Moray

Moray (from Old Celt mori-tref = “sea-settlement” ) is a unitary authority in north-east Scotland, since the 1975 local government reforms part of the Grampian Region. It is pronounced “Murray” and an inhabitant is a morave from the Latin for the area (Moravia.)

An alliance of Scots and Vikings conquered the area in the ninth century, subduing the original Picts and forming the Kingdom of Moray. Its most notable ruler was to be Macbeth who assumed the Scottish throne in about 1040, however, by the end of the eleventh century it had begun to be subsumed into the Scottish crown as a county, a process completed by the end of the thirteenth century.

The county town ( and current administrative centre) was Elgin. The region is bound in the north by the North Sea in the west by the highlands and to the east and south by Aberdeenshire. The slope between the Grampians in the south and the sea, watered by the River Spey, is a fine barley growing district with many whisky distilleries.