The Milky Way And Ginnungagap

Our old friend, the Milky Way, returns three times in the first half of Poul Anderson's The Avatar:

"...the Milky Way, the nebulae, the galaxies beyond our galaxy...." (XVI, p. 140);

"...the Milky Way gleamed around its lanes of darkness..." (XVIII, p. 160);

"The Milky Way rivered in silver, nebulae glowed where new suns and planets were being born, a sister galaxy flung her faint gleam across Ginnungagap." (XXIII, p. 201)

Poul Anderson compares intergalactic space to the Ginnungagap of the Norse creation myth. I think that this myth comes closest to scientific cosmogony (see here):

void;
within the void, opposed material forces, heat and cold;
interaction between the opposed forces;
emergence of life and consciousness from the interaction;
thus, no conscious creator in the beginning;
eventual destruction of the worlds by fire;
renewal;
a cosmic cycle.