What, then, is the Odinist mythology?

Briefly, our mythology unfolds in five acts (which may be compared to the
evolution of the seasons of the year):

the Creation (spring)
the time preceding the death of Balder (summer)
the death of Balder (summer's end)
the time immediately after the death of Balder (autumn)
Ragnarok, the decline and fall followed by the regeneration of the world (winter and spring)

The first effort of speculative man has always been to solve the mystery of
existence, to ask what was in the beginning. The condition of things before the
world's creation is expressed in the Eddas negatively; there was nothing of that
which sprang into existence:

Nothing was
Neither land nor sea,
Nor cool waves.
Earth was not ,
Sky was not,
But a gaping void
And no grass.
Ymir was a frost-giant, e.g. chaotic matter:
From Ymir's flesh
The world was made,
And from his blood the sea.
Mountains from his bones,
Trees from his hair,
And the welkin from his skull.

There were as yet no human beings upon the earth when one day as the Gods Odin,
Hoener and Loder were walking along the seashore they saw two trees from which
they created the first human pair.

Odin gave them life and spirit, Hoener endowed
them with reason and the power of motion and Loder gave them blood, hearing, and a
fair complexion. The man they called Ask ash)-and the woman Embla (elm). As their
abode the newly-created pair received from the Gods Midgarth and from them is
descended the whole human race.

Balder is the god of the summer, the favorite god of all Nature and a son of Odin;
he is one of the wisest and most eloquent of the Gods and his dwelling is in a
place where nothing impure can enter. The story of Balder, well-known in the
Northern countries, finds explanation in the seasons of the year, in the change
from light to darkness; he represents the bright and clear summer and his death is
the impermanent victory of darkness over light, of winter over summer, of death
over life. When Balder is dead, all Nature mourns. His death presages the disaster of Ragnarok,

the consummation of the world, followed by its cleansing and return
to the primal state.

Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, represents a great conflict between good and
evil powers. The idea is already suggested in the story of the Creation in which
the Gods are represented as proceeding from giants, that is from an evil and
chaotic force. And whatever can be born must surely die. In the seasons and
activities of Nature we see a constantly recurring picture of the necessity for
death and the equal certainty of its being overcome. At Ragnarok all the worlds of
Nature will be destroyed and even the giants must die. But from that catastrophe
will emerge a renewed world and the Gods themselves will be born again. We see
this drama enacted every year in miniature when autumn heralds the period of
decline and decay until with the spring we witness the magic of resurrection and
new life.

This, briefly told, is the myth that explained to our ancestors their origin and
the origin of the world, the creation of life from chaos and the emergence of
evolution and harmony.