Saxons

The Saxons (Latin: Saxones, Old English: Seaxe, Old Saxon: Sahson, Low German: Sachsen) were a confederation of Germanic tribes on the North German plain, some of whom migrated to Great Britain during the Middle Ages and formed part of the merged group of Anglo-Saxons that would eventually carve out the first united Kingdom of England.

The Saxons were Ingvaeonic tribes, whose earliest known area of settlement is Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein. This area overlapped the area of the Angles, a tribe with which they were frequently closely linked. Saxons participated in the Germanic settlement of Britain during and after the fifth century. It is unknown how many migrated from the continent to Britain, though estimates for the total number of Anglo-Saxon settlers are around two hundred thousand. During the Middle Ages, because of international Hanseatic trading routes and contingent migration during the Middle Ages, Saxons mixed with and had strong influences upon the languages and cultures of the North Germanic and Baltic and Finnic peoples, and also upon the Polabian Slavs and Pomeranian West Slavic people.