Ing and Its Elder Futhark Cognate, Ingwaz

Ing is the twenty second of the twenty four Futhorc runes carried from the Elder Futhark, its name a direct continuation of Ingwaz, and the connection between this rune and the god later called Yngvi Freyr in Norse sources is one of the more substantial pieces of comparative evidence linking the runic and the broader Germanic mythological record, since the god's own alternate name, Yngvi, preserves the same root the rune itself carries, an unusually well corroborated case compared to Peorth's or Eolh's far more uncertain identifications.

R. I. Page's survey treats Ing as good evidence that at least some Elder Futhark rune names carried genuine mythological content the Anglo-Saxon tradition still understood and could build narrative around centuries later, even as most of the row's other divine associations, Tiwaz aside, had by the time of the surviving poem either faded or, as with Os, been quietly set aside. Ingwaz's letterform, a diamond or lozenge shape distinct from most of the row's other signs, is sometimes read as a stylised seed or fertility symbol consistent with Freyr's own broader association with agricultural abundance, though such shape based readings again remain suggestive rather than confirmed.