Norse Tarot!
a good friend of mine once made me a special set of rune stones according to my favourite colours, flower and norse goddess and they were absolutely beautiful - i lost them in transit when i moved home though.
i think that a big reason that runes aren't as widely popular in the US is because we in the UK have a bigger connection to the "vikings" in our country, and so they are known about a bit more.
and as for runes and tarot......get a deck of the norse tarot if you can find it, as it is now out of print.
each of the major arcana has an associated rune on the card, and also a god or goddess on most (thought you might like to how clive barrett links the two together) and i have also included the rune symbolism after each rune...
fool - balder - sigil - glittering, sun
magician - odin - peorth - dice cup
high priestess - frigga - ear - sea, water
empress - freya - ger - year, harvest
emperor - tyr - tir - splendour, power, glory
high priest - frey - ing - one who travels in a wagon
lovers - brisingaman -gyfu - gift
chariot - thor - thorn - thor
justice - forseti - lagu - the law
hermit - heimdall - eolh - protection
wheel - norns -rad - travel, knowledge
strength - tyr & fenrir - ur - trials of strength
hanged man - odin & yggdrasil - os - god, hero, odin
death - honir - yr - yew tree, death
temperance - hel - beorc - rebirth, spring
devil - loki - nyd - thralldom
tower - ragnarok - hagall - hail
star - a star - cen - torch
moon - a moon - is - ice, winter
sun - a sun - winn - joy
judgement - new gods - ethel - inheritance, homeland
world - balder - mann - mankind
as you can see, there are a hell of a lot of associations between the runes and the tarot symbolisms and when you dig even deeper the similarities are too good to be true.
an excellent book for working with the runes is "Futhark: A Handbook of Rune Magic" by Edred Thorsson which goes into detail about each of them and also some excellent exercises, meditations and magickal workings.
so if you can find the norse tarot, then you will be able to combine the two techniques and get quite a lot of insight once you learn the runic meanings.
jue xx