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Celts (pronounced /ˈkelts/ or /ˈselts/,
see names of the
Celts; the most common academic usage is with a velar "c", pronounced as
"k") is a modern term used to describe any of the European
peoples who spoke, or speak, a Celtic language.^[1]
The term is also used in a wider sense to describe the modern descendants of those peoples, notably those
who participate in a Celtic culture.

Charlemagne (pronounced /ˈʃɑrlɨmeɪn/; Latin:
Carolus Magnus or Karolus
Magnus, meaning Charles the Great) (2 April 742 – 28 January
814) was King of the Franks from 768 to his
death. He expanded the Frankish kingdoms
into a Frankish
Empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered
Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800 which temporarily
made him a rival of the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople. His rule is also associated with
the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of
art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic
Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne
helped define both Western
Europe and the Middle Ages. He is numbered as Charles I in the regnal
lists of France, Germany
(where he is known as Karl der Große), and the Holy Roman
Empire.

The Franks or Frankish people (Latin: Franci or gens Francorum) were a West
Germanic tribal confederation first attested in the 3rd century as living
north and east of the Lower
Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman
territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a kingdom on Roman-held soil
that was acknowledged by the Romans after 357. In the climate of the collapse of
imperial authority in the West, the Frankish tribes were united under the
Merovingians and conquered all of Gaul save Septimania in the 6th century. The Salian political
elite would be one of the most active forces in spreading Christianity over
western Europe.

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural
community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC.
Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the
largest empires in the ancient world.^[1]

In its centuries of existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy to an oligarchic republic to an increasingly autocratic empire. It came to dominate South-Western
Europe, South-Eastern Europe/Balkans and the Mediterranean region through conquest and assimilation.

Plagued by internal instability and
attacked by various migrating peoples, the western part of
the empire, including Italy, Hispania, Gaul, Britannia and Africa
broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century AD.

Empire

With his enemies defeated, Octavian took the name Augustus and assumed
almost absolute power, retaining only a pretense of the Republican form of
government.^[40] His designated
successor, Tiberius, took power
without serious

The Normans were the people who gave their names to Normandy, a region in northern France. They descended from Viking conquerors of the territory and the native
population of mostly Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock. Their identity emerged initially
in the first half of the tenth century, and gradually evolved over succeeding
centuries until they disappeared as an ethnic group in the early thirteenth
century. The name "Normans" derives from "Northmen" or "Norsemen", after the Vikings from Scandinavia who founded Normandy
(Northmannia in its original Latin).

They played a major political, military, and cultural role in medieval Europe
and even the Near East. They were famed for their martial spirit and Christian piety. They quickly adopted
the Romance language of the land they
settled in, their dialect becoming known as Norman, an important literary language. The Duchy of Normandy,
which they formed by treaty with the French crown, was one of the great large fiefs of medieval France. The
Normans are famed both for their culture, such as their unique Romanesque
architecture, and their musical traditions, as well as for the military
accomplishments and innovations. Norman adventurers established a kingdom in Sicily and southern Italy by
conquest, and a Norman expedition on behalf of their duke led to the Norman Conquest of England. Norman
influence spread from these new centres to the Crusader States in the
Near East, to Scotland and Wales in Great Britain, and to Ireland.

In Russian historiography, the term "Norman" is often used for the Varangians, as for example in the
term "Normanist theory". In French
historiography too, the term is often applied to the various Viking groups that
raided France in the ninth century before settling down to found Normandy.

Anglo-Saxons (or Anglo-Saxon) is the term usually used to
describe the invading Germanic tribes in the south and east of Great Britain from the
early 5th century AD, and their creation of the English nation, to the Norman conquest of 1066.^[1] The Benedictine monk, Bede, identified
them as the descendants of three Germanic tribes:^[2]



• The Angles, who may have come from
  Angeln, and Bede wrote that their whole
  nation came to Britain,^[3] leaving their former
  land empty. The name 'England' or 'Aenglaland' originates from this tribe.^[4]
  
• The Saxons, from Lower Saxony (German: Niedersachsen,
  Germany)
  
• The Jutes, from the Jutland peninsula.



Their language (Old
English) derives from "Ingvaeonic" West Germanic dialects and transforms
into Middle English
from the 11th century. Old English was divided into four main dialects: West Saxon, Mercian, Northumbrian and Kentish.




Place names seem to show that smaller numbers of some other Germanic tribes
came over: Frisians at Fresham, Freston, and Friston; Flemings at Flempton and Flimby; Swabians
at Swaffham; perhaps Franks at Frankton and Frankley.




In modern usage, Anglo-Saxon can be used in various contexts to mean
people predominantly descended from the English
ethnic group, in England as well
as other Anglophone countries. This usage is
restricted to certain contexts in Anglophone cultures, but this term and its
direct translations are commonly used in other languages.

A romanticized picture of Vikings as Germanic noble savages emerged in the 18th century, and
expanded during the Victorian era Viking revival.^[2] In Britain it
took the form of Septentrionalism, in Germany that
of "Wagnerian"
pathos or even Germanic mysticism, and in the Scandinavian
countries that of Romantic nationalism or Scandinavism. In contemporary
popular culture these clichéd depictions are often exaggerated with the effect
of presenting Vikings as caricatures.^[2]