The so-called Anglo-Saxon the old Hanoverian population.
Their languages were sufficient alike to be mutually intelligible, and after the conversion of the Angles of England, who became Christianized about A.D. 600, the extension of their own creed to the still Pagan Saxons of the Continent became one of the great duties to the bishops and missionaries of Britain; who, although themselves of Hanoverian rather than Westphalian extraction, looked upon the whole stock at large as their parentage, and called their cousins (so to say) in Westphalia, and their brothers in Hanover, by the collective term Old-Saxon.
All the Angles, then, of the Saxonia of the Frank and British writers of the eighth century were Saxon, though all the Saxons were not Angle.
Eastphalia, the division which must have been the most Angle, reached as far as the Elbe.
But there was, also, a Saxony beyond Eastphalia, a Saxony beyond the Elbe; the country of the Saxones Transalbiani; other names for its occupants being Nord-albingi (=men to the north of the Elbe), and Nord-leudi (=North people). The poet already quoted, writes—
Saxonum populus quidam, quos claudit ab Austro
Albis sejunctim positos Aquilonis ad axem.
Hos Nordalbingos patrio sermone vocamus.
[173]In this case as before, Saxon is a generic rather than a particular name. The facts that prove this give us also the geographical position of the Nordalbingians. They fell into three divisions:
1. The Thiedmarsi, Thiatmarsgi, or Ditmarshers, whose capital was Meldorp—primi ad Oceanum Thiatmarsgi, et eorum ecclesia Mildindorp—
2. The Holsati, Holtzati, or Holtsætan, from whom the present Duchy of Holstein takes its name—dicti a sylvis, quas incolunt.[20] The river Sturia separated the Holsatians from—
3. The Stormarii, or people of Stormar; of whom Hamburg was the capital—Adam Bremens: Hist. Eccles. c. 61.