Bamburgh in the context of "Uhtred the Bold"

The Rulers of Bamburgh (Old English: Bebbanburh; Old Irish: Dún Guaire; Brittonic: Din Guairoi) were significant regional potentates in what is now northern England and south-eastern Scotland during the Viking Age. Sometimes referred to in modern sources as the Earldom of Bamburgh, their polity existed for roughly two centuries, beginning after the attacks on the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria by the Vikings in the later ninth century, and ending after the Norman Conquest later in the eleventh century. In Scottish and Irish sources of the period the Bamburgh 'earldom' is referred to as the kingship of the Northern English (or the North English kingdom), or simply of the 'Saxons'.

In essence, Bamburgh and the surrounding region (the former realm of Bernicia), the northern component of Northumbria, was ruled in succession by a shadowy series of 'kings', 'earls' (Latin duces) and 'high-reeves' (from Old English heah-gerefa). Most of these were descended from Eadwulf I of Bamburgh, thereafter called the Eadwulfings or House of Bamburgh. Several of these men commanded the whole of Northumbria, and their jurisdiction is also sometimes referred to also as the earldom of Northumbria (not to be confused with the southerly 'official' ealdordom of Northumbria based at York).

Eadred (also Edred, c. 923 – 23 November 955) was King of the English from 26 May 946 until his death in 955. He was the younger son of Edward the Elder and his third wife Eadgifu, and a grandson of Alfred the Great. His elder brother, Edmund, was killed trying to protect his seneschal from an attack by a violent thief. Edmund's two sons, Eadwig and Edgar, were then young children, so Eadred became king. He suffered from ill health in the last years of his life and he died at the age of a little over thirty, having never married. He was succeeded successively by his nephews, Eadwig and Edgar.

Eadred's elder half-brother Æthelstan inherited the kingship of England south of the Humber in 924, and conquered the south Northumbrian Viking kingdom of York in 927. Edmund and Eadred both inherited kingship of the whole kingdom, lost it shortly afterwards when York accepted Viking kings, and recovered it by the end of their reigns. In 954, the York magnates expelled their last king, Erik Bloodaxe, and Eadred appointed Osullf, the Anglo-Saxon ruler of the north Northumbrian territory of Bamburgh, as the first ealdorman of the whole of Northumbria.

The Northumberland Coast National Landscape is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) covering 40 miles (64 km) of coastline from Berwick-Upon-Tweed to the River Coquet estuary in the Northeast of England. Features include: Alnmouth, Bamburgh, Beadnell, Budle Bay, Cocklawburn Beach, Craster, Dunstanburgh Castle, the Farne Islands, Lindisfarne and Seahouses. It lies within the natural region of the North Northumberland Coastal Plain.

Eadwulf II (fl. AD 968–970), nicknamed Evil-child (Old English: Yfelcild), was ruler of Bamburgh in the latter half of the tenth century. Although Eadwulf is sometimes described as the Earl of Northumbria, he ruled only a northern portion of Northumbria, a polity centred on Bamburgh that once stretched from the Firth of Forth to the River Tees.

Waltheof was high-reeve or ealdorman of Bamburgh (fl. 994). He was the son of Ealdred and the grandson of Oswulf I and was father of Uhtred the Bold, Ealdorman of Northumbria.

The name 'Waltheof' remained in his family when Earl Siward married his great-granddaughter and named his son Waltheof. This son of Siward became Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, and one of his descendants was Saint Waltheof of Melrose. Additionally, another branch of the family would use the Waltheof name including: Waltheof of Allerdale, who was the son of Gospatric, Earl of Northumbria. Waltheof of Inverkeithing and Dalmeny was the son of Cospatric, and the grandson of Waltheof of Allerdale. Another descendant of Gospatric, Earl of Northumbria was Waltheof, Earl of Dunbar.

Eadwulf Cudel or Cutel (meaning cuttlefish) (died early 1020s), sometimes numbered Eadwulf III, was ruler of Bamburgh for some period in the early eleventh century. Following the successful takeover of York by the Vikings in 866/7, southern Northumbria became part of the Danelaw, but in the north English rulers held on from a base at Bamburgh. They were variously described as kings, earls, princes or high-reeves, and their independence from the kings of England and Scotland is uncertain. Uhtred the Bold and Eadwulf Cudel were sons of Waltheof, ruler of Bamburgh, who died in 1006. He was succeeded by Uhtred, who was appointed by Æthelred the Unready as earl in York, with responsibility for the whole of Northumbria. Uhtred was murdered in 1016, and king Cnut then appointed Erik, son of Hakon, earl at York, while Eadwulf succeeded at Bamburgh.

In 1018, the Northumbrians of Bamburgh were defeated by Malcolm II of Scotland in the Battle of Carham. In one twelfth-century Durham source, De obsessione Dunelmi, Ealdulf is described as "a very lazy and cowardly man", who ceded Lothian, the northern part of Bernicia, to the Scots—though the historicity of this claim is disputed, one of several twelfth-century English accounts that try to explain the 'loss' of Lothian to Scotland. Another twelfth-century tradition relates that Lothian had been under Scottish control since the time that King Edgar ceded it to Kenneth II of Scotland in the early 970s. Recently, it has been argued that Lothian remained part of the principality of Bamburgh until its dissolution around 1090, during the reign of Malcolm III.