Because of Johannes Bureus people see runes as some sort of magical alphabet, but really they are no different from any alphabet like Cyrillic, Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, etc.
I may have the details wrong. I read about it in school after all. I love the story though: http://norse-mythology.org/tales/odins-discovery-of-the-rune...
Edit: like I wrote above, this is the STORY, ie the cultural myth about how they came to be. The STORY shows how they were THOUGHT OF as more than a practical language.