Sundial

Sundial – the shadow tells the hour

Valheim has no clock, but it has a very honest sun. This mod adds three ways to read it:

• the Sundial: a stone pedestal with an engraved bronze dial plate, for a garden or a doorstep;
• the Sun circle: a paved stone circle almost ten metres across, with a standing stone in the middle and a ring of hour stones. Build it as the heart of your base;
• the Ring dial (Bauernring): a bronze ring on a cord for your pocket. Hold it up against the sun anywhere, on the road or at sea.

The sundial and the sun circle come in granite, black marble and grausten, to match your hall.

You build the dials, align them to north and then read the time from the shadow. You can align them the way people did for thousands of years or quickly by eye. There is no magic clock: the reading comes from the light that really falls on the stones.

| | Where | Cost | |---|---|---| | Sundial | Hammer → Misc, workbench | 12 Stone, 2 Bronze | | Sun circle | Hammer → Misc, workbench | 80 Stone, 4 Bronze | | … in black marble | Hammer → Misc, stonecutter | 12 / 80 Black marble, 2 / 4 Bronze | | … in grausten | Hammer → Misc, stonecutter | 12 / 80 Grausten, 2 / 4 Bronze | | Ring dial | Forge | 1 Bronze |

Reading it

Look at the dial and it tells you where the shadow lies, for example:

> Shadow on III – a quarter past three in the afternoon · Nón

• E: read it closely. Your Viking says the time out loud.
• Readings go to the quarter hour, like a real dial, with the Old Norse eykt (the eight marks of the Norse day: Ótta, Miðr morgunn, Dagmál, Hádegi, Nón, Miðaftann, Náttmál, Miðnætti).
• By moonlight the shadow is still there. The moon stands opposite the sun, so the scale reads twelve hours early, and the dial knows it.
• No sun, no shadow. In rain and storms the sun is hidden. At dawn and dusk it is too low. Under a roof or a tree the dial lies in the shade.

The sun circle

A standing stone carries a bronze ball on its tip. Valheim's sun runs the same path every day, so at any hour the stone's shadow points the same way, day after day. The thirteen hour stones, from VI in the west through XII in the north to VI in the east, stand exactly where the shadow points at their hour. Their numerals are cut into the side that faces the stone. The southern half, where the shadow never falls, is closed by low boulders.

The circle is laid out the way a real one would be. First come the floor and the standing stone. Then you find north. Only then are the hour stones raised. They rise out of the ground one after another, starting with XII.

Building it on open ground levels the earth beneath it and clears the grass, the way a hoe would. On a floor above the ground it leaves the terrain alone. The levelled ground stays if you remove the circle. A circle built right beside another one levels less far, so it leaves its neighbour's ground alone. Switch the levelling off with LevelGround = false.

Three kinds of stone

• Granite: weathered grey stone with a little moss, for the meadows.
• Black marble: polished, almost black stone with white veins. On the sun circle its numerals are gilded.
• Grausten: the dark, pitted stone of the Ashlands, with ash in its joints.

They differ only in their looks and cost. A dial is still made for the sky of the place where it stands, whatever its stone.

The ring dial (Bauernring)

Farmers and travellers carried these for centuries: a bronze ring with a small hole, hung from a cord. Put it in your hotbar and use it. Your Viking holds it up against the sun, and a close-up shows the ring:

• it swings on its cord for a few seconds and settles;
• a beam of sunlight comes in through the hole, and its spot of light falls on the hours engraved inside;
• it tells you where the spot stands and what time that means: "The spot of light stands at IX · III – the sun is in the east – nine o'clock in the morning".

It works anywhere and needs no north, because it measures how high the sun is, not where. That makes it honest in an old way too:

• One mark serves two hours. The sun is as high at nine as at three, so the marks read IX · III. Which one it is you can tell from the sun, in the east or in the west.
• Vague around noon. The sun hardly climbs near noon, so the spot hardly moves. Between about eleven and one the ring only says around noon.
• Made for one sky. It is engraved for 45° north, the sky of most lands. In the Mistlands and the Ashlands it reads wrong, and it says so.
• It needs sunlight: not under a roof, not in rain, not at night.

Use it again to put it away. It also goes away when you walk off.

The real thing

Valheim's sun turns at a steady rate about a celestial pole due north, every day:

• it rises due east at 06:00;
• it stands due south at noon;
• it sets due west at 18:00.

It is the sky of the equinox. How high the pole stands depends on the biome:

| Where | Pole height (latitude) | |---|---| | Meadows, Black Forest, Swamp, Mountains, Plains, Ocean | 45° | | Mistlands | 30° | | Ashlands | 55° (changes with the weather) | | Deep North | changes with the weather |

A real sundial only works at the latitude it was made for, and so do these. Each dial is made for the sky of the biome it is built in.

• Sundial: the gnomon's edge rises at the latitude, and the hour lines are engraved with the classic formula tan θ = sin φ · tan t.
• Sun circle: the hour stones stand where a vertical gnomon's shadow points, tan A = tan t / sin φ. On this sky the tip of the shadow walks a straight line from west to east every day.

Under the sky it was made for, an aligned dial reads the time to the minute.

Aligning it: once, with two equal shadows