"Strong runes he scored that night.  Runes of hail, need and death."

Runes have long been linked to spellwork and sorcery.  The clue is in the name itself: 'rune' comes from an Old English word meaning 'secret'.  In a time when barely anyone could read, the power to transmit thoughts by scratching shapes onto wood must have seemed like magic in itself.  Indeed, many of the earliest inscriptions comprise single words and rows of repeated letters that are better explained as curses and charms than as everyday writing.  Even today, placing letters together to make a word is known as spelling. 

At some point, each rune gained a meaning alongside its sound.  From then on, a rune could stand for an idea on its own, which may explain the single runes found in so many inscriptions.  How widely these meanings were understood, and to what extent they were shared across the Germanic world, is unknown.  In the earliest times, the mere act of scoring runes was likely seen as magic.  As writing began to spread, however, allotting meanings to the runes would have served to keep their magical uses distinct from their use in writing. 

Almost everything we know about the meanings of the runes comes from three medieval poems, written in England, Norway and Iceland.  The English poem is the eldest of these, being known from a tenth-century manuscript.  Translations of this poem are widely available online.  The names and meanings in the three poems concur to such a degree that it is generally agreed they must have come from a common original.  All three contain direct references to heathen gods, including the only references to Ingui and Tiw found in any Old English source.  The English poem cannot, therefore, have been composed later than the eighth century, as these gods would not have been mentioned so openly in Christian times.  The Norwegian and Icelandic poems were written down in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries respectively.  Again, this is well into Christian times so the originals must be older. 

There is no direct evidence of runes being used to tell fortunes in heathen times, but there are a number of references to 'tokens', 'chips' and 'lots' which were cast to the floor by those wishing to know the future.  In some cases, these were said to have been marked with symbols, which many have taken to be runes.  Even today, we use the word 'forecast' when attempting to predict the future. 

Norse folklore has given the runes a heavenly origin.  According to the poem, Runatal, the runes were discovered by Woden on his quest to learn the secrets of the world.  He hung himself from a tree for nine nights without food or drink until strange shapes appeared before him.  He then gathered these in and (presumably) took them back to Esyard.  How he passed them to mankind is not recorded.  This brief tale has been expanded to form the introductory chapter to The Runemaster.  While there is no record of this story in any Old English poem, Woden is linked to runes and magic in other English sources, and there is nothing to suggest the English did not know this tale.

We shall never know for sure when runic magic died out, but among the English, it may well have outlasted the use of runes in writing.