Saxons

The Saxon people are a confederation of Old Germanic tribes whose modern-day descendants in Northern Germany are considered ethnic Germans while those in the Eastern Netherlands are considered Netherlanders (or “Dutch,” though not “Hollanders"). Their earliest known area of settlement is Northern Albingia, roughly that of today’s Holstein in Hesse and the northeastern part of the Netherlands (Drenthe, Groningen, Twente, Achterhoek). Saxon participation of the Germanic settlement of Britain was very strong and at times dominant, and especially the population of today’s Southern England descended essentially from a mixture of Celtic and Saxon people. During the past two centuries or so, many continental Saxons emigrated to other parts of the world, especially to the Americas, to Australia, to Southern Africa and to areas of the former Soviet Union, where some communities still maintain parts of their cultural and linguistic heritage, often under the umbrella categories “German” and “Dutch”. Due to international Hanseatic trading and migration during the Middle Ages, Saxons mixed with and strongly influenced the languages and cultures of the Scandinavian and Baltic peoples, also the Polabian and Pomeranian West Slavic peoples.