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
Ingwaz is rune 22 of the 24 in the Elder Futhark, in Tyr's Aett, and carries the sound NG. It means “Ing, the fertility god”. Upright: Gestation and stored potential. Something complete internally but not yet released — the seed before it breaks the ground. The shape is symmetrical, so it has no reversed position at all — true of only 4 runes in the row.
Reversed
Ingwaz is symmetrical — turning it over changes nothing, so it has no reversed meaning.
Position in the row22 of 24
AettTyr's Aett
SoundNG
Literal meaningIng, the fertility god
ElementEarth
Can be reversedNo
Ingwaz is the 22th rune of the Elder Futhark and belongs to Tyr's Aett. Before it meant anything divinatory it was a letter, carrying the NG sound.
This is one of the four symmetrical runes — along with Gebo, Isa, Jera and Ingwaz — which cannot be drawn reversed.
Primary source
What the rune poem says
Ing was first seen by men among the East-Danes, till, followed by his chariot, he departed eastwards over the waves. So the Heardingas named the hero.
— Anglo-Saxon rune poem, recorded around the 8th–10th century
Where the rune poems come from and why the medieval reading is often blunter than the modern one — explained once on the main page.
Calculated
Ingwaz by the numbers
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
Of the 24 runes, only 17 have a reversed reading — 71% of the row. Four are symmetrical and cannot be turned over at all, and 3 more are conventionally read upright only.
The rune-of-the-day figures are exact rather than estimated. Our daily draw is derived from the date, so the whole year can be computed — which a site with a random draw cannot do.
Days it falls in 2026: 28 Jan, 1 Feb, 22 Feb, 13 Mar, 24 Mar, 30 Mar, 8 Apr, 20 Apr
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.
Around 800 CE the 24-rune Elder Futhark contracted to the 16-rune Younger Futhark — fewer symbols for more sounds, at exactly the point the language was growing more complex. Eight runes were dropped outright. Which ones survived, and how they changed, is the closest thing to a documented history these symbols have.
Traditional associations
Pronounced
ING-wahz
Deity
Ing and Freyr
Tree
Apple
Element
Earth
Ingwaz sits in Tyr's Aett, position 22 of the row, and carries the NG sound. Its literal meaning is ing, the fertility god — which is where every later reading of it starts.
The poem above is a source; this table is twentieth-century reconstruction.