Ingwaz upright
Gestation and stored potential. Something complete internally but not yet released — the seed before it breaks the ground.
Rune 22 of 24 · Tyr's Aett
ᛜ Ingwaz rune meaning
Ingwaz rune meaning: gestation and stored potential. Its name is read as “Ing, the fertility god”; it is rune 22 of 24, in Tyr's Aett, with the sound ng. The shape looks the same upside down, so there is no reversed reading.
- Place in the row
- 22 of 24 Tyr's Aett, aett 3
- Sound
- ng said ING-wahz
- Rune poems
- 1 of 3 named ing
- Read as
- Ing, the fertility god from the rune’s name
Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems, 1915.
Ingwaz reversed
Ingwaz is symmetrical — turning it over changes nothing, so it has no reversed meaning.
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Where Ingwaz sits in the Elder Futhark
Ingwaz is rune 22, the sixth of the eight in Tyr's Aett, between Laguz and Dagaz.
Position in the row22 of 24
AettTyr's Aett
SoundNG
Literal meaningIng, the fertility god
ElementEarth
Can be reversedNo
Its shape is one of the 9 in the row that look the same after a half-turn, so an upside-down draw cannot be seen. It has no reversed reading here.
In a reading
What Ingwaz usually means when you draw it
Ingwaz is gestation and completion — energy stored and then released. It is traditionally read without a reversal.
Ingwaz in love
A relationship ready for its next stage, or family plans.
Ingwaz at work
Finishing a phase and preparing for a new one.
Advice
Complete what you started before beginning again.
Primary source
What the rune poems say about Ingwaz
In brief, the Anglo-Saxon verse tells of Ing, first seen among the East Danes, who later traveled away over the water with his wagon.
“Ing was first seen by men among the East-Danes, till, followed by his car, he departed eastwards over the waves. So the Heardingas named the hero.”
Ing wæs ærest mid East-Denum
gesewen secgun, oþ he siððan est
ofer wæg gewat; wæn æfter ran;
ðus Heardingas ðone hæle nemdun.
Bruce Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 1915) — read the original text.
Both the original texts and the translations are from Dickins’s edition. The Norwegian and Icelandic poems cover only the 16 runes of the Younger Futhark, which dropped Ingwaz. Where the three rune poems come from
Ingwaz in the three rune poems, side by side
Only the Anglo-Saxon poem has a verse for Ingwaz, and it is about Ing.
| Source | Name | The verse is about |
|---|---|---|
| Elder Futhark name (reconstructed) | Ingwaz | Ing, the fertility god |
| Anglo-Saxon rune poem | ing | Ing |
| Norwegian and Icelandic poems | — | no verse: the Younger Futhark dropped Ingwaz |
Subjects in the words of Dickins’s 1915 translation; the first row is the modern reconstructed name and reading.
Calculated
Ingwaz by the numbers
Ingwaz turns up 18 times as the rune of the day in 2026, above the even share of 15.2 — joint 5th of 24 with one other rune. March is its busiest month, with 3. Its longest gap between draws, from August 17 to October 12, spans 56 days.
Position in the row
22 of 24
Odds of drawing it
1 in 24 · 4.17%
Rune of the day in 2026
18 times · 4.93%
Can be reversed
No
Days in 2026:
- Jan 28
- Feb 1, 22
- Mar 13, 24, 30
- Apr 8, 20
- May 26
- Jul 2, 21
- Aug 3, 17
- Oct 12
- Nov 14, 23
- Dec 1, 29
Which runes can be reversed, and how the daily draw is fixed →
What happened to it
Ingwaz after the Elder Futhark
In the Younger Futhark
Dropped from the Younger Futhark, though its NG sound persisted in speech.
Worth knowing
Ing is named in the Anglo-Saxon poem as a hero who departed eastward over the waves — one of the few narrative fragments in the whole corpus.
Ingwaz: deity, tree and element
Pronounced
ING-wahz
Deity
Ing and Freyr
Tree
Apple
Element
Earth
The poem above is a source; this table is a twentieth-century reconstruction.
How to type the Ingwaz rune
| Character | ᛜ |
|---|---|
| Code point | U+16DC |
| Unicode name | RUNIC LETTER INGWAZ |
| HTML | ᛜ or ᛜ |
Its official name is Ingwaz alone, with no second name attached.
Copy the character, or paste the code into a web page; it shows wherever a font covers the Runic block, added in Unicode 3.0.
Sources
- Bruce Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 1915)
Statements of fact on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. How we choose and check sources: editorial policy.
Cite this page
AstroHot. “Ingwaz Rune Meaning: Ing, the Fertility God.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://astrohot.com/runes/ingwaz/
For Wikipedia
{{cite web |title=Ingwaz Rune Meaning: Ing, the Fertility God |url=https://astrohot.com/runes/ingwaz/ |website=AstroHot |access-date=2026-10-27}}