I first heard about runes when I was about eight or nine and we had a student teacher at our school who had been to Norway; she was only young but seemed like a proper grown-up to us. She was so excited and enthusiastic and she must have shown us slides of her visit, and we did a project about Vikings which included a lesson about runes. When I was much younger I was given a book about heroes which included the story of Leif Erikson, so I knew who the Vikings were and some stories about them. However, this young woman was so interesting that she started a life-long interest.
I came across an article about a small isolated village in northern Sweden called Älvdalen where the inhabitants still speak the old Norse language, Elfdalian (älvdalska in Swedish and övdalsk in the language itself) Following that there was another article about the use of runes, which had died out in most places except in Älvdalen where it was still in use a hundred years ago, although sometimes mixed in with the Latin alphabet.
These days, certainly in this country, runes are associated with fortune-telling, but originally they were a practical script, recording the lives of the people who used them. They may have had some mystical meaning even in the old days, but I guess most people who still used them a hundred years ago were only interested in communicating!
Inhabitants of Älvdalen and other people who are interested, are trying to revive the old Norse language and to promote its use, language does not just convey a culture, it is the heart of the culture
http://sciencenordic.com/isolated-people-sweden-only-stopped-using-runes-100-years-ago
http://sciencenordic.com/fight-preserve-elfdalian-swedens-lost-forest-language
Lois Elsden 