In effect, the Norse creation myth is sort of a three-in-one: the fashioning of Ymir's body, Audhumla (the big cow) licks the rime until she discovers Buri, then the flight of Bergelmir and his wife from the flood, and their founding of the race of giants.

The "big link", of course, is the flood...

"His wounds were like springs; so much blood streamed from them, and so fast, that the flood drowned all the frost giants except Bergelmir and his wife. They ambarked on their boat - it was made out of a hollowed tree trunk - and rode on a tide of gore."

-from Kevin Crossley-Holland's wonderful book The Norse Myths, which is an almost direct translation from the Eddas. Great book. I highly recommend it.

The World Flood is sort of an old chestnut as far as comparative mythology goes. It appears in nearly every world myth-cycle, from Babylonian, Vedic, and Russian, to the myths of Indonesia, Melanesia, and New Guinea, all the way to the Native Americans of North America. There are scholars who think the Norsemen copied this idea of a great deluge from Gilgamesh, or the Christian Bible. However, since the respective floods do not have the same purpose or providence, it's more likely that the Nordic deluge as a part of the common Indo-European cycle of myths deriving from a common source.

The really cool part, I think, is never really mentioned in texts about comparative mythology (that I've seen anyway. As is often the case, I could be wrong). The cow that licks Buri from the ice, Audhumla, bears an eerie resemblance to Hathor, the cow goddess in Egyptian mythology, who gave birth to all the gods of Heliopolis. Audhumla licked Buri frlom th ice, and suckled Ymir, so in a roundabout way, she mothered ALL of the Æsir and the race of giants. Neat, huh?

Now for some REALLY cool stuff...remember that frost giant Ymir? The hermaphrodite who gave birth to all the giants? According to Thomas DuBois AND Kevin Crossley-Holland, his name derives from the Sanskrit yama, which means (roughly) "hermaphrodite". Strange, but true.

Anybody wanna comment?

Sources:

Crossley-Holland, Kevin. The Norse Myths. Pantheon Books, New York, NY, 1999.

DuBois, Thomas A. Nordic Religions in the Viking Age. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1999.