Northwestern Europe
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Northwestern Europe, or Northwest Europe, is a loosely defined subregion of Europe, overlapping Northern and Western Europe. The term is used in geographic,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> history,<ref name="Loveluck" /> and military contexts.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Geographic definitions
Geographically, Northwestern Europe is given by some sources as a region which includes Great Britain,<ref name="Barnes">Template:Cite book</ref> Ireland,<ref name="Barnes" /> Belgium,<ref name="Verhulst">Template:Cite book</ref> the Netherlands,<ref name="Verhulst" /> Luxembourg,<ref name="boje" /> Northern France,<ref name="Verhulst" /> parts of or all of Germany,<ref name="interreg" /><ref name="boje" /> Denmark,<ref name="Barnes" /> Norway,<ref name="boje" /> Sweden,<ref name="boje" /> and Iceland.<ref name="Loveluck">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Nonspecific</ref> In some works, Switzerland, Finland, and Austria are also included as part of Northwestern Europe.<ref name="boje">Template:Cite book</ref>
Under the Interreg program, funded by the European Regional Development Fund, "North-West Europe" (NWE) is a region of European Territorial Cooperation that includes Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Netherlands and parts of France and Germany.<ref name="interreg">Template:Cite web</ref>
Ethnography
During the Reformation, some parts of Northwestern Europe converted to Protestantism,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> in a manner which differentiated the region from its Roman Catholic neighbors elsewhere in Europe.<ref name="americanmind">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="amimmigration">Template:Cite book</ref>
A definition of Northwestern Europe was used by some late 19th to mid-20th century anthropologists, eugenicists, and Nordicists, who used the term as a shorthand term for the part of Europe with a predominantly Nordic population.<ref name="hayes">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> For example, Arthur de Gobineau, the 19th-century aristocrat who published works on the pseudoscience of scientific racism, included parts of Northwestern Europe in what Leon Baradat described as his "Aryan heaven".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Genetics
There is close genetic affinity among some Northwest European populations,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> with some of these populations descending from Bell Beaker populations carrying steppe ancestry.Template:Fact For example, the Beaker people of the lower Rhine overturned 90% of Great Britain's gene pools, replacing the Basque-like Neolithic populations present prior.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>