Based off my limited exposure to post-Christian Norse works much of their mythology is presented in fairly, for lack of a better word, superficial manner. i.e. the stories are to be taken literally with no significant symbolic reading.
Compare this with Hindu mythology which on a superficial level is equally bizarre but when read in its proper historical/philosophical context is actually deeply symbolic and presenting conscious philosophical and theological positions.
Given the literary sophistication of say the Poetic Edda, and the reasonable level of development of Norse society even prior to Christianisation I’m wondering if I’m simply lacking some cultural context.
In short: No.
In long: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
In an acceptable format for AskHistorians:
The sagas that form the basis of about 90% of popular understandings of Norse mythology were not written to preserve the beliefs, practices, or "theology" of the pre-Christian Norse. They were written largely to show off really good skaldic poetry, which I guess they succeed at pretty well, I don't really know since I don't read Icelandic/Old Norse. So even with the purpose of the sagas not being to preserve mythology and beliefs, do they still contain useful information for learning about the pagan belief systems? Not really.
The sagas were composed centuries after conversion to Christianity by Christians for Christians, but even ignoring that pretty big stumbling block, there's little reason to think that the practices and beliefs that supposedly originate in pre-Christian times were widespread across the Norse world. This literature is Icelandic in origin and clearly reflected the kinds of stories that were circulating in, well, Iceland. Are these the same stories, deities, and so on that were honored across the Norse world? Probably Not.
The Norse world shows a remarkable diversity in the deities that were honored in place names (including some that hardly appear in Sagas) and over time the importance and prominence of certain deities waxed and waned. Trying to apply Saga material to the belief systems of the Anglo-Saxons pre-conversion or the Goths, and so on is even more hazardous.
If you are curious about the context and purpose of the sagas beyond showcasing fancy literature and serving as a nice thesaurus, you should be looking at the competitive nature of life between elite members of society in Iceland. Although that perhaps understates the stakes in competition between these figures. There are sagas that deal mostly with recent history in Iceland and Scandinavia, they are not all written on ostensibly mythological topics. Snorri Sturluson, who compiled the most famous of the sagas, was a well to do member of Icelandic society and many of the sagas he edited or wrote were used to glorify the lines of certain Icelandic people or other notable Scandinavians such as kings in Norway and not necessarily to record Icelandic stories/mythology (told through a decidedly Christian and Medieval worldview) If you're looking for deeper context this is where you should focus, not attempt to suss out theology on pre-conversion beliefs or deities.
u/Steelcan909 got some of the main points on issues of reconstructing practice of pre-Christian Nordic Religions, but I still have a few things to add, mostly on the nature of Norse poetics. In short, the skaldic poetry stanzas that we can reliably date to pre-Christianization are full of complicated symbols and references. These are used, however, to very different purposes that the philosophical commentaries that appear adjacent to Hindu mythologies.
The Prose Edda is enlightening here. Snorri Sturluson wrote that texts to be a handbook to train skalds for court poetry. He recorded the Gylfaginning specifically to be understood as the "correct" ordering of major events in the mythology, and an introduction to the gods and events used in the poetry of skalds. Skaldskaparmal, the next part, is then a listing of the various kennings used to refer to these same beings, with examples of "good" skaldic poetry from the 9th and 10th centuries, mostly. The final part, mostly left out of translations of the Edda, is the Hattatal, which is a list of various verse structures in Norse, largely using original compositions to demonstrate it.
Kennings are a form of circumlocution that makes up the core of Norse poetry: to refer to any noun, you instead use a possessive construction alongside a frequently (though not always) mythological reference; gold may be called "Freyja's Tears" because she wept gold when her husband was away travelling. This can stack indefinitely: a ship may be called "the horse of the road of whales" because "the road of whales" is the ocean, and a "horse" crossing the ocean is therefore a ship!
As a result, a highly developed form of poetry emerges. All of this mythological background is kept in the skald's head, and can be drawn on to serve to commemorate or condemn individuals, as needed. Even a Christian ruler could be praised with mythological references; the mythology was understood in symbolic enough terms due to the circumlocution to be valuable even in the 13th century, centuries after Christianization.
Now, is this the same level of abstraction and self-awareness that Indian philosophy shows? Not even close. There are no extant philosophical commentaries or exegesis on stories (and I doubt any ever existed). And in fact, almost none of what I have said would fall under the modern umbrella of theology. However, the stories were used as abstractions and symbols for more social purposes than the most superficial, entertaining mode.