Fife
Fife (/faɪf/ FYFE, Scottish English: [fɐi̯f]; Scottish Gaelic: Fìobha, IPA:[fiːvə]; Scots: Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross (i.e. the historic counties of Perthshire and Kinross-shire) and Clackmannanshire. By custom it is widely held to have been one of the major Pictishkingdoms, known as Fib, and is still commonly known as the Kingdom of Fife within Scotland. A person from Fife is known as a Fifer. In older documents the county was very occasionally known by the anglicisationFifeshire.
Fife is Scotland's third largest local authority area by population. It has a resident population of just under 367,000, over a third of whom live in the three principal settlements, Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes. On the northeast coast of Fife lies the historic town of St Andrews, home to the University of St Andrews—the most ancient university of Scotland and one of the oldest universities in the world—and the Old Course at St Andrews, considered the world's oldest golf course.
Fife, bounded to the north by the Firth of Tay and to the south by the Firth of Forth, is a natural peninsula whose political boundaries have changed little over the ages. The Pictish king list and De Situ Albanie documents of the Poppleton manuscript mention the division of the Pictish realm or Albany into seven sub-kingdoms, one being Fife.[2]: 70–72 The earliest known reference to the common epithet The Kingdom of Fife dates from only 1678, in a proposition that the term derives from the quasi-regal privileges of the Earl of Fife.[2]: 132 The notion of a kingdom may derive from a misinterpretation of an extract from Wyntoun.[2]: 133 The name is recorded as Fib in A.D. 1150 and Fif in 1165. It was often associated with Fothriff.
The hill-fort of Clatchard Craig, near Newburgh, was occupied as an important Pictish stronghold between the sixth and eighth centuries AD.[3][4]
Fife was an important royal and political centre from the reign of King Malcolm III onwards, as the leaders of Scotland gradually moved southwards away from their ancient strongholds around Scone. Malcolm had his principal home in Dunfermline and his wife Margaret was the main benefactor of Dunfermline Abbey. The Abbey replaced Iona as the final resting place of Scotland's royal elite, with Robert I amongst those to be buried there.[5]
The Earl of Fife was until the 15th century considered the principal peer of the Scottish realm, and reserved the right of crowning the nation's monarchs, reflecting the prestige of the area.
