When our Norwegian ancestors wished to navigate in the open sea they could find their bearings by the Sun or stars if the sky was not overcast. In foggy weather they used the sólaisteinn or sunstone, ‘a stone with which one could see where the sun was in the heavens’. A knife blade will do equally well as may be seen from Fig. 1. If you place the point of the knife on your thumb nail, as shown in the figure, on a sunny day you can easily see the shadow it casts; turning the blade a little one way or the other the shadow widens, but when the knife edge points towards the sun the shadow is reduced to a narrow line.