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The Rune and Its Name

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The Rune and Its Name

Ingwaz is the twenty-second rune of the Elder Futhark, sixth in the third aett, carrying the sound "ng." Its reconstructed name is that of Ing, an early Germanic god identified with Freyr and with the Ingvaeones, a group of North Sea peoples. The Old English rune poem tells that Ing was first seen among the East Danes and then departed eastward over the waves in his wagon. The rune is linked with fertility, the seed and gestation.

Ingwaz stands sixth in the aett of Tyr, named for the god Ing, an early name associated with the god later known as Freyr. Its Old English futhorc counterpart, ing, receives a stanza in the Old English Rune Poem describing Ing as first seen by men among the East Danes, until he later departed eastward over the waves, his wagon following after; a notably obscure, narrative stanza compared to most others in the poem. Ingwaz is one of the eight Elder Futhark runes with no surviving Younger Futhark counterpart, attested only in the Old English poem.

Runologists reconstruct the Proto-Germanic form behind the name as *ingwaz, part of the comparative linguistic evidence, alongside cognate vocabulary across the older Germanic languages, used to establish the name's original sense independent of the later rune poems themselves.

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