Name and sound values
Fé is a historically transmitted name of the rune and denotes livestock and wealth. In the Younger Futhark the sign could cover the sound values /f/v/.
Reducing the row from 24 to 16 signs meant that one rune wrote several different sounds. The correct reading therefore depends on vocabulary, grammar, and inscriptional context.
Historical use
Younger runes primarily served writing: on memorial stones, everyday objects, ownership marks, and short messages. Magical inscriptions exist, but they do not turn every rune into an independent magical sign.
The Norse rune poems
The Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems do comment on the sixteen Younger Futhark runes. They survive, however, only through medieval manuscripts and may transmit divergent imagery.
Both Norse poems stress that property can foster conflict. Wealth is therefore not presented as simply positive.
Modern interpretation
Present-day practice may use Fé as a symbolic field for “livestock and wealth”. Such reflection is modern; the rune poems offer images and mnemonics, not a complete surviving system for drawing individual oracle stones.
Rune poems in the original
Old Norwegian
Norwegian Rune Poem
Fé vældr frænda róge; føðesk ulfr í skóge.Wealth causes strife among kinsmen; the wolf feeds in the forest.
The second line is gnomic; its relationship to the first is not unambiguous.
Old Icelandic
Icelandic Rune Poem
Fé er frænda róg ok flæðar viti ok grafseiðs gata.Wealth is strife among kinsmen, fire of the flood, and path of the serpent.
The final two phrases are poetic circumlocutions for gold; the manuscripts contain variants.