Countryside Lower Saxony Nature Germany
Countryside Lower Saxony Nature Germany
Lower Saxony (
German: Niedersachsen [ˈniːdɐzaksən],
Low German: Neddersassen) is a
German state (
Bundesland) situated in northwestern Germany and is second in area, with 47,624 square kilometres (18,388 sq mi), and fourth in population (8 million) among the sixteen
Länder of Germany. In rural areas
Northern Low Saxon, a dialect of Low German, and
Saterland Frisian, a variety of
East Frisian, are still spoken, but the number of speakers is declining.
Lower Saxony borders on (from north and clockwise) the
North Sea, the states of Schleswig-Holstein,
Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,
Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt,
Thuringia,
Hesse and
North Rhine-Westphalia, and the
Netherlands. Furthermore, the
Free Hanseatic City of Bremen forms two enclaves within Lower Saxony, one being the city of
Bremen, the other, its seaport city of Bremerhaven. In fact, Lower Saxony borders more neighbours than any other single Bundesland.
The state's principal cities include the state capital
Hanover,
Brunswick,
Lüneburg,
Osnabrück,
Oldenburg,
Hildesheim,
Wolfenbüttel,
Wolfsburg and
Göttingen.
The northwestern area of Lower Saxony, which lies on the coast of the North Sea, is called
East Frisia and the seven
East Frisian Islands offshore are popular with tourists
. In the extreme west of Lower Saxony is the
Emsland, a traditionally poor and sparsely populated area, once dominated by inaccessible swamps. The northern half of Lower Saxony, also known as the
North German Plains, is almost invariably flat except for the gentle hills around the Bremen geestland. Towards the south and southwest lie the northern parts of the
German Central Uplands: the
Weser Uplands and the
Harz mountains. Between these two lie the
Lower Saxon Hills, a range of low ridges. Thus, Lower Saxony is the only Bundesland that encompasses both maritime and mountainous areas.
Lower Saxony's major cities and economic centres are mainly situated in its central and southern parts, namely Hanover, Brunswick, Osnabrück, Wolfsburg, Salzgitter, Hildesheim and Göttingen. Oldenburg, near the northwestern coastline, is another economic centre. The region in the northeast is called the
Lüneburg Heath (
Lüneburger Heide), the largest heathland area of Germany and in medieval times wealthy due to salt mining and salt trade, as well as to a lesser degree the exploitation of its peat bogs up until about the
1960s. To the north, the
Elbe river separates Lower Saxony from Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein,
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg. The banks just south of the
Elbe are known as
Altes Land (
Old Country). Due to its gentle local climate and fertile soil it is the state's largest area of fruit farming, its chief produce being apples.
Most of the state's territory was part of the historic
Kingdom of Hanover; the state of Lower Saxony has adopted the coat of arms and other symbols of the former kingdom. It was created by the merger of the
State of Hanover with several smaller states in 1946.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Saxony
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