Ed Wozniak, who brought us lists of Norse and Hawaiian dieties, has a list of gods in the pantheon of the Inuits, whose homelands stretch all around the northernmost regions of the world. Some have downright scary stories, like the sea goddess Sedna.
Read more about Sedna and eleven other Inuit deities at Balladeer's Blog. Link
She was the daughter of the god and goddess Anguta and Isarrataitsoq and, like countless female figures in Inuit myths, she refused all prospective husbands. Sedna instead had sexual relations with dogs and the “freakish” offspring of these unions were said to be white people and Native American tribes that the Inuit were often at war with. A ghoulish twist to the story is how Sedna took to using her parents as food (a recurring theme in Inuit myths because of the scarcity of food in the frozen north at times and how instances of cannibalism during such famines were much-discussed). Sedna devoured both of her mother Isarrataitsoq’s arms and had finished eating one of her father’s arms before he was able to subdue her and take her out to sea in his canoe, intent on banishing her to the sea. Continuing to struggle, Sedna clutched the sides of the canoe as her father tried to submerge her, prompting him to take his long knife and cut off her fingers. Since, to the Inuit, loss or mutilation of the hands was often seen as a horrific transformation into something new, the myth states that Sedna now embraced her fate, transforming her now-fingerless hands into flippers and transforming her severed digits into the various species of sea animals.
Read more about Sedna and eleven other Inuit deities at Balladeer's Blog. Link
The body of myths belonging to a culture. Myths are traditional stories about gods and heroes. They often account for the basic aspects of existence — explaining, for instance, how the Earth was created, why people have to die, or why the year is divided into seasons. Classical mythology — the myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans — has had an enormous influence on European and American culture.
I don't see anything offensive about it, but then again I do consider the bible to be Christian mythology.
The connotation of the word probably gets in the way. But, in a scholarly sense it is usually used to refer to the body of traditional beliefs and stories that a culture uses to define itself.