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
Fehu is rune 1 of the 24 in the Elder Futhark, in Freyr's Aett, and carries the sound F. It means “Cattle, wealth”. Upright: Movable wealth — what you own and can spend. Prosperity that has arrived and now needs managing rather than chasing. Reversed: Loss, or wealth held so tightly it stops circulating. Greed, or a resource drained faster than replaced. That reading exists for 17 of the 24 runes; the other 7 are symmetrical or read upright only.
Reversed
Loss, or wealth held so tightly it stops circulating. Greed, or a resource drained faster than replaced.
Position in the row1 of 24
AettFreyr's Aett
SoundF
Literal meaningCattle, wealth
ElementFire
Can be reversedYes
Fehu is the 1th rune of the Elder Futhark and belongs to Freyr's Aett. Before it meant anything divinatory it was a letter, carrying the F sound.
Primary source
What the rune poem says
Wealth is a comfort to every man, yet each must share it freely if he wishes to gain honour in the sight of the Lord.
— 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
Fehu by the numbers
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
44%
Can be reversed
Yes
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: 6 Jan, 19 Jan, 25 Jan, 31 Jan, 7 Feb, 29 Mar, 5 Apr, 3 May
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
Appears on the Gallehus horns (c. 400) and in countless wealth inscriptions.
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
FAY-hoo
Deity
Freyr and Freyja
Tree
Elder
Element
Fire
Fehu sits in Freyr's Aett, position 1 of the row, and carries the F sound. Its literal meaning is cattle, wealth — which is where every later reading of it starts.
The poem above is a source; this table is twentieth-century reconstruction.