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  • Folkish Odinism Dorset

The Vanir and the God Ing in England

The Vanir and the God Ing in England

Building on suggestions by archaeologist Ole Crumlin-Pedersen and others, link the Vanir to ship burial customs among the North Germanic peoples, proposing an early Germanic model of a ship in a "field of the dead" that may be represented both by Freyja's afterlife field Fólkvangr and by the Old English 'Neorxnawang' (the mysterious first element of which may be linked to the name of Freyja's father, Njörðr). This old English connection to Ing can be seen in the grave goods at the Sutton Hoo ship burial in England.


Richard North theorizes that glossing Latin vanitates ("vanities", "idols") for "gods" in Old English sources implies the existence of *uuani (a reconstructed cognate to Old Norse Vanir) in Deiran dialect and hence that the gods that Edwin of Northumbria and the northern Angles worshiped in pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon England were likely to have been the *uuani. He comments that they "shared not only the name but also the orgiastic character of the [Old Icelandic] Vanir."

Ing has his own section in the Old English Rune Poem and can be found in Beowulf. Also, Ing is considered as part of a ‘sun-king’ cult with which King Æthelfrith of Bernicia (c.593–c.616) maintained and redeveloped the solar alignments of the old royal site in Yeavering. It is also interesting to note that Bede said "the Englisc were the children of Ing" (an old name for the Vanir God Ingvi Freyr)

All things considered I can see why lots of people call 'Ing', the God of the English. Admin Gary FFF



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