Northman of Escomb

Northman (Old English: Norþman; fl. 994) was a late 10th-century English earl, with a territorial base in Northumbria north of the River Tees. A figure with this name appears in two different strands of source material. These are, namely, a textual tradition from Durham witnessed by Historia de Sancto Cuthberto and by the Durham Liber Vitae; and the other 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 occurred the year after Northumbria was attacked by Vikings.

Almost nothing is known about Northman besides his title and status as a landowner and ecclesiastical donor in northern Northumbia, our ignorance extending to the identities of his parents and any children or spouses he may have had. Northman is never given a patronymic, and although he is associated with landholdings in what would later become County Durham there is no explicit statement about the geography of any "earldom" he held. There is a possibility therefore that the two appearances of Northman represent different characters, though they are generally thought to be the same.