As early as Homer the stage of belief is past. Nevertheless the myth, after having lost its value as an adequate token of human’s understanding of the cosmos, still retains the function of expressing the divine in poetical language, which is rather more than an aesthetic function, in fact, a liturgical one. When Plato or Aristotle want to give us the core of their philosophy and express it in the pithiest way they choose the myth-form: with Plato it is the myth of the soul, with Aristotle the myth of the love that all things have for the unmoved mover of the world.
The play-note so characteristic of the genuine myth is heard nowhere more distinctly than in the opening pages of the younger Edda, the Gylfaginning and skaldskaparmal