Ing- Germanic GodDeity

The Wagon Over the Waves

The Old English Rune Poem, from the eighth or ninth century, preserves a stanza for the rune ᛝ: Ing wæs ærest mid East-Denum gesewen secgun, oþ he siððan est ofer wæg gewāt; wæn æfter ran. Þus Heardingas ðone hæle nemdon. Ing appeared first among the East-Danes. Then he departed eastward over the waves, and his wagon ran after him. The Heardingas named him hero.

The image is strange and precise. A god arrives among a coastal people, stays long enough to be seen, then crosses the sea. His wagon follows on its own. No farewell, no reason given, no return. Wagon processions ran through Germanic fertility worship. Tacitus describes the goddess Nerthus conveyed in a curtained wagon through the countryside, her passage marking a season of peace. When the rites ended, the wagon was washed in a hidden lake and the slaves who touched it were drowned. Ing's wagon followed him over the waves instead.

Ancestor of Kings

Tacitus records in the Germania that the coastal Germanic peoples called themselves Ingaevones, tracing their origin to Ing through Mannus, son of the earth-born god Tuisto. These were the North Sea tribes who became the Anglo-Saxons and Frisians. In Beowulf, Hrothgar is called "lord of the Ingwines," and Anglo-Saxon genealogies in the Chronicle trace royal blood through the same divine line. The god who vanished over the waves left his name in the veins of kings.