No / Rheged has been well known to historians for some time, but it is usually considered from the standpoint of the written sources. This paper seeks to begin the process of wider examination, firstly by discussing salient aspects of the archaeological setting, specifically the Iron Age and Roman background. Secondly, attention is drawn to those elements of the archaeological and written record relating to the location of Rheged, as well as to kingship and power. Earlier assumptions as to the location of Rheged are challenged, and it is suggested that its focus was in the Rhinns of Galloway. By the late sixth century Rheged, led by its great king Urien, was in existence, but it proved to be transient, and within a century or so of the earliest references in the literature, it had become absorbed into the expanding kingdom of Northumbria. Later, the Men of the North provided the heroic ancestry and models appropriate to kings in Wales, and ultimately found a place in one of the most enduring themes in medieval romantic literature.

No / Rerigonium, a place-name in Ptolemy¿s Geography, is thought to have been located in the Rhinns of Galloway, but its site has never been identified. There is a strong circumstantial case for regarding the Innermessan area on the eastern side of Loch Ryan as being the likely locus of Rerigonium. Why is this of interest? It is contended that the name, in both the British and Old Welsh forms, indicates an important function perhaps in the pre-Roman Iron Age in connection with the Novantae, as well as the obscure post-Roman entity known as Rheged.