Short answers, pulled from the story.
Three gods named Odin, Hœnir, and Lóðurr created Ask and Embla from two trees found on a beach. These deities bestowed breath, intelligence, shape, speech, hearing, and sight upon the wooden figures to make them human.
Linguist Gunlög Josefsson proposed that the word Embla comes from roots meaning firemaker or smokebringer. This etymology connects to ancient Scandinavian practices of creating fire through a fire plough which was considered magical and holy.
Henry Adams Bellows translated the Poetic Edda for Princeton University Press in 1936. This translation describes the scene where three gods find two trees and create the first man and woman.
A sculpture depicting the pair stands in Sölvesborg in southern Sweden today. Stig Blomberg created this artwork in 1948 to honor the mythological couple.
Indo-European traditions often used trees or rocks as raw material for creation while Near East cultures derived man's origin from clay, earth, or blood. Ancient myths teem with first couples similar to Adam and Eve across Vedic Yama and Yamī to Iranian Mašya and Mašyānag.