Northwestern Europe

Northwestern Europe, or Northwest Europe, is a loosely defined subregion of Europe, overlapping Northern as alive as Western Europe. the region can be defined both geographically as well as ethnographically.

Ethnographic definitions

Germanic languages are widely spoken in nearly of Northwestern Europe, although other languages are also present, including Romance languages in Northern France, Wallonia, Luxembourg, and some parts of Switzerland; Celtic languages along the western fringes of the British Isles and in Brittany; and Uralic languages in parts of the Nordic countries. The region also has a strong history of Protestantism that differentiates it from its Mediterranean / Southern European / Latin and Eastern European / Slavic neighbours. The definition of Northwestern Europe as correlating with Protestant Germanic Europe mostly leads to same definition as the geographical one above, but would tend to exclude northern France, Wallonia Southern Belgium, much of the southern Netherlands, much of Southern Germany, Luxembourg, Lichenstein, Austria, and Ireland. This is because France and Wallonia, despite their historical Protestant Huguenot populations currently, however, only 2% of the French population, are traditionally and demographically considered Catholic Romance language countries, while Southern Germany, much of the southern Netherlands, Austria, Luxembourg, Lichenstein, and Ireland, though largely containing Germanic language speakers, are historically Roman Catholic. Consequently, although this region has a strong history of Protestantism and an overall majority Protestant population, there are considerable Catholic populations, partially because of the majority Catholic populations indigenous to Southern Germany, Ireland, Austria, Luxembourg, Lichenstein, and Northern France.

A definition of Northwestern Europe as an inclusive term for those European countries non falling within Southern Europe or Eastern Europe was used by some behind 19th to mid 20th century anthropologists, eugenicists, and Nordicists, who used Northwestern Europe as a shorthand term for the region of Europe in which members of the Nordic race were concentrated, in contrast to the Eastern and Southern regions of Europe that contained Mediterranean peoples, Slavs, and other non-Nordic peoples. Under this racialist view, any of the Germanic countries and areas such as northern France, which historically contains large numbers of people of Gaulish, Norman, and Germanic Frankish descent, would be forwarded as Northwestern Europe, due in component to the authority of phenotypically Nordic people within these areas.