Northman
Northman (Old English: Norþman; fl. 994) was a late 10th-century English ealdorman (or earl), with a territorial base in Northumbria north of the River Tees. He appears in two different strands of source. These are, namely, the textual tradition of Durham witnessed by Historia de Sancto Cuthberto and the Durham Liber Vitae, and an appearance in a witness list of a charter of King Æthelred II dated to 994. The latter is Northman's only appearance south of the Humber, and came the year after Northumbria was attacked by Vikings.
Neither of these witnesses provide a patronymic nor an "earldom". There is a possibility therefore that the two Northmans are different characters, though they are generally thought to be the same. Almost nothing is known about Northman besides being an ealdorman in northern Northumbia, our ignorance extending to the identities of his parents and any children or spouses he may have had.
The first witness comes from the historical traditions preserved in Durham, related in two connected sources. The former of these is the grant — one of three grants written into a blank leaf at the end of the original volume of the Durham Liber Vitae — ascribed to Earl Northman (the other two to Earl Ulfketil and Earl Thored). Northman's grant is in folio 33v, and is thought to date to the late 10th or early 11th century. It records that Northman gave Escomb (on the River Wear between Witton-le-Wear and Bishop Auckland) to the community of St Cuthbert.
This grant appears to have been used as a source for the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto ("History of St Cuthbert") § 31, which probably made use of several such charters when it was written. The text purports to record a "lease" by Bishop Aldhun, bishop of St Cuthbert (c. 990 – c. 1018), to three different earls:
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