Norse Gods Blogfest: Naglfar, the Ship made from Dead Men's Nails

Today I'm participating in the Norse Gods blogfest. Wanting to be a bit different, I'm not going to talk about a deity per se, but a magical ship called Naglfar ("Nail Ship").

The Norse envisioned the end of the world as a titanic battle between Gods and the forces of Surtr, which included giants, rival gods, and various other fell beings such as the giant wolf Fenrir.

Sailing against the gods is the ship Naglfar, captained by the trickster god Loki and made entirely from the fingernails and toenails of dead men. It's a vast ship carrying hordes of warriors. In this apocalyptic battle many of the gods are killed, the world is consumed by fire and then flooded, and then rises from the waves fresh and new. Some gods remain to rule over this new land.

Only two humans are going to survive that particular era in human history, a sort of Norse Adam and Eve who will repopulate the land. The Prose Edda warns us to make sure to trim the nails of the dead to keep the enemies of the gods from completing Naglfar, but since it's all fated to happen anyway, I don't see how we can stop it!

Below is a shot of the Tullstorp Runestone from Sweden, showing the wolf Fenrir and the ship Naglfar.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Medieval Mondays: Sunstone found in English shipwreck

In a previous post I talked about the Viking sunstone, a legendary crystal that could detect the location of the Sun on cloudy days. This, of course, would be a boon to navigation in the age before GPS.

Sunstones are mentioned in some Viking sagas and historians have theorized they were double-refracting crystals such as cordierite, tourmaline, or calcite, which are common in Scandinavia. These crystals only allow light through them that's polarized in certain directions and thus appear darker or lighter depending on the polarization of the light behind it. While the Sun may be blocked by clouds, it's still sending out a concentration of polarized light that can be detected by the crystal as it's moved around.

But that's only a theory. No sunstone has ever been found. . .until now.

A team of French archaeologists studying artifacts from a British ship that sunk in 1592 found a rectangular block of Iceland spar calcite crystal, a type known for its double-refracting properties. The wreck was near Alderney island in the English Channel.

You can see the sunstone in this picture, next to a pair of dividers that may have been used for navigation. Both items were found close together in the wreck.

It's interesting that the sunstone was found on a ship dating centuries after the Viking era. It looks like these things were more popular than anyone ever suspected.

Photo courtesy Alderney Society.