ᚠ fé

Line of descent

History

f is one of the runes that passed from the Elder to the Younger Futhark with no change in shape or position. It is the first rune of the row in every tradition. Its long-branch and short-twig forms are identical: a vertical stave with two branches rising to the right.

The name fé is the Old Norse word for livestock and, by extension, movable wealth, the same word as Old English feoh and Gothic faihu. The continuity of the name across all three traditions is why the Proto-Germanic name of the Elder Futhark rune can be reconstructed with confidence. Both rune poems treat fé as money or gold rather than cattle. The Norwegian poem says that it "causes strife among kinsmen", and the Icelandic poem gives three kennings for gold and glosses the stanza with Latin aurum.

In Viking Age Old Norse the sound /f/ was voiced to [v] between vowels and at the end of words, so f wrote both. In aft "in memory of", one of the most common words on rune stones, it stands for f. In medieval runes a dotted form ᚡ was sometimes used for v. See medieval runes.

One quirk of the later manuscript tradition: Icelandic scribes sometimes wrote the rune ᚠ as an abbreviation for the word fé in texts otherwise in Latin letters, as they did with ᛘ for maðr. Dickins notes this in his edition of the Norwegian poem.

In the rune poems

Original text from the public-domain editions named on each poem's page; translations are our own.

Where it is found

• Gørlev stone (DR 239), position 1 of the row fuþorkhniastbmlR
• Jelling stone 2 (DR 42): faþur 'father'
• Rök stone (Ög 136): aft uamuþ 'in memory of Vámóðr'

On inscriptions described on this site

Sources

• Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata), signa DR 239, DR 42, Ög 136
• Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (1915), pp. 24–33
• Barnes, Runes: a Handbook (2012)
• Wikipedia: Younger Futhark (checked 2026-10-26)