(Cattle)

Wealth; Money, financial prosperity, the Price

The basic meaning of Fehu is wealth in the sense of money or currency. Cattle were mobile property, a measurement of one's wealth. Fee, a payment, comes from this term and so the rune has the added meaning of the price one must pay for any action or inaction. Indeed the old Norse Rune Poem warns that `Money causes strife among kinsmen’.

Throughout the old Norse legends the deities and heroes were continually paying the price for their actions. Odin craved wisdom and so he went to the spring of Mimir at the root of Ygdrassil, the World Tree. Mimir demanded the payment of one of Odin's eyes as payment for a drink from the waters of memory. Odin accepted and never regretted his sacrifice.

The eye was placed in the fountain and each morning Odin drank of its healing waters. Odin's outer vision was replaced by an inner guide and the conscious sight in his blind eye by contact with unconscious wisdom. But his new insight was a double-edged sword for Odin understood now that all things must pass, even the rule of the Elder Gods.

Tyr, the Spirit Warrior, God of Courage and War paid the price of his right Sword hand to bind Fenris Wolf who was threatening the gods. However he too was aware even as he made his sacrifice that Fenris Wolf could only be bound till Ragnarok and the Last Battle.

But the price may not involve noble sacrifice; Freya, Goddess of Beauty and Love, was prepared to give her body to four hideous dwarves, Alfrigg, Dvalin, Berling and Gerr, so that she might obtain the wonderful golden necklace they had fashioned that would make her even more lovely and desirable.