Might be over reading Old Nan and feel free to say so, but it seems that Ned’s mom’s mom being a Flint is unique or weird? We see on the House Stark pedigree that Lord Cregan Stark married Arra Norrey from another mountain clan. Hopefully you know more mountain clans, because just wondering if mountain clans are kind of blob or some are “more wild” than others? Also I kind of got the impression that they are considered “lowly” among the Northern nobles so how Cregan married one?

Well, Cregan is an example of how it’s not unique….

The Northern mountain clans (although I usually refer to them as hill clans because that’s how GRRM introduced them in ADWD, and it more clearly separates them from the mountain clans of the Vale) include the First Flints, Wulls, Liddles, Harclays, Norreys, Burleys, and Knotts that we know of, and about 33 that we don’t know of. 

I don’t know how accurate is to call them lowly. They’re “petty lords” in the sense that individually, each clan doesn’t have much land or men (3,000 divided by 40 gives you 75 men each, although there’s bound to be some rather complex sub-infeudation as there was in the clan structures of the Scottish Highlands). As a result, they’re not the principal houses of the North – although the Flints might be, the Appendix isn’t clear on which Flints are counted among the principals. But between the fact that they have to be personally asked for their military service and their customary right to shelter in Wintertown, I would say they’re honored rather highly.