Talk:Northwestern Europe

Poll: Ireland article titles

A poll is currently underway to determine the rendition of the island, nation-state, and disambiguation articles/titles for Ireland in Wp. Please weigh in! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 08:32, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

France

France has nothing to see with that concept ! Or pleas see a map ! France is a mediterranean country of latin culture whose big majority of its land is situated quite clearly in southern Europe. Only Normandy or Britanny could, exagerating since their position is more "middle/western", be included due to their relative proximity to the extreme south of the British isles. culturally obviously couldn't, since northwestern relates to protetantism and germanic languages.

France is big. Southern France may be Mediterranean, while Northern France (Normandy, Francia) is definitely part of the historical Germanic cultural sphere. --dab (𒁳) 11:57, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Normandy is obviously not part of the Germanic cultural sphere. It is since 2000 years a romance-speaking area (that the reasons why the borrowing of latin-based words in English has been made mainly from Normandy). Said that it is true that Normandy shows, in opposition with most of the rest of France (alongside with Nord department, Alsace region and Moselle departement) some impact of germanic tribes (Vikings in the case of Normandy). But that is deeply false to imagine that because of the Viking invasions Normandy is a region of Scandinavian culture (there have been huge Vikings influences in Sicily, and nobody consider that island to be culturally Germanic). In Normandy, when it has been settled by Vikings, the viking did not put out the romance-speaking populations; vikings still were a minority in the whole Normandy area, and they would have been obliged rapidely to integrate into the local dominant latin culture. If they didn't do that, and were enought noumerous to impose their languages to Normandy we could say that Normandy would have switch into the germanic cultural sphere. But this never happened, Normandy continue to be part of the romance and catholic part of Europe, like 98% of the french territory. Alsace is another story, but is in no way representative of the whole country.

concerning the impact of the Frankish people, yes France had its name from them, and they ruled our country for centuries; but as for Vikings they were small minorities and then never could impose their languages and culture to the romance-speaking peoples that existed and still exist today. Whole France, included the northern part of of romance-speaking culture; there is no reason to try to pass France as a country of north western European culture while it is definitly not at all. That said; germanic rule was not limited to northern half of France, but concerned the whole western former roman empire: from Belgium to Andalucia (Franks, Wisigoths, Vandals, sueves, burgondians, etc), it concerns as much Spain or Italy than France (Spain kingdom and nobility was founded by wisigoths... even today most "Spanish" names such as Rodriguez, have germanic etymology...) but nobody calls Spain a country in the germanic cultural sphere... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.224.59.166 (talk) 10:39, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

France is not all all north-western Europe! Linguistically: it is romance speaking, like Italy, Spain and Portugal Religiously: it is not protestant, but catholic with muslim minority and at least and not the last Geographically speaking France is not in the northern half of Europe!!! the northermost regions that are supposed to make France as a whole being part of northern Europe such as Normandy are as the latitude of southern Germany... which is hardly geographically northern European (while it is much more culturally speaking) Like it or not France is part of the latin part of Europe... that is to say the SOUTH-western Europe and not north-western! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.19.67.76 (talk) 17:32, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

More recently...

This image link seems to be popping a lot, as well as [1] there is a [2] website. From my limited observations in the Enlgand, where the country has been divied into 9 regions, it seems to perhaps suggest a layer above the nation level? So not sure if I'm saying that an actual definition today exists for this region (and othrs) but perhaps someone with a bit mroe knowledge in the area may be able to shine some more light on this. maybe even an article on the [Subdivisions of Europe]. brzak (talk) 17:33, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Protestantism in "Celtic Europe"

I reverted Onetonycousins edit as it is unsourced, lacks verifiability and according to his edit summary Protestantism isn't a trait of Celtic Europe - despite the fact the majority of Welsh and Scottish people (so called Celtic-Europe nations) are Protestant, and that Protestantism exists in Ireland. Such edits hint at bias and WP:IDONTLIKE and would ask Onetonycousins to stop addinh such controversial and unsoured claims into the article. Mabuska ^(talk) 09:45, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

The ironing is delicious. Onetonycousins (talk) 15:19, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean irony? Mabuska ^(talk) 23:53, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Dubious???

According to Onetonycousins this is suppossedly dubious:

“ Linguistically, "North-West Europe" consists of Celtic Europe and Germanic Europe, sharing some cultural traits (for example, a history of Protestantism and Germanic languages) ”

What a load of tosh. The statement says "sharing some traits", it does not say that all of it shares those same traits, however that is irrelevant. Onetonycousins has to prove that North-West Europe as it is defined here doesn't share a history of Protestantism and Germanic languages.

