Collective name given to the various Germanic tribes who settled in the south and east of Roman Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries AD, who eventually united in the 9th century to form the nation called England.

They mainly consisted of sundry Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, but may well have included Frisians and Franks and certainly Swedes. The Jutes came from the peninsula of Jutland, (what is now Denmark), the Angles came from a little farther south whilst the Saxons came from what is now northern Germany on the North Sea coast.

Commonly referred to as the Saxons (they being the dominant tribe) or Anglo-Saxons in order to distinguish them from the remaining Saxon people inhabiting northern Germany.(Hence the German kingdom of Saxony.)

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.