Germanic Europe
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Germanic Europe is the part of Europe in which Germanic languages are predominant. Countries or areas in which such language is officially recognized and/or de facto spoken as a minority language are sometimes included; this entire area corresponds more or less to North-Western Europe and western parts of Central Europe.
In its widest sense, this region consists of Iceland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Faroe Islands, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Swedish-speaking municipalities of Finland, French Flanders and Alsace-Moselle in France, Flanders and the smaller German-speaking Community in Belgium, the German-speaking part of Luxembourg, Germany, the formerly German parts of Poland as well as in East Prussia and the Baltic States Estonia and Latvia, Liechtenstein, the German-speaking part of Switzerland, Austria, and the province of Bolzano-Bozen in Italy.
Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, whilst also belonging to Celtic Europe, are considered (here) to be partially Germanic because of the dominance of the English language in these areas. And in the case of Scotland, also its history of Viking raids and settlement, its own Germanic/Anglic language (Scots) and the fact that south-eastern Scotland was once part of Northumbria, an Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Similarly, Finland is included because of the existence of a minority of Swedish-speakers in the country. However, the vast majority of inhabitants of these countries share a language other than a Germanic language.
The predominant religion in the majority of the region is Protestantism; the United Kingdom, the Nordic countries, the Northern Netherlands, northern Germany, and most of German-speaking Switzerland are Protestant. At the same time, some parts of the region are predominantly Catholic: Republic of Ireland, Flanders, Austria, and southern Germany (particularly Bavaria).