Firstly i'll deal with sharing a history of Protestantism. Every country that the description covers: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany and the Republic of Ireland - all have a history of Protestantism to some degree and almost all are Protestant majority countries. France even has a history of Protestantism - it even had a Protestant monarch at one stage. Seeing as Ireland was dominated by the Protestant Ascendancy and a Protestant parliament its wrong to claim Ireland has never had a history of Protestantism.

Secondly on languages. All countries in North-West Europe including the Republic of Ireland though excluding France, primarily speak a Germanic language as their first language/mother toungue. English is a Germanic language, as is Scots funnily enough.

I assume from your edit history you don't like the fact Ireland falls into this statement. However show me and everyone else proof Onetonycousins that the majority of people in Ireland don't speak English (a Germanic language) as their first (and in most cases only) language - and also proof that Ireland has never had a history of Protestantism. If you can do these two things the dubious tag stays and the sentence reworded - otherwise the tag will be removed.

Mabuska ^(talk) 22:39, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Like I said, the statement is sweeping. Believe it or not, the area called Celtic Europe in the article has a history of Celtic languages. Parts of Germanic Europe have a history of Celtic languages. The same goes for religion. The statement does not mention this, which is misleading. It needs to be qualified. Onetonycousins (talk) 23:06, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

You said its dubious and you've failed to show how it is dubious. The tag qualifies for removal as you've provided no defense for its usage. Have you even read the statement properly? It clearly states that Celtic and Germanic Europe share some traits - traits that they do share. Prove that they don't share those traits? Those traits mark them out from the rest of Europe. Celtic languages aren't shared with Scandinavia are they?

I think the Protestant bit and the Germanic languages bit should be swapped over as it sounds like a history of Germanic languages which can lead to confusion. Having it stating sharing Germanic languages and then history of Protestantism would clarify that it is talking present-day language. Mabuska ^(talk) 17:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see there's a counterfactual and a conflation here. Dunno about the details of the text of this article, have only made superficial clean-up edits. However of the remaining Celtic areas of Europe, some including the largest, are Catholic. Also the more protestant Celtic areas such as Wales and Scotland are also the more interbred with Germanic elements but have striven to maintain elements of Celtic culture. Perhaps that what the initiator of this thread is referring to. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 20:23, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

The fact some parts of North-West Europe are largely Catholic is irrelevant. The statement doesn't deny that or try to imply that Protestantism is the majority throughout it, and nowhere does it say that there are no Roman Catholics or that Roman Catholics aren't a majority in parts. Protestants don't have to be a majority for somewhere to have a history of Protestantism - cases in point being "Protestant Ascendancy" Ireland and "Huguenot" France.

On your edits, i think they add both good and bad into the article - on one hand better wording of parts that clarifies things better, however the inclusion of more things that need sourced. Then again the whole article needs sourced :-) Mabuska ^(talk) 15:55, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Right, I only did clean-up without altering the original thrust of the article, which actually I find rather superficial and perhaps chauvinistic. Probably in time the whole space of articles will get some kind of reworking and this could get merged into something else. The thing I learned though was that the Finns are a group like the Celts and that there are other Baltic countries whose people are considered Finnic than just Finland. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 04:36, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

The Finns are more widespread than just Finland, however i don't really think they'd classify as North-Western Europe. Mabuska ^(talk) 11:19, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

This is a misleading way to put it at best. The Estonians (besides various minor groups) aren't Finns in the narrow sense of Finnish. They're a separate ethnicity and nation with a separate language, though they are closely related, so they (or more precisely their language) are called Finnic (or sometimes Balto-Finnic, or Fennic) to distinguish the broad from the narrow Finnish sense that applies only to the titular nation of Finland.

