Frankish paganism
Salian Mythology comprises the polytheïstic beliefs of the Salian Franks, originating from their Germanic homelands north of the Lower Rhine and taken with them in their expanse into France. Paganism is supposed to have flourished among the Salian Franks until the conversion of Clovis to Christianity, after which paganism withered slowly.
The modern knowledge of ancient Germanic beliefs is sufficient to assume similarities between the continental and Scandinavian counterparts, although the latter represents almost the totality of the sources we have. It has been possible to reconstruct the basic elements of Germanic traditional religion, especially the tripartite structure that, in accordance with other Indo European systems, recognized a threefold structure of worship - in the Germanic world defined by heaven, war and fertility and incarnated by the identities of its three main deities: Wodan/Odin, Donar/Thor and Fricco/Freyr. However, the worship of this triad was not rigid. Since the relation toward the gods answered to specific needs of groups and confederations, some degree of local variation has been observed in time and people, giving emphasis to specific gods (such as Thor in Uppsala) while others were cast aside (as possibly occured with Wodan among the high German dialect speaker). The Scandinavian religion contrasted to the Frankish structure of the pantheon, where the worship was especially devoted to fertility gods.
Although for instance the spear was a attribute to both Wodan and the Merovingian kings, in contrast to many other Germanic tribes no Merovingians claims are known to be descended from Wodan. Instead, the tradition of a cart pulled by bulls seems to be present from the early Merovingians on. The bulls that pulled the cart were taken as special animals, and according to Salian law the theft of those animals would impose a high sanction. In the grave of Childeric was found the head of a bull, craftily made out of gold. This may have represented the persistence of a very old fertility ritual, attached to the sacred person of the Merovingian king and in accordance with Tacitus mentioning rituals among Germanic tribes of the North Sea area that include a fertility goddess Nerthus riding a chariot drawn along by cows. This goddess is generally held to be a Roman misinterpretation of Freyr, itself strongly associated to a god carrying the similar name Njord. This Nerthus, whose worship was connected to a lake where the service was accompanied with human sacrifices, is thought to be the origin of the Merovingian story about the conception of Meroveus, after whom the dynasty would be named, telling of the Frankish king Chlodeo taking a summer bathe with his wife, when she was attacked by some sort of sea beast, which Fredegar[1] described as something like Neptune or the Minotaur, thus it was unknown if Meroveus was conceived out of Chlodeo, or the Beast. The Frank kings riding through the country on their chariot pulled by bulls could then be imagined re-enacting the blessing journey of their divine ancestor.
The Salian Franks, even though belonging to the Germanic group of tribes known as Rhine-Weser, were closely tied to the Germanic groups along the North Sea. With them the Franks shared a special dedication to the worship of Yngvi, synonym to Freyr, whose cult can still be discerned in the time of Clovis.[2]