The Noric Alps () is a collective term denoting various mountain ranges of the Eastern Alps. The name derives from the ancient Noricum province of the Roman Empire on the territory of present-day Austria and the adjacent Bavarian and Slovenian area. Concept history Referring to extinct Noricum, the designation originally comprised the Alpine mountain ranges in the medieval Bavarian stem duchy of East Francia, including the later Tyrol, Salzburg and Upper Austrian regions. In the 19th century, the German term Norische Alpen covered the whole group of ranges of the Central Eastern and Northern Limestone Alps east of the Dreiherrnspitze peak. The Noric Alps were considered the major northern range of the Eastern Alps, alongside the Carnic Alps (i.e. the Carnic Alps proper, Gailtal Alps, Karawanks, Kamnik–Savinja Alps, and Pohorje) in the south and the Julian Alps in the southeast. Later the meaning was confined to the ranges south of the Alpine divide between the Mur and Drava rivers Geography In the traditional context, the Noric Alps are located mostly in Austria — 98% of the region is Austrian, mainly in the southern states of Carinthia and Styria—, with a small area in the adjacent Lower Styria region of Slovenia. The area covers and stretches from the upper Mur River in the North to the Drava in the South and from the Katschberg Pass in the West to the Mur River in the East. The Noric Alps are surrounded by the Hohe Tauern range in the West and the Low Tauern in the North, in the South they border on the Gailtal Alps, the Karavanke and Pohorje ranges of the Southern Limestone Alps. The highest point is Mt. Eisenhut in Styria, which, at , is only modest in the context of the Eastern Alps, where many mountains rise above 3,000 m (10,000 ft). Other notable peaks in the range are Rosennock (), Zirbitzkogel () and Großer Speikkogel (). In the south the Noric Alps comprise the Klagenfurt Basin with the historic centres of Zollfeld and Magdalensberg. The mountainside is characterised by transhumance (Alm) agriculture and was also a mining area, still for magnesite in the area of Radenthein. Today the region largely depends on tourism, in winter around the ski aras of Bad Kleinkirchheim, Krems, at Katschberg, Turracher Höhe and Klippitztörl, in summer around several picturesque Carinthian lakes like Wörthersee, Lake Millstatt or Lake Ossiach. The Nock Mountain National Park,