only to the best-known areas of the south-west coast.

The new excavations and zooarchaeological work appear to support the notion of an initial settlement of at least parts of Iceland driven and ‘financed’ by walrus hunting and connections to Viking Age exchange networks.

As a preliminary conclusion it seems that we can now refine the ‘trading hypothesis’ by verifying or disproving that walrus ivory in north-west European exchange networks may be Icelandic c. 850–1000 CE, but increasingly Greenlandic from 1000 CE onwards.” (Frei et al. 2015)

So Ciric (2023) is proposing that this earlier pre-colonization  longhouse/hunting camp may have existed to hunt walrus ivory before the Iceland walrus was driven to extinction by overhunting.

But the subject of this column is the small engraved piece of sandstone found in the walls of the older longhouse.

“The small but remarkable sandstone featuring a Viking ship with its sails unfurled was found in the walls of the older longhouse, Bjarni told reporters. Such carvings of ships, made in bone, wood, and stone, are fairly common artefacts in the Nordic countries, he stated, but this is the first ever found in Iceland and is likely the oldest picture of any kind ever found on the island.

Trade beads, Stöð, Iceland. Photograph Bjarni Einarsson.

This spring, archaeologists used survey equipment to scan a larger area around Stöð and found indications of still more structures and boat burial sites. While there is much that is unknown about the early settlement of Iceland, the amount of beads, coins, and silver found at Stöð certainly suggests significant wealth and trade.” (Ciric 2023)

Hnefaltafl game board and pieces, Online image, public domain.

Wherever they roamed, whether for trade, colonization, or raiding, Vikings carried with them an important element of their culture, the board game known as hnefaltafl.

Carved stone hnefaltafl game board, Online image, public domain.

"Over the past 150 years, excavators have unearthed large quantities of gaming material from Viking boat burials. Dating from the 7th to the 11th centuries, most of it consists of checker-like pieces constructed from glass, whale bone, or amber. These pieces range from ordinary discs to ornate figurines and are usually uniform in shape and size, save for one prominent king piece, known as the hnefi. The archaeologist Mark Hall recently chronicled the contents of 36 burials containing such pieces in a 2016 article for the European Journal of Archaeology. This material, he says, indicates the game was much more than a frivilous way to kill time between raids. 'Its presence in these burials suggests it was an aspect of everyday life that was desirable to see continued,' he says, as well as 'a significant element that helped define the status of the deceased." (Crown 2018) In other words hnefaltafl seems to have had a ritual or ceremonial element as well as just recreational. Between its recreational popularity, and its ritual/ceremonial importance it seems to have been ubiquitous in the Viking world.

"That archaeologists and game historians can confidently make such claims is a testimony to more than 100 years of painstaking research. Indeed, until the early 20th century, few scholars differentiated hnefatafl from other contemporary board games. Early published editions of the Sagas relied upon wildly disparate translations of medieval Iclandic texts,, with also confused the matter. Because the oldest extant copies of these documents often refer to the gam as 'Tafl' - a Germanic word denoting 'board' or table'  - translators regularly mistook references to it for generic allusions to chess." (Crown 2018)

Carved sandstone showing Viking ship in full sail, from Stöð, Iceland. Credit, The Landnámsskáli group in Stöð.

Early assumptions that hnefatafl somehow developed from contact with cultures that played chess have been proven wrong, indeed, some claim that the Viking game preceded chess. In any case, their origins are hard to pin down and they were played side-by-side in some cultures.

"Tafl games (pronounced [tavl], also known as hnefatafl games) are a family of ancient Northern European strategy board games played on a checkered or latticed gameboard with two armies of uneven numbers. Most probably they are based upon the Roman game Ludus latrunculorum." (Wikipedia)

So, we have a very early Viking residence in Icelend, apparently there some time before the actual period of settlement by Europeans, and in excavating it a small piece of sandstone was found hiddenn in the wall as it it were important enough to keep concealed. It is my suggestion that perhaps the small piece is a prized game piecer, and logically the game would have been hnefaltafl, the Viking board game. Now, being made from sandstone it would not have been valued so much for its material, but Vikings were very superstitious by today's standards. Maybe this piece was prized for the number of games it won, much like a boy playing marbles today prizes his winning shooter almost superstitiously.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Ciric, Jelena, 2023, Stone Carved With Viking Ship May Be Oldest Picture Ever Found in Iceland, 15 June 2023, https://www.icelandreview.com. Accessed online 17 June 2023.

Crown, Daniel, 2018, The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture, 26 June 2018, https://atlasobscura.com. Accessed online 24 June 2023.

Frei, Karin M. et al., 2015, Was it for walrus? Viking Age settlement and medieval walrus ivory trade in Iceland and Greenland, Taylor & Francis, ISSN 0043-8243. Accessed online 24 June 2023.

Wikipedia, Tafl Games, https://en.wikipedia.org. Accessed online 25 June 2023.

ANOTHER SUPPOSED NORTH AMERICAN RUNE STONE:

Noman's Land Island Rune

Stone, Massachusetts.

Every so often, here in North America, we run into an inscription on a stone that is claimed to be done in authentic Viking runes and proves that they were here hundreds of years before the discovery of the Americas by Columbus. The most famous of these, of course, is the Kensington Rune Stone. This column is about a stone on an island off of Martha's Vineyard, the Noman's Land Rune Stone.

Noman's Land Island, off southern
tip of Martha's Vineyard,
Massachusetts.
Image: Google Earth.

The small, uninhabited island called Noman's Land is about three miles off of the southwest corner of Martha's Vineyard. It was previously owned by the U.S. Navy which used it for a bombing range (unexploded ordnance is believed to remain there). It has been owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since 1975, and is now used as a wildlife refuge, primarily for migratory birds. (Hickey 2007)

"In 1602, during the British ship Concord's exploration of Cape Cod, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold named Nomans Land "Martha's Vineyard" after his eldest daughter, Martha. However, the name was later transferred to the larger island currently known as Martha's Vinyard, which is located northeast of Nomans Land. The island was probably named "Nomans Land" after a Martha's Vineyard Wampanoag sachem, Tequenoman, who had jurisdiction over the island when the English came in the early 17th century: named from TequeNoman's Land." (Wikipedia)

The stone is reportedly located a little way off of the beach of the island and is usually obscured by water but is apparently exposed at low tide.

Closeup of the inscription,

Noman's Land Island Rune

Stone, Massachusetts.

"Joshua Crane, the former owner of Noman's Land, first discovered the strange lettering on the large black rock late one afternoon when the setting sun sank low on the horizon on afternoon in 1926. Mr. Crane took the oldest known photographs of the inscription in 1926, which were published in a book by Edward Gray titled Leif Eriksson, Discoverer of America." (Hickey 2007)

Gray "sent his photos to some experts at Oslo University. What the professors came back with was certainly interesting - and had the potential to throw three centuries of accepted history on its head. Once deciphered the text read, "Liif Iriksson, MI." (Berke 2015) In this text, the MI is taken to be the Roman numerals for 1001 (the supposed year of the inscription). This mixing of runes and Latin script was known in Britain after AD 700 (where Anglo-Saxon runes and Latin numerals were sometimes used together). "The characters were generally replaced by the Latin alphabet as the cultures that had used runes underwent Christianization, by approximately 700 AD in central Europe and 1100 AD in northern Europe." (Wikipedia) This suggests that it would be contradictory for an authentic Northman's Viking inscription from the year 1001 to contain a Latin notation, and since none of the records seem to suggest that Leif Ericsson's expedition included Anglo-Saxons, that would seem to settle it.

"The stone was later examined by E. B. Delbarre in the New England Quarterly in 1935 and again by Hjamar P. Holland in the same publication in 1944, both of whom dismissed the rock as a hoax." (Hickey 2007)

If one plugs the name Leif Ericson into a modern English to Runic translator, the results come back fairly convincingly like the inscription with slight differences for the different spelling (it actually translates to Liif Iriksson as noted above). This would be close enough to convince me - if the ancient Vikings of a thousand years ago had spelled their words the same way that we do in modern English. Different languages do not always share all of the same sounds and pronunciations. This, in itself, would be enough to make me suspicious of any supposed Runic inscription that translates so handily into English.

Of course, now that we know of L'anse aux Meadows and other possibly Viking sites in North America there is much less of a motive to have to believe in dubious inscriptions to prove the early Viking presence. In this case, I fear I have to classify myself with the doubters and proclaim the Noman's Land Rune Stone a hoax.

REFERENCES:

Berke, Jeremy

2015 Object of Intrigue: The Possibly Viking Runestone of Massachusetts, https://atlasobscura.com/articles/the-vikings-of-noman-s-land-island

Hickey, Jim

2007 Revisiting Viking Myth on Island, Noman's Expedition Is Planned, The Vineyard Gazette, Edgartown

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomans_Land_(Massachusetts)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes