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2022 מועד קיץ - 41 - פרק ראשון- אנגלית
Text II (Questions 18-22)
(1) Today's travelers have access to a wide variety of navigational aids, from magnetic
compasses to GPS devices. A thousand years ago, the Norse people of southern
Scandinavia, commonly known as the Vikings, had none of these tools at their disposal.
Yet they sailed thousands of kilometers from their homeland all the way to Greenland.
(5) While other sailors of the time steered their ships by noting the position of the sun and
the stars, such direct observations would have been impossible for the Vikings during
the stormy weather typical of the regions through which they sailed. How then did the
Vikings achieve their formidable navigational feats?
The answer is alluded to in the collection of legends known as the Icelandic Sagas,
(10) our principal source of information about Viking society. A few of these sagas mention
a sólarsteinn, or sunstone, that was used by navigators to ascertain the position of the
sun when it was not visible. The Hrafins Saga, for example, in describing a voyage
made by King Olaf, relates: "The weather was thick and stormy. . . . The king looked
about and saw no blue sky. . . . then the king took the sunstone and held it up, and he
(15) saw where [the sun] beamed from the stone."
In the second half of the twentieth century, researchers suggested that the sunstones
described in the sagas might have been natural crystals like Iceland spar, which would
have been readily available to the Vikings. These crystals have a property called
birefringence: when a ray of light passes through them, it is split into two separate rays,
(20) one brighter than the other. As a person rotates the crystal, changing the angle at which
the light hits it, the relative brightness of the two beams changes. When the beams are
equally bright, it means that the crystal is directly aligned with the sun. Researchers
surmise that the Vikings used sunstones in this way to navigate.
While this hypothesis has been well received by the scientific community and has
(25) sparked the imagination of the general public, archaeologists have yet to find Iceland
spar or similar crystals among Viking shipwrecks. Therefore, the theory remains merely
that: a description not of what the Vikings did, but of what they might have done.
Questions
18. An appropriate title for this text would be -
(1) Sunstones: The Key to Viking Navigation?
(2) Viking Voyages: From Scandinavia to Greenland
(3) The Icelandic Sagas: A Record of Viking Voyages
(4) Iceland Spar: The Vikings' Greatest Discovery
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