Most Americans are British who originated from many different tribes including the angles, Saxons and vikings.You need to look at where the Angles, the Saxons (ever hear of Saxony?), the Jutes (ever hear of Jutland?) and the Vikings came from. It wasn't Britain. The original inhabitants (pre-Roman) were the Celts.
In fact, you could also make the statement that most Britans (at least pre-1960) were of German blood.
There's a reson why our days of the week are named after Norse gods:
Sunday ........ Sun's day
Monday ........ Moon's day
Tuesday ....... Tiw's day (Tiw = Scandinavian Tyr, the god of war)
Wednesday ..... Woden's day (Woden = Scandinavian Odin)
Thursday ...... Thor's day
Friday ........ Freya's (or possibly Frigga's) day (both were goddesses of love)
Saturday ...... exception...there is no Norse equivalent to the Roman god Saturn, so they retained the original day name from when England was still Roman Britannia
As for Sunday through Friday, with the exception of Wednesday they are Norse equivalents to Roman gods:
Sunday ........ Luna
Monday ........ Sol
Tuesday ....... Mars
Wednesday ..... Mercury (the Norse changed the tradition on this one)
Thursday ...... Jupiter
Friday ........ Venus
Saturday ...... Saturn
The thing is, the Romans got it from the Greeks:
Sunday ........ Helios
Monday ........ Artemis
Tuesday ....... Ares
Wednesday ..... Hermes
Thursday ...... Zeus
Friday ........ Aprodite
Saturday ...... Cronos
And according to
this site, the Greeks got it from the Babylonians, who themselves got it from the Sumerians (each one using equivalent gods from their pantheon).
So anyway I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make (if any at all), but suffice to say that we have heavy Norse influences in our language and some customs, but at the same time some things are way older.