I used to have a little Java app on an old pre-smartphone which drew a sundial on the screen; point the little arrow at the sun, and the big arrow would point north. You told it roughly where you were and it used the phone's click to figure out where the sun should be.

It worked really well.

...I'd say that modern phones with internal compasses have obsoleted this technique, but given how unreliable phone compasses are, I wonder whether I should try producing an Android version.

Hm, anecdotally I have seen this trick printed in so many kid magazines and books that I thought everybody knew it. Nevertheless, I have never had a need for it.

I remember reading about it a long time ago - since then I started paying attention to the sun while going to school (when there was a sun to watch, Tromsø has ~two months of polar night, and quite a few months where the sun doesn't rise until long after school starts).

So now I can generally (roughly) tell the time by looking at the sun, if I'm somewhere familiar (I know where north is) - and I can generally tell where north it is by looking at the sun, if I know the time.

I suppose most people (ie, those that don't live near the poles) can tell time roughly just by how high the sun is/how long the shadows are - but it's a little tricky in most of Norway, most of the year (except maybe around noon).

That's an excellent trick, although ironically I'd only ever use it in a city. Out in the woods, I'd have a cheap digital (or nothing) and a compass.

You could always draw a clock dial on the ground if you actually needed to use it.