Nora Arendt is a supporting character in Spice and Wolf. She first appeared in the second volume of the novels and the latter part of the first season of the anime. She is a skilled shepherdess from a church town named Ruvenheigen who dreams of becoming a tailor. Her companion in her current profession is a shepherd and she has a well-trained sheep dog named Enek.
She is voiced by Mai Nakahara in the Japanese version of the anime and Leah Clark in the English version.
Appearance[]
Nora is of pretty short stature. She has blonde hair that is always seen done up in a small ponytail, brown eyes, and always wears the same modest brown and white clothing, probably in part due to the fact she used to work in a convent. While travelling around and working as a shepherdess, she also wears a light brown robe and carries a staff that she uses to herd the sheep and command Enek.
Personality[]
Nora is pretty soft-spoken and reserved, but also friendly, polite and compassionate. She immediately gets along well with Lawrence and even becomes friends with Holo in spite of the latter's intense dislike for shepherds as a wolf deity, which doesn't change even after finding out what she is. She is also very competent at her job as a shepherdess to the extent she can travel dangerous routes that even knights are afraid to take and easily keep her sheep safe just based on her mastery of managing Enek, demonstrating that she is very bold and courageous and far from weak or helpless as one may assume. She later shows this quality again when she accepts taking part in Lawrence and Holo's risky gold-smuggling scheme despite the severe consequences of it failing and keeps her composure both when dealing with the wolves that attempt to attack the group and even when temporarily facing Holo's true wolf form. She can still come off as a touch naive, or at least too willing to assume good faith since she sticks with the church for a long time despite them blatantly mistrusting her due to her unusual talents as a shepherdess, which leads them to keep sending her to dangerous routes to prove she's a pagan sorceress who's using witchcraft, and it is only when Lawrence points this out when convincing her to participate in her scheme that she finally decides it's time to break off from them.
History[]
Not a lot of details about Nora's past are given, but what is known is that she's an orphan without any known relatives and that she used to work in a convent sometime before the present tense. Sometime after she no longer worked there and had no home of her own, she discovered Enek, who was badly wounded at the time. Therefore, she took care of him, and due to the dog happening to carry a shepherd's staff, she would learn how to use it and become the skilled shepherdess she is in the present, enough so to be employed by the church.
However, while the church may have initially taken her in at least partially out of goodwill, the arrangement and their relationship gradually took a turn for the worse when those in it started to become increasingly suspicious of her unusually proficient skills to the extent they began to suspect her of being a sorceress using witchcraft. Therefore, her supervising priest would increasingly send her out to more dangerous areas with small amounts of sheep in order to test her abilities to confirm if it was the truth.
Biography[]
She first encounters Holo and Lawrence on their way to Ruvenheigen, upon which Lawrence hires her to escort them there, much to Holo's dismay and jealousy since shepherds are the natural enemy of wolves. During this time, she and Lawrence engage in some friendly conversations, and among the different topics, he suggests that she could change employers if she's unhappy with it, but when she insists that she's generally okay with the work she's given and that the church treats her well, he reassures her that it probably isn't necessary, especially if work is consistent and she has a means to provide for herself as a result. However, he also mentions there's nothing wrong with having a second job and that he'll put in a good word about her and her talents to his fellow merchants when they arrive at Ruvenheigen.
They temporarily split up for a while, but Lawrence and Holo later approach her after Lawrence falls deeply into debt due to investing everything in armor only to find out the market for it and their value had crashed due to the usual Northern Expedition being cancelled. Therefore, they enlist her help to pull off a risky gold-smuggling scheme alongside Remerio Trading Company, who have also suffered from the armor market crash. Having earlier heard from Jacob Tarantino about the rumors about her and the true, estranged nature of her situation with the church, Lawrence becomes confident he can convince her to help them with the scheme. Therefore, when sitting down with her, he convinces her how corrupt the people of the church really are and how badly they're mistreating her by repeatedly sending her out to dangerous routes where she's likely to be attacked by mercenaries or wolves just to confirm their suspicions without considering that her intentions and methods are innocent. Therefore, he asks her to simply accompany them to another town where they'll collect the gold while fending off any wolves along the way, then smuggle the gold back into Ruvenheigen by putting them in the sheep's bellies to bypass inspection. After being being told she'll have no choice but to leave town like them if they're successful, but that'll she'll also have no trouble finding work as a tailor with her share of the resulting profits