This is a lot like the English, or the Swedes, aren't German, but they're Germanic. Many terms in -ic have been created for the purpose of distinguishing larger groupings (families) from individual languages and ethnicities: Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Baltic, Italic, Finnic, Turkic etc. It's just that it's not official usage in academia to speak of Germanics or Finnics for clarity (you can say Germanic-speaking peoples or Finnic-speaking peoples instead, though), though this use can certainly be found among laypeople. In the case of Finnic, the usual term is, in fact, Baltic Finns. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:13, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Shipping

The North-West Europe term crops up in connection with shipping as a loose term used to cover a wider area than the (Le Havre - ) Hamburg Range, i.e. including UK North Sea and Channel ports, Norwegian coast and even Baltic sea. Everybody got to be somewhere! (talk) 17:27, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Title spelling

Isn't Northwest the proper spelling? Shouldn't a spelling of "North-West" redirect to "Northwest" instead? Mistakefinder (talk) 08:35, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Greenland

Why isn't Greenland represented in light green on the map? Sure, it's not geographically in Europe, but as part of Denmark, I would think it would qualify in a lot of people's minds. It's also farther northeast than all the green regions on the map. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.215.209.37 (talk) 20:25, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Geographic definitions

I amended the article to the following based on the reasoning in my edit summary: [3], however a well known trouble maker has since decided to revert the edit with the spurious claim that "Revert to geographical links; Northern Germany is not a polity". Rather than engage in a petty edit-war which this editor would love I've brought it to talk.

Personally the revert is ridiculous and only continues to mix geographical landmasses (i.e. Ireland and GB) with geo-political entities such as Netherlands and Denmark. Also no-one is saying northern Germany is a polity and clearly refers to the north half of the state, not some geographical landmass that once contained Prussia or anything.

Unless a proper reason is giving by Gob Lofa, and no other editors have any objections, I will reinsert the changes based on common sense.

Mabuska ^(talk) 15:20, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Actually the Fascist source used to source the statement states "Britain" not "Great Britain" and in the following pages makes pretty clear it is on about Britain in the sense of the UK and Ireland in the sense of the Republic, or due to the era the source is on about "Irish Free State", which the source clearly uses on page 61 when discussing fascism in Ireland. I'll make the change. Mabuska ^(talk) 18:13, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Protestantism?

There is a long paragraph in this article that makes absolutely no sense. It's also unsourced and most likely OR.

The original paragraph went like this:

"The definition of Northwestern Europe as correlating with Protestant Germanic Europe leads to somewhat the same definition as the geographical one above, but would tend to exclude northern France, Wallonia, Southern Netherlands, Catholic Belgium, southern Germany, Austria, and Ireland. This is because France and Wallonia, despite their historical Huguenot populations, are considered Catholic Romance language countries, while Belgium, Southern Germany, Austria and Ireland, though largely containing Germanic language speakers, are historically Catholic. Measured by the attribute of Protestantism and Germanic culture, Northwestern Europe would therefore be equivalent to the area known as Northern Europe combined with the Low Countries, much of Switzerland and Northern Germany, and minus the Baltic regions, Belgium and Ireland." - First of all this is someone's own creation and is unsourced. Second, the conclusion and theory is wrong because Estonia and Latvia are also Protestant and have a Germanic culture background.

I tried fixing the paragraph by adding that fact:

"The definition of Northwestern Europe as correlating with Protestant Germanic Europe leads to somewhat the same definition as the geographical one above, but would tend to exclude northern France, Wallonia, Southern Netherlands, Catholic Belgium, southern Germany, Austria, and Ireland. This is because France and Wallonia, despite their historical Huguenot populations, are considered Catholic Romance language countries, while Belgium, Southern Germany, Austria and Ireland, though largely containing Germanic language speakers, are historically Catholic. The definition would also exclude the majority protestant Estonia and Latvia, which also have a history of germanic culture. Measured by the attribute of Protestantism and Germanic culture, Northwestern Europe would therefore be equivalent to the area known as Northern Europe combined with the Low Countries, much of Switzerland and Northern Germany, and minus the Baltic regions, Belgium and Ireland."

But now it makes even less sense. I would just remove the entire paragraph or rewrite it in a factual way that would make sense. Clearly trying to define "Northwestern Europe" by Protestantism will not work. Blomsterhagens (talk) 12:11, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Edit: There's also this definition: Northwestern Europe coincides with Protestant Germanic Europe. That would sort of work - by excluding the Protestant, but Finnic Finland and Estonia and the Protestant but Baltic Latvia. Blomsterhagens (talk) 12:18, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Finnland and Eastern Scandinavia

Why are Sweden and Finnland considered as northwestern european, as they are racially blonde as baltics people and even geographically closer to Eastern Europe such as Estonia/Russia than to the Northwestern European countries like UK? 89.166.236.254 (talk) 13:12, 13 November 2022 (UTC)