These Nordic elements in Britain, both Goidelic and Brythonic, were in a minority during Roman times and the ethnic complexion of the island was not much affected by the Roman occupation, as the legions stationed there represented the varied racial stocks of the Empire. After the Romans abandoned Britain and about 400 A. D., floods of pure Nordics poured into the islands for nearly six centuries, arriving in the north as the Norse pirates, who made Scotland Scandinavian, and in the east as Saxons and Angles, who founded England. The Angles came from somewhere in central Jutland and the Saxons came from coast lands immediately at the base of the Danish Peninsula. All these districts were then and are now almost purely Teutonic; in fact, this is part of old Saxony and is to-day the core of Teutonic Germany. These Saxon districts sent out at that time swarms of invaders not only into England but into France and over the Alps into Italy, just as at a much later period the same land sent swarming colonies into Hungary and Russia. The same Saxon invaders passed down the Channel coasts and traces of their settlement on the mainland remain to this day in the Cotentin district around Cherbourg. Scandinavian sea peoples called Danes or Northmen swarmed over as late as 900 A. D. and conquered all eastern England. This Danish invasion of England was the same that brought the Northmen or Normans into France. In fact the occupation of Normandy was probably by Danes and the conquest of England was largely the work of Norsemen, as Norway at that time was under Danish kings. Both of these invasions, especially the later, swept around the greater island and inundated Ireland, driving both the Neolithic aborigines and their Celtic-speaking masters into the bogs and islands of the west. The blond Nordic element to-day is very marked in Ireland as in England. It is derived, to some extent, from the early invaders of Celtic speech, but the Goidelic element has been very largely absorbed in Ireland as in western England and in Scotland by the Iberian substratum of the population and is found to-day rather in the form of Nordic characters in brunets than in the entirely blond individuals who represent later and purer Nordic strains. The figures for recruits taken some decades ago in the two countries would indicate that the Irish as a whole are considerably lighter in eye and darker in hair color than are the English. The combination of black Iberian hair with blue or gray Nordic eyes is frequently found in Ireland and also in Spain and in both these countries is justly admired for its beauty, but it is by no means an exclusively Irish type.