ELDER FUTHARK · TYR'S AETT · RUNE 22 OF 24
Ingwaz ᛜ
“The god Ing” · the sound ng
IN A READING
Gestation, inner growth, completion.
REVERSED
Ingwaz looks the same either way up, so it has no reversed reading.
IN MAGIC
Fertility, storing energy, completing a phase.
In the rune poems
Three medieval poems give a short verse to each rune's name, the oldest record of what the names meant. What they stress for Ingwaz: ing was first seen among the East-Danes, then went over the waves.
THE OLD ENGLISH RUNE POEM · ᛝ ING
Ing wæs ærestmid East-Denumgesewen secgun,oþ he siððan estofer wæg gewat;wæn æfter ran;ðus Heardingasðone hæle nemdun.
Known only from George Hickes's printing of 1705; the manuscript burned in the Cotton library fire of 1731.
The Icelandic and Norwegian poems have no verse for Ingwaz: they follow the sixteen-rune Younger Futhark, which gave it up.
The verses are given in their own languages, Old English from Bruce Dickins's edition (1915) as transcribed on Wikisource, Old Icelandic as normalised in Wikipedia's article on the rune poems. Square brackets mark words the editors restored.
In the later rows
Anglo-Saxon futhorc
ᛝIng
Younger Futhark
Given up when the row was cut to sixteen, about 800.
Tyr's aett
The futhark falls into three rows of eight, the aettir. Ingwaz is number 6 of Tyr's aett:
Learn more in the lessons
- The Elder Futhark Runes · 15 min
- Runes in Magic · 15 min
- The Younger Futhark and the Runestones · 18 min