Fehu upright
Movable wealth — what you own and can spend. Prosperity that has arrived and now needs managing rather than chasing.
Rune 1 of 24 · Freyr's Aett
ᚠ Fehu rune meaning
Fehu rune meaning: movable wealth — what you own and can spend. Its name is read as “cattle, wealth”; it is rune 1 of 24, in Freyr's Aett, with the sound f. Reversed: loss, or wealth held so tightly it stops circulating.
- Place in the row
- 1 of 24 Freyr's Aett, aett 1
- Sound
- f said FAY-hoo
- Rune poems
- 3 of 3 named feoh · fé
- Read as
- Cattle, wealth from the rune’s name
Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems, 1915.
Fehu reversed
Loss, or wealth held so tightly it stops circulating. Greed, or a resource drained faster than it is replaced.
18 pages · printable
The 2027 Sky Calendar — free PDF
Every retrograde, eclipse, new and full moon of 2027 to the minute, already converted to your city. A month to a page, ready to print.
Where Fehu sits in the Elder Futhark
Fehu is rune 1, the first of the eight in Freyr's Aett, which it opens; Uruz follows.
Position in the row1 of 24
AettFreyr's Aett
SoundF
Literal meaningCattle, wealth
ElementFire
Can be reversedYes
In a reading
What Fehu usually means when you draw it
Fehu usually turns up around money, resources and what you have earned. It favors putting wealth to work and sharing it, and warns against hoarding.
Fehu in love
Generosity and material security in a relationship; sometimes tension over money.
Fehu at work
Income, rewards for effort and new opportunities to earn.
Advice
Circulate what you have — resources grow when they move.
Primary source
What the rune poems say about Fehu
In brief, the Anglo-Saxon verse treats wealth as a comfort, but one that earns respect only when it is shared generously.
“Wealth is a comfort to all men; yet must every man bestow it freely, if he wish to gain honour in the sight of the Lord.”
Feoh byþ frofur fira gehwylcum;
sceal ðeah manna gehwylc miclun hyt dælan
gif he wile for drihtne domes hleotan.
“Wealth is a source of discord among kinsmen; the wolf lives in the forest.”
Fé vældr frænda róge;
føðesk ulfr í skóge.
“Wealth — source of discord among kinsmen and fire of the sea and path of the serpent.”
Fé er frænda róg
ok flæðar viti
ok grafseiðs gata.
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. Where the three rune poems come from
Fehu in the three rune poems, side by side
All three poems agree: the verse for Fehu is about wealth.
| Source | Name | The verse is about |
|---|---|---|
| Elder Futhark name (reconstructed) | Fehu | cattle, wealth |
| Anglo-Saxon rune poem | feoh | wealth |
| Norwegian rune poem | fé | wealth |
| Icelandic rune poem | fé | wealth |
Subjects in the words of Dickins’s 1915 translation; the first row is the modern reconstructed name and reading.
Calculated
Fehu by the numbers
Fehu turns up 16 times as the rune of the day in 2026, above the even share of 15.2 — joint 10th of 24 with 5 others. It lies reversed on 7 of them. January is its busiest month, with 4. Its longest gap between draws, from September 20 to November 19, spans 60 days.
Position in the row
1 of 24
Odds of drawing it
1 in 24 · 4.17%
Rune of the day in 2026
16 times · 4.38%
Reversed on those days
7 of 16
Can be reversed
Yes
Days in 2026:
- Jan 6 (rev.), 19, 25, 31
- Feb 7
- Mar 29
- Apr 5 (rev.)
- May 3 (rev.), 17 (rev.)
- Jul 4, 27
- Sep 20 (rev.)
- Nov 19
- Dec 7, 24 (rev.), 30 (rev.)
Which runes can be reversed, and how the daily draw is fixed →
What happened to it
Fehu after the Elder Futhark
In the Younger Futhark
Survived into the Younger Futhark as fé, keeping both its shape and its meaning of cattle and wealth.
Worth knowing
It opens the earliest complete row of the Elder Futhark, carved on the Kylver Stone on Gotland around 400.
Fehu: deity, tree and element
Pronounced
FAY-hoo
Deity
Freyr and Freyja
Tree
Elder
Element
Fire
The poem above is a source; this table is a twentieth-century reconstruction.
How to type the Fehu rune
| Character | ᚠ |
|---|---|
| Code point | U+16A0 |
| Unicode name | RUNIC LETTER FEHU FEOH FE F |
| HTML | ᚠ or ᚠ |
Besides Fehu, the official name lists Feoh and Fe, names the same stave carries in other rows and poems.
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. “Fehu Rune Meaning: Cattle, Wealth.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://astrohot.com/runes/fehu/
For Wikipedia
{{cite web |title=Fehu Rune Meaning: Cattle, Wealth |url=https://astrohot.com/runes/fehu/ |website=AstroHot |access-date=2026-10-27}}