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The Saxons ((ラテン語:Saxones), , , , (ドイツ語:Sachsen), (オランダ語:Saksen)) were a confederation of Germanic tribes centered in the western North German Plain. They settled in large parts of Great Britain in the early Middle Ages and formed part of the merged group of Anglo-Saxons who eventually organised the first united Kingdom of England. Many Saxons however remained in Germania, where they resisted the expanding Frankish Empire through the leadership of the semi-legendary Saxon hero, Widukind. The Saxons' earliest area of settlement is believed to have been Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein. This general area also included the probable homeland of the Angles. Saxons, along with the Angles and other continental Germanic tribes, participated in the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain during and after the 5th century. The British-Celtic inhabitants of the isles tended to refer to all these groups collectively as Saxons.〔Simon Young, "AD 500 A journey through the dark isles of Britain and Ireland" p. 36, Phoenix 2006〕 It is unknown how many Saxons migrated from the continent to Britain, though estimates for the total number of Anglo-Saxon settlers are around 200,000. During the Middle Ages, because of international Hanseatic trading routes and contingent migration, Saxons mixed with and had strong influences upon the languages and cultures of the North Germanic, Baltic peoples, Finnic peoples, Polabian Slavs and Pomeranian West Slavic people. ==Etymology== The Saxons may have derived their name from ''seax'', a kind of knife for which they were known. The seax has a lasting symbolic impact in the English counties of Essex and Middlesex, both of which feature three seaxes in their ceremonial emblem. Their names, along with those of Sussex and Wessex, contain a remnant of the word "Saxon". The Elizabethan era play ''Edmund Ironside'' suggests the Saxon name derives from the Latin ''saxa'' (stone): Their names discover what their natures are, more hard than stones, and yet not stones indeed. ::::I.i.181-2 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Saxons」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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