I do not belong to any group. Although I do believe organization, when properly conducted, is a good way to insulate yourself, your family, and your fellow organizees from bad outcomes and can potentially magnify opportunity for members of the group. I'm much more of an individualist than a collectivist, but an organization of individuals allows them to strengthen their foundation, maintain larger networks, increase potential partners or customer base, aquire more access to capital, better utilize relevant information, develop better educational and employment opportunities for themselves and their children, celebrate, maintain, and preserve their culture in the face of our modern societies, project their political interests and concerns and on and on. To me, that is what civilization is and it's part of our culture as well. Whereas in modern societies we're turning into worker drones isolated from our communities. Look at the Putnam study on the effect of diversity and multiculturalism in communities.
In my reading of mythology I tried to reach logical conclusions out of what I could glean from the information. I'm part Scandinavian and even before that meant anything to me I was always fascinated with Norse Mythology. To me, our ancestors were just as mentally capable as we are, and in some ways more so. There is an oral tradition in Indo-European society as opposed to a written record, so over time I think a lot of history and information was lost to the general public. I don't doubt that somewhere the oral tradition exists in tact in some way or another. But basically, all I have is the eddas.
I look at Odin as a founding father of Indo-European civilization, like a Washington or a Jefferson. Whether or not that is the case, I don't really know, it's just a guess. In the myths, Odin is described as wielding certain weapons, powerful weapons, like Gungnir the magical spear that never misses it's target, or the Magical Bow of Odin that hits ten targets at a time. I don't think our ancestors were stupid, and I have no proof that they had advanced technology, so there must be some other explanation. In the U.S. military, Special Forces/Special Operations is called the tip of the spear, so using that metaphor I figured that Odin's magical spear that never misses it's target was an allusion to a military he commanded. I think our knowledge of Indo-Europeans and their way of life would back this up.
I also don't think our ancestors really believed that planet earth was created out of a dead giant. With modern scientific information you could say that the earth was formed out of the debris from an exploded star, or that the earth was formed when two smaller planets collided. I have no proof that the Indo-Europeans were privy to that information. So I believe Ymir was the name the Indo-Europeans gave to an ancient empire that existed somewhere in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East. When this Empire collapsed they were there to fill the void, lead by a founding father, Odin. And from the bones of that giant, or the infrastructure/remnants of a collapsed empire, Indo-Europeans built their world.
Think of the collapse of Rome. Many different factors lead to Rome's demise. Whereas some would place the cause at the feet of the Germanics, I think they just took advantage of an inevitability. Rome would have collapsed either way and some group or groups would have been there to fill the void. The Germanics just happened to be positioned to do so in Western Europe, and thus you could say that Odin, who was still worshipped by the Germanic people's at the time, built the world (modern Europe) out of the bones of a giant. Although the Roman Catholic church had just as much a hand in building modern Europe as the various Germanic tribes and Kingdoms.
