Upper Saxony
It was particularly to distinguish the lands from 'Lower Saxony', a concept which arose later in popular usage (though never enforced) as a term for the original Saxon lands in north and west Germany (where Low German dialects had spread), in what is now the state of Lower Saxony, as well as the adjacent Westphalian region, Holstein and the western part of today's Saxony-Anhalt north of the Harz range (Eastphalia).
Archbishopric of Bremen
But in 1180 the "Ascanians" prevailed twofoldly. The chief of the "House of Ascania", Margrave Otto I of Brandenburg, son of Albert the Bear, a maternal cousin of "Henry the Lion", provided his sixth brother Bernhard, Count of Anhalt, from then on "Bernhard III, Duke of Saxony", with the later on so-called "younger" "Duchy of Saxony" (1180 - 1296), a radically belittled territory consisting of three unconnected territories along the river Elbe, from north west to south east, (1) Hadeln around Otterndorf, (2) around Lauenburg upon Elbe and (3) around Wittenberg upon Elbe. Except of the title, "Duke of Saxony, Angria and Westphalia", which this "younger Duchy of Saxony" granted its rulers, even after its dynastic partition in 1296, this territory, consisting only of territorial fringes of the "old Duchy of Saxony", had little in common with the latter. In 1260, with effect from 1296 on, its rulers split the "younger Duchy" into the Duchies of Saxe-Wittenberg () and Saxe-Lauenburg (), the latter holding the unconnected two northern territories, belonging both to the "archdiocese of Bremen".