[note 1] Although his parentage is unknown, he was probably a member of the Cumbrian dynasty that is recorded to have ruled the Kingdom of Strathclyde immediately before him.

[9] A certain son of Rhun was Eochaid, a man who seems to have possessed a stake in the Scottish kingship before falling from power in the last decades of the ninth century.

In the 870s, the kingdom's principal citadel—the eponymous fortress of Al Clud ("Rock of the Clyde")—fell to the Irish-based Scandinavian kings Amlaíb and Ímar.

[19][note 2] At some point after the loss of Al Clud, the Kingdom of Strathclyde appears to have undergone a period of expansion.

[21] Although the precise chronology is uncertain, by 927 the southern frontier appears to have reached the River Eamont, close to Penrith.

[24][note 3] Amiable relations between these powers may be evidenced by the remarkable collection of contemporary Scandinavian-influenced sculpture at Govan.

[26] After Eochaid's career, the next notice of the Cumbrian realm is the record of Dyfnwal's death preserved by the ninth- to twelfth-century Chronicle of the Kings of Alba.