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Re: Ancient Viking ATMers
On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Justin Kelly wrote:
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_702000/702478.stm
>
> The vikings are now recognized as having lenses. Once thought to be
> ornaments, they have been tested and are of exellent quality. They are
> eliptical, best exanple being 2 inches in diameter and one inch thick, and
> made of "rock-crystal". - SNIP- ... fires....navigation - SNIP -
Well, it is in fact the Norweigan Vikings that provided
the word "window" from "Vind Ogon", meaning wind-eye. I
would hope they used glass and not just a hole in the
wall to stare through. Polar breezes are really painful
to the eyes. It would also make sense that
these were simple viewers for doors to see who is
knocking outside your door. Keep in mind this is still
very common in this part of the world and represents a
very old tradition in door manufacturing that could
date back to the Vikings. I doubt these are ornamental and
I doubt they were used for making fires since there
were easier techniques for these things. Keep in mind that
it is cloudy and raining or snowing here throughout the
year (Scandinavia and Iceland are effectively rain
forests). Also, it is dark half the year up here. It
could also have been used as a simple spotting scope
to check out the scene on the beaches from the boats.
>From viking artwork, I think it is fairly easy to
deduce what they were looking at....
So why do I say they did not use this for navigation...
simple.... the Vikings were too dumb for this! If they
knew anything at all about navigating, they would have
known that the warmth is in the direction of the Sun.
The Vikings kept sailing North, away from the Sun and many
froze to death as a result. Some say they went
fishing. The fish up here are not so appatizing. Nope...
I say these lenses were for beach browsing and peering
through doors. But if you want to say this was for
navigation, I guess you could say that the Vikings
remained here because of poor navigation equipment.
If you want to say it waws for making fires, a lot
of them froze to death, if it was ornamental, they
clearly were not very observant in seeing the obvious
applications for this.
Cheers,
Dominic
North 59 37' 30"
East 17 48' 10"