Since matches did not become available until the mid-1800’s, prior to that time people had to make fires in other ways. The two most common methods of fire-making before the advent of matches were friction and percussion.
The friction method is the one that most people think of when they consider primitive fire-starting.
The classic stereotype is the ancient man rubbing two sticks together, although actual friction fire-starting used methods such as drilling (twirling a stick in a pre-prepared hole on another piece of wood, using the hands for the motion or a bow to twirl the “drill”), or the fire-plow (a hardwood stick is rubbed back and forth in a groove in a softwood board). The Old Norse language contains evidence that the fire-drill was known and used. There are two words in Old Icelandic that specifically refer to fire-drills. The first is bragð-alr “twirling-awl”, used in Iceland for making fire, and the second is bragðals-eldr, the term for a fire produced using a bragð-alr. The word bragðhas a fundamental notion of “a sudden motion”, but also, especially in sports, it has the sense of “a trick or strategem,” and the use of a bow-and-drill to make fire is certainly a clever trick. Since friction-method fire-making equipment is generally made up of wood and fiber, which don’t survive well in archaeological contexts, the language clues can be the only source of information about this technology.
Percussion fire-starting is the method that seems most commonly to have been in use in the Viking Age: it certainly is the only one that leaves good traces in the archaeological record. This method utilizes a piece of high-carbon steel and flint (or other hard stone that experiences conchoidal fracturing to produce sharp edges, including quartz, quartzite, chert) plus a flammable substance that will ignite with a low-temperature spark and hold the ember well.
Exciting new evidence from Sweden has provided evidence that burning glasses made of lathe-turned rock crystal may also have been used to make fire.
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