FIRE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTUKE 87 



still known, and a specimen of the apparatus is shown in the Neuf- 

 chatel Museum. It can be traced in practically ever)'' country of 

 Europe. A description of its use in various parts of eastern Europe 

 was published by Frederick Kunze.'^ 



The horizontally worked drill is peculiar to Em-ope.^" 

 " The regin-naglar which stood in the pillars (high seat pillars of 

 early northern temples) may have been pegs used for ignition by 

 friction, perhaps for the rekindling of the perpetual fire, which, in 

 view of certain customs existing in later times, may have been ex- 

 tinguished once a year. Or again it may have been for the kindUng 

 of the 'need fire,' which was also perhaps connected with the cult of 

 Thor; cf. Adam of Bremen IV, 26; si pestis uel fames imminet Thor 

 ydolo hbatur. In later times the sparks for the kindUng of the ' need 

 fu-e' were sometimes obtained by twisting a wooden peg round in an 

 oaken post (cf. Grimm, Deutche Mythologie, vol. 1, p. 502)."" 



As the swarming place of nations, it appears natural that every 

 fire-making device known to man should be found in Asia. The 

 vertically "SN'orked drill, however, is the characteristic implement for 

 the great part of the continent. 



NOBTHERN ASIA 



West of Bering Strait the Siberian Eskimos use the machine with 

 vertical drill called the bow drill, as do the Alaskan Eskimo. The 

 Chukchis, who hve in northeastern Siberia between the Anadyr 

 River and the Arctic Ocean, also use the bow drill (pi. 28, fig. 1). 



Nordenskijold says: 



" Fire is lighted partly in the way common in Sweden some decades 

 ago by means of flint and steel, partly by means of a drill implement. 

 In the former case the steel generally consists of a pieqe of a file or 

 some other old steel tool, or of pieces of iron or steel which have 

 been especially forged for the purpose. * * * 'pj^g ^j^^ consists 

 of a beautiful chalcedony or agate, which has been formed in cav- 

 ities in the volcanic rocks which occur so abundantly in northeastern 

 Asia, and which are probably also found here and there as pebbles 

 in the beds of the tundra rivers. As tinder are used partly the 

 woolly hair of various animals, partly dry fragments of different 

 kinds of plants. The steel and a large number of pieces of flint are 

 kept in a skin pouch suspended from the neck. Within this pouch 

 there is a smaller one containing the tinder. It is thus kept warm 

 by the heat of the body, and protected Irom the wet b}^ its double 

 envelope. The other sort of fire implement consists of a dry wooden 



"Intemat. Archiv f. Ethnogr. Leiden, vol. 13, 1900, p. 81. 



••See Dr. Friedrich S. Krauss. Altslavische Feuergewinnung, Globus, vol. 59, 189), p. 317. 



•' H. M. Chadwick. Jour. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., vol. 30, new ser., vol. 3, 1900, pp. 37-38. 



