ᛜ *ingwaz

Line of descent

History

The ŋ rune is a small diamond or square. In some inscriptions it sits high on the line without a stave, and in others it stands on a stave or between two staves. English carvers used a larger form with crossed staves, ᛝ. Unicode gives the two forms separate code points, ᛜ (INGWAZ) and ᛝ (ING). Like eihwaz and pertho, the rune is absent from the earliest inscriptions (before about 400). Claims for earlier examples (Westergaard 1981) were rejected by Odenstedt (1990).

The rune wrote the velar nasal heard in English sing. Proto-Germanic had no words beginning with this sound, so the name cannot work by the usual principle. It is reconstructed as *ingwaz, the name of a god or legendary ancestor, from the Old English poem's Ing and the Gothic letter name enguz. The Old English stanza says Ing was first seen among the East Danes and later left over the sea, followed by a wagon. Scholars connect Ing with the Ingaevones, a group of tribes named by Tacitus, and with the Swedish Yngvi-Freyr. All of this concerns the name, not how the rune was used.

Rune-rows give its place, 22nd: ŋ on Kylver and the Vadstena and Mariedamm bracteates. Elsewhere the rune often writes the whole sequence ing or ng, as in the name birgŋgu on the Opedal stone in Norway (Rundata's reading). The rune was dropped in Scandinavia. In England it continued as ing.

In the rune poems

Original text from the public-domain editions named on each poem's page; translations are our own.

Where it is found

• Kylver stone (G 88), position 22
• Vadstena (Ög 178) and Mariedamm (Nä 10) bracteates: tbemlŋod
• Opedal stone (N KJ76): birgŋgu

On inscriptions described on this site

Sources

• Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata), signa G 88, Ög 178, Nä 10, N KJ76
• Dickins (1915), notes to Old English rune poem ll. 67–70
• Wikipedia, 'Elder Futhark' (checked 2026-10-26), for the absence of ŋ before c. 400 (Odenstedt 1990)