Talk:Northwestern Europe

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)

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: [1], 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)