In older times, the Northern Orcs were found throughout the Misty Mountains, as far as Gundabad and Angmar in the far North of the range. After the Quest of Erebor passed through the mountains in III 2941, this situation changed. Many of the Orcs of the northern mountains fought in the Battle of Five Armies and were decimated, while those remaining among the Misty Mountains were hunted by Beorn and his followers.
At the time of the War of the Ring, few Orcs remained northward of the Mountains of Moria (and indeed those who took part in the capture of Merry and Pippin explicitly said that they had come from Moria). 'Northereners' in this sense, then, refers to the fact that these Orcs came from farther North than Isengard, not that they inhabited the abandoned northern reaches of the Misty Mountains.
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