Negotiating Fire and Water: Strike-a-lights from the Early Iron Age in Scandinavian Wetlands

Abstract In the Early Iron Age strike-a-lights, or elliptic fire striking stones, were in use all over Scandinavia. Most of them were found during agricultural work in the late nineteenth century, and are recorded as stray finds. This is more an effect of nineteenth century antiquarian practices than of actual circumstances, and more recent and better recorded finds show that the strike-a-lights do have contexts which can be used to understand certain mind sets from the Iron Age, particularly regarding ritual behaviour. The strike-a-lights are found in burials, on settlements and in wetlands. During most of the last century, however, strike-a-lights have received little attention and they need to be re-examined and re-interpreted.