The use of runes in that series made me want to investigate them a bit, so I dug around on the web. I found a pretty cool site: http://www.ancientscripts.com
It's basically a library of many of the world's written languages. It details the history of each language. Latin and Japanese are both included. The runes in WHR seem to be "Ruthark", or some variation of that language.
I didn't end up getting to study my vocab this week, but my flash cards are made. I'll try to get the next chapter written up, and then just study that whole mass, I guess. And then we'll have a review next Friday.