IOTL the runes of the Norse peoples were eventually phased out in favour of the Latin alphabet (though it stayed around for a remarkably long time in certain isolated parts of Scandinavia).
How can we make this not happen and have the runic alphabet keep being used as the main writing system in the Nordic countries all the way into the modern era? After all Cyrillic did fine as a parallel alphabet with the Latin one, and the Greeks manage to keep their alphabet as well, so it isn't unprecedented that it could happen in Europe.
Presumably the reason Cyrillic and the Greek alphabet did stay on was that they had religions backing them (Russian and Greek orthodox churches respectively), whereas the Norse went all Catholic in the 11th-12th centuries. Do you guys think that we'd have to find a way to make the Norse not convert in order to preserve their writing system, or might there be another way?
Obviously writing systems change over time and I am by no means thinking we have to preserve the use of the futhark here, but some kind of successor or otherwise runic based alphabet ought to be possible I'm thinking.
How can we make this not happen and have the runic alphabet keep being used as the main writing system in the Nordic countries all the way into the modern era? After all Cyrillic did fine as a parallel alphabet with the Latin one, and the Greeks manage to keep their alphabet as well, so it isn't unprecedented that it could happen in Europe.
Presumably the reason Cyrillic and the Greek alphabet did stay on was that they had religions backing them (Russian and Greek orthodox churches respectively), whereas the Norse went all Catholic in the 11th-12th centuries. Do you guys think that we'd have to find a way to make the Norse not convert in order to preserve their writing system, or might there be another way?
Obviously writing systems change over time and I am by no means thinking we have to preserve the use of the futhark here, but some kind of successor or otherwise runic based alphabet ought to be possible I'm thinking.