Ales Stenar sundial - with the leaning staff.

According to the constellation mythological description of the Edda poems the sungod Heimdall lived highest up in the dome of heaven, by the peak of the sun’s orbit. From here he constantly watched over the sanctuaries of both gods and men and the eternal course of time as well.
As the most powerful guardian of the world, Heimdall ruled over the cosmical course of events. Therefore he symbolised the divine power, which in the mythology held the staff, that was leaning towards the Pole-star in place, i.e. the huge worldpillar, which one thought connected the earth to the roof of heaven. With this staff in his hand, the sungod Heimdall undoubtedly has also been the symbolic prototype for the sunworshipping calendarpeople´s own sacred staff, i e the suntime´s true indicator at the heart of the Ales stenar sunship.

From the absolute centre of the sunship the people of the sun not only "counted" the 365 sundays.
With help of a 70 degrees leaning staff they also checked the suntime during the warm summermonths.

To keep track of the suntime during the brighter part of the solar year (between the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox), with aid of the shadow from a sunstaff, this has of course been just as important for the sunship´s time calculator as predicting the solar year months and markdays. But this has not been a simple task because the length of the days, then as nowadays, vary during a solar year, which in that way moves the reading of the sunshadow both forwards and backwards (during spring and summer) towards the quarterbound suntime rocks. The sunship´s timecalculator had to well knew the length of a day and night. Ales stenars gigantic sunship is an incredible proof that this without a doubt has been the case. The Ales stenars marking suntime rocks (44 during the summer), does not only mark and symbolise a calender year, but also a complete quarterdivided daylapse of 16 "väktar" (eyktir, a time of approximately 1,5 hours), in which the 12 sunguardians in the sundial marked the time of the year (at the summer solstice), when the days were longest and the sun was at its highest point in the sky.
From the center of the sunship and with these fundamental conditions one has been able to tell the suntime with good accuracy, thanks to the shadow which a sun-illuminated leaning staff (70 degrees) cast on the timegiving sunrocks in the sunguardians.
Bearing in mind the precise number and position of the suntimerocks, one can not rule out that there might have been a system of smallerscale timedividings in the sundials narrow shipflanks. For the sundialtime can be told in quarters from west to northwest, from northwest to north, and also from east to southeast if you like to.
The quarter is also significant for the precise timedifference, which today can be read through the true suntime in Als´ sunship. Between the sunguardians from southwest to northwest the sunshadow is about 15 minutes slow, while it between the quarters from northeast to southeast is 15 minute ahead. For the sunship´s timecalculator this slight timedifference has hardly had any significance, because one has from the beginning followed the path of the sunshadow in a fixed sunguardian schedule between the four cardinal points, which is clearly evident in the summaries and the photodocumentation. Furthermore the opposing suntimerocks in the quarters southwest to northwest and from northeast to southeast symbolised the calendarsun´s rises and sets, which for the people of the sun must have had a tremendously important magical meaning.

The sunship´s guardian classification:

The sunship has evidently not only served as one of the prehistoric age´s largest and most remarkable solar year calenders, but also as a first class sundial, by which the sunpeople very closely could follow the great sungod´s shining timewheel in the heavens.