Myth (a special type of narrative set aside by the scholar and maybe also by the insider due to its contents, form and im- or explicit purpose) is very often a narrative that speaks about the beginning of the world and everything important in the world and society. The myth lays the foundation for the world that the human beings who tell the myth inhabit. A narrative may be termed a myth when the actions told take place in a 'world' that does not look exactly like the one that followed from those actions. It takes place thus not in what may be termed 'pre-historic- times but in primoridal 'time' ,  a time before time and history came into being,
This can be indicated rather discreetly, as in some South American myths in which the jaguar apparently does not have its spots, yet. Or it may be quite clear, as in the biblical myth of creation: "The earth was unformed and void”. The Greeks let the world begin with chaos, which really means a 'gap' – a big void with nothing in it yet. In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap is a huge void from which everything begins. In this framework, the myths allow the world to be created; here the foundation of the world is laid, and male and female roles, the status and purpose of various population groups, and political systems are determined.
In the Nordic Ginnungagap we find the giant Ymer. The giants (jætter) were creatures that did not belong in the orderly world. Three gods, Odin and his two brothers, Vili and Ve, killed Ymer, perhaps as a kind of sacrifice. From the giant’s meat, the earth was created, from his blood came the sea, his bones became mountains, his hair was used for trees and the sky was made of his skull. The brain became clouds, and from his eyebrows the gods made the wall, which, protectively, encircles 'Midgård', the world of human beings. Outside, in Udgård, giants still live.

What is a myth
A myth is a narrative that relates the connection between the earliest times and the present. The earliest times is before all time and therefore fundamentally different from the present, often its opposite, a chaos (from Greek chaos) in which the foundation of the world has not yet been laid. That happens in the myth, and the new cosmos becomes the model for today's order in nature and society. Therefore, the myth legitimizes the prevailing social order. There are different types of myths, but common for them all is that they explain how something came into being and got its particular characteristics and status, i.e. the characteristics and the status it has had ever since.
The four main types of myths are:

• Cosmogonic:  Myths about the creation  and design of the first world (in many myths there is actually no "nothing" before the world is created, rather an unfinished world that is  arranged and designed by gods or other primeval creatures).
• Theogonic: Myths about of the origin of the gods.
• Anthropogenic: Myths about the origin of humankind or the shaping of the first beings into human beings.
• Eschatological: myths about the end of the world.

Cosmology
The perception of how the whole world (cosmos) is constructed as a certain order that includes both nature and society. Cosmology may be implicit, as a world order implicit in the religious phenomena, or it may be an explicit doctrine about the world and the world order.
Cosmology is expressed in both myths and rituals: Myths express the first exemplary order; rituals express the order they are working to recreate and maintain.
When reconstructing the cosmology of a culture or a religion, it is necessary to consider all the myths. It is usually not enough with the cosmogonic myths, which often only explain how the natural order of the sun and moon, day and night, sky and earth is organized. For the world to resemble the world of the narrators of the myths, we also need myths about the origin of gods and human beings, of the segregation of gods and man (who often seem to have lived closely together in primordial time), the creation of the two sexes and of marriage, how death came into the world (most myths explains death as an unfortunate mistake or as a punishment for man not obeying the gods.) Moreover, we need myths about the emergence of the social order, and about how to make a living. Besides, myths will tell us about the appearance of the religion, culture, and various rituals at the time when the gods and the human beings were separated. After this segregation, it became necessary to communicate with the gods in a new way: through the religion.

Sources' Analysis

Source n° 1
The text is from the Rig-Veda, a large collection of hymns to be used in the cult, particularly in connection with a sacrifice. The oldest parts of the Rig-Veda most likely depend on an oral tradition going back to 1400 B.C., at which time there was no written language in India. The text as we have it here is probably not much older than 700 B.C. The late parts of the Rig-Veda are products of a highly specialized priesthood, who have thought very intensely and very universally about the cult and its sacrifices as something that will keep the world going.
The primordial man, Purusha, is huge. He is simply everything - and more: What was, what is, and what will be. Only a quarter of him has materialized in the human world. The remaining three quarters of him are in the world of the gods as a hidden potential. Almost imperceptibly, the text goes on to tell the myth about how Purusa became this world. From the sixth stanza, we see that it happened because he was the offering. In primordial times the gods sacrificed Purusha as the first offering ever, the universal sacrifice that became the model for all later sacrifices. It contained the three seasons in India, and once the sacrifice had been made, everything was born out of it: the animals in the air, in the woods and in the village, i.e. the birds, the wild animals, and domestic animals (stanza 8), the rituals, hymns, mantras, traditional metrics and sacrificial formulas (stanza 9), the different kinds of livestock (stanza 10) and the different kinds of human beings, namely the four social groups (varna), that form the backbone of the Indian caste system. They are even created (as in the case of Ymer in the Old Norse myth) from different parts of the primordial man: Brahmins (priesthood) from the head, the warriors (ksatriyas) from the arms, the vaishas (i.e. the productive part of the population, such as peasants and artisans) from the thighs, and shudras (people that service other people) from the feet. In this way, the social groups form a hierarchy, and it is quite clear that this is the world according to the brahmin priests - with themselves at the top, due respect to warriors, and the rest of the population below with increasingly lower status.

This social order is perceived as just as fundamental as the physical organization of the world; the moon, sun, and a number of gods were formed out of Purusha, and space, sky and earth were also made this way. As in the biblical revelation on Mount Sinai, the ritual order was established together with the moral and social order. The seven sticks, which mark the place of sacrifice, and the seven woodpiles, which are needed for this type of Vedic sacrifice, were established at this very first exemplary sacrifice (link) made by the gods

Didactical proposals

Task 1:
The purpose of this exercise is getting the students look at different myths and trying to use the different categories of myths cosmogonic, theogonic, anthropogenic and eschatological myths). The aim is also looking at how eastern and western world religions are different in structure and content.