 Neither the year nor the date of Stigand's birth is known. He was born in East Anglia, possibly in Norwich, to an apparently prosperous family of mixed English and Scandinavian ancestry, as is shown by the fact that Stigand's name was Norse but his brother's was English. His brother Æthelmær, also a cleric, later succeeded Stigand as bishop of Elmham. His sister held land in Norwich, but her given name is unrecorded.
