- Name
- ing
- Meaning
- Ing, a legendary or divine figure; eponym of the Ingwine
- Transliteration
- ŋ
- Sound
- /ŋ/, /ŋg/ (the ng of sing, finger)
- Unicode
U+16DDrunic letter ing
Line of descent
History
The ŋ rune wrote the ng sound, which never begins a word in Germanic. Its name is therefore not an ordinary acrophonic word but a proper name, Ing. In the elder row the rune was a small diamond or a diamond on a stem (see ingwaz). The English form ᛝ is a larger diamond with the strokes crossing and extending beyond the corners, sometimes standing on an upright. Hickes printed variant forms of this rune that Dickins attributed to Cotton Domitian A.ix.
The rune poem gives the only narrative stanza in the poem: Ing was first seen among the East Danes, then went away over the waves, "the wagon ran after", and so the Heardings named the hero. Dickins linked Ing to the Ingwine, a name for the Danes in Beowulf. He also linked him to the Ingaevones of Tacitus and to the Swedish god Yngvi-Freyr, and compared the wagon to Tacitus's account of the goddess Nerthus carried in a cart. These links are widely accepted, but how they fit together is still debated. The name of the Codex Vindobonensis 795 list for this rune is corrupt, and ing comes from another manuscript.
On the Seax of Beagnoth ŋ stands 20th, before d, l and m, the most visible disorder in that row.
In the rune poems
gesewen secgun, oþ he siððan est
ofer wæg gewat; wæn æfter ran;
ðus Heardingas ðone hæle nemdun.
among the East Danes, until he later went east
over the wave; the wagon ran after;
so the Heardings named the hero.
Original text from the public-domain editions named on each poem's page; translations are our own.
Where it is found
- Seax of Beagnoth, position 20 (out of usual order)
- Manuscript rune lists, including Hickes's printing from Cotton Otho B.x
On inscriptions described on this site
Sources
- Dickins (1915), pp. 20–21 and notes to vv. 67–70.
- Wikipedia, 'Anglo-Saxon runes' and 'Seax of Beagnoth', checked 2026-10.