http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/png/oi_cleasbyvigfusson/b0437.png
http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/png/oi_cleasbyvigfusson/b0438.png

"On the wedding night the stipulated mund became the wife's personal
property, and thus bears some resemblance to the `morning gift'
(morgun-gjöf) of later legislation."

> I think "brideprice" or "bride wealth" would be the terms in English

for the

> amount that the groom pays for the bride.

Thanks Brandon. I'm sure there's lots about this on the internet but
I haven't had a chance to look into it properly yet. There's a
Wikipedia that defined "brideprice" and "bride wealth" as a payment to
the bride's parents; but I guess others may use these terms
differently. The OED has simply "money paid for a bride." The
Wikipedia article also mentions Morgengabe which was supposed to be of
suffient value to "secure the bride for widowhood," and a similar
tradition of a payment to the bride herself called mahr in Arabic [
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_price ], about which I also came
across this:

"Islam does not prescribe such a brideprice, but does enjoin the
giving of mahr in the form of money or property for the personal use
of the bride so that her financial welfare may be ensured in the event
of divorce. Islamic law does not include the concept of alimony."

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+af0056)