We have not had the tools to measure Longitude 1 , upon which modern world time zones are based, for very long. The calculation of Longitude depends on having an extremely precise chronometer. Therefore it was only in the late Eighteenth century that advances in technology, in combination with the genius of John Harrison, allowed the making of time pieces precise enough to accurately calculate longitude aboard ship. For centuries seamen had been able to tell local time using a quadrant 2 or sextant 3, but without good chronometers could not know what time it was in at a reference longitude in, for instance, Greenwich England. 4 Simply knowing the local time is not enough to determine one's position east or west on the globe. However, once the problem of keeping accurate time was solved, it was not long before a standardised system of longitudinal meridians was created. The Earth surface was divided into 24 adjacent, equal and equatorially perpendicular wedges, called time zones, each one delineated by two meridians forming a hour angle of one hour at the poles. The mean solar time of the central meridian of each time zone was assigned by convention to all places within that time zone. 5

Neither accurate time pieces nor precise instruments to measure angular elevation were used by the Norse seamen who, with Leif Eiricksson the "Lucky" as captain, travelled west from Iceland and Greenland on voyages of discovery. Whether or not the Viking seamen actually used a sun-compass or sun-stone as is hinted in the Eddas is debated to this day. Recently in Greenland what some believe to be a sun-compass artifact was found: a wooden disk (solskuggjáfjöl: "sun shadow board") with a central hole through which a gnomon (central vertical stick) of a certain length is inserted. The gnomon then casts a shadow upon the horizontally held face of the disk, and the disk is rotated until the tip of the shadow touches an arc incised on the stone's face. One theory is that the inscribed arc shows the sun's daily path through the sky at a certain latitude and in a certain season (most likely summer, when voyages were made). Another hypothesis is that Norse seamen used this device as a primitive sextant to navigate by a technique known as comparative latitude. At noon each day the distance between the bottom of the sun's disk and the horizon is measured with the the solskuggjáfjöl. If one were on a northerly heading, the distance would decrease each day, and if on a southerly heading the distance would increase. A common Norse navigational technique was to sail due west from a point on, say, the coast of Norway until land was raised. By experience, seamen knew that they could reach a point on the coast of Greenland if they kept on a heading due west. The solskuggjáfjöl would have aided in this.

Since in the northern latitudes the sun is due south at noon, and at night in clear weather the pole star indicates due north, it was possible to determine fairly accurately the directions of east and west, but without timepieces it was as yet impossible to know one's longitude. The figuring of distance was more a matter of experiential knowledge of prevailing winds, ocean currents, and how many days sailing it generally took to reach a destination. In some more shallow locations Norse seamen could sound for ocean depth using a weighted line. A decrease in depth indicated that one was nearing land. Floating vegetation, sea birds and the presence of whales were also signs that landfall was near. Some seamen say they can smell land, and if you are within a few miles this is possible. The ability to recognise particular headlands was of vital importance, for instance those of the Faroe and Shetland Islands. Banks of fog on the horizon are also indications of land, as fog builds over landmasses at sea. Such seafaring lore was passed down from father to son through the generations.

Another theory, put forth by the Danish archeologist Thorkild Ramskou in 1967, is that Norse seamen used a crystal called Iceland Spar (cordierite or optical calcite) to orient themselves in fog or under light cloud cover. The crystal polarises the sky light. One looks through this "sunstone", turning it until the colour of the light seen through it changes from blue to pale yellow, which indicates it points towards the sun. This technique works particularly well in the far north, because at high latitudes the sun remains longer near the horizon, which produces the best sky light polarisation pattern for navigational purposes. Whether the Norse used the sunstone or not, they were unquestionably extremely skilled seamen, with intimate knowledge of sea, sky, currents, prevailing winds and landmarks. Like all early seamen they primarily navigated by hugging coastlines. In ancient times, there were few who ever travelled far enough south or north of their birthplace latitude to notice a difference in the length of day. However, some adventurous Vikings did so, travelling south to North Africa and far southeast into what is now modern Russia. While sailing west and south, their skill, courage and luck eventually got them as far as the northeast coast of North America, to discover the land they named Vinland "Land of Grapes" in the year 1000 CE.

Today, a thousand years later, with our super-accurate nuclear clocks and orbiting global positioning satellites (see World Links below), it is easy for us to know where on the face of the Earth we are, and what time it is in any place. For Pagans of old, time was a more flexible concept. Time was broken down into obvious units of night and day, with dawn, midday, sunset, and midnight being the basic divisions. The time of day was measured for millennia by finding the hour angle between the current position of the Sun and the highest point above the horizon reached by the Sun each day (noon or 12:00). This measure of time gives the true local solar time, as is shown on sundials. The waxing and waning of the moon's disk was, next to the Sun, the most obvious natural clock known to the ancients. There is much evidence that Moon phases were observed for purposes of time keeping by people the world over. Cults of the lunar God or, more commonly, Goddess exist in every culture; often the Moon was seen as the ruler of time. This belief is reflected in the word sublunary,"below the moon", meaning the Earthly plane of matter that is bound by time, and superlunary "above the moon", meaning the timeless celestial sphere. As early as the Neolithic period, women noticed the correspondence between their 28 day menstrual cycle and the moon. Women are credited by many scholars as the creators of the first calendars, which they used to keep track of their menses. In one neolithic "Venus" sculpture found in Europe, an ample-bodied female figure holds aloft a crescent shaped horn, displaying thirteen equally spaced marks. Some archeologists have speculated this horn represents the thirteen lunar months. From the moon ancient people derived the thirteen month lunar year, which later solar calendars divided into twelve thirty-day months with a few sacred "intercalary days" added at the end to make up the deficit. In Scandinavia and England carved primstaves (from prim, "new moon", and stave, "a long piece of wood"). clogs ("a carved piece of wood"), or rimstock ("calendar"). Examples of these have been found dating to around 1200 CE, but it is quite possible that they represent an ancient Heathen tradition. These staves were used to correlate the lunar and the solar calendars. These primstaves were most commonly long sticks, with one side for winter ( October 14 - April 14) and one for summer ( April 14- October 14). The ancient Norse usually reckoned time by half years, but some primstaves are four-sided, dividing the year into quarters, and there are rare primstave "books" of seven flat staves thirteen sides of which represented a year of lunar months. The seven day weeks seem to be of primary importance, and the first seven runes of the FUTHARK were used to represent them on primstaves. In Northern Europe the seven days of the solar week were named for the Gods and Goddesses: Monday for Mani the Moon God, Tuesday is Tiw's day, Wednesday is Woden's Day, Thursday is Thor's, Friday is Freia's or Frigg's, Saturday -- a Latin exception, is for Saturn (laugardagr, or "washing day" in old Norse), and Sunday for Sunna the Sun Goddess.Years were calculated by the annual flooding of rivers, like the Nile, by the rising of certain non-circumpolar stars such as Sirius, and by the position north or south on the horizon of the rising or setting sun. Naturally, the seasons were of vital importance, and people as far back as the Neolithic era devised clever ways to calculate the solstices and equinoxes using alignments of natural topographical features, and later, alignments of carefully positioned objects in the landscape. Stonehenge is believed to be such an astronomical calendar, and is by its latitude ideally positioned for solar observations.

Even in today's much smaller world of rapid transit, we can most easily and freely communicate together as a global community though the use of the Internet. With free instantaneous communication linking the entire planet, there is a new need to keep track of global time differences. This is of great relevance to Heathenism / Paganism worldwide, as the Internet gives even widely scattered members of these minority Earth-based religions a way to build community. The web of the Internet also allows us to educate the world about our religion. Asatru and other Pagan religions are growing rapidly, not only in Europe and the USA, but in Australia and South America. If you use IRC or a messenger chat, you will probably encounter time zone differences. For all those of you out there who like to know what the local time is for your Heathen friends all over Midgard, I present the Current World Time table. The clocks have been corrected for Daylight savings time.
If you have any comments or suggestions, please E-mail me.

1. Angular distance east or west on the Earth's surface, measured by the angle (expressed in degrees up to 180° in either direction) which the meridian passing through the position to be measured makes with the standard or Prime Meridian, which is an imaginary line running North to South through Greenwich, England. On a globe the longitude lines are the ones running from pole to pole.

2. An instrument for measuring altitudes or angular elevations in astronomy and navigation: it consists of a graduated arc of 90° with a movable index and a sight.

3. An instrument used in measuring the angular distance between objects: used in determining position by measurement of the angle between a heavenly body and the horizon or another heavenly body.

4. Greenwich England is the location of the Prime (first) Meridian (0° Longitude) from which longitude is measured both east and west. Thus it is the standard for world time.

5. There are 25 integer World Time Zones from -12 through 0 (GMT) to +12. Each one is 15° of Longitude as measured East and West from the Prime Meridian of the World at Greenwich, England. Each Time Zone is measured relative to the Prime Meridian. There are both civilian designations (which are typically three letter abbreviations--e.g. EST) for most time zones, as well as military designations. These use each letter of the alphabet (except 'j') and are known by their phonetic equivalent. E.G. Greenwich Mean Time (civilian) or Z = Zulu (military and aviation). Here is a time zone table from the Greenwich Observatory site that shows world time zones + or - GMT, Civilian, and Military designations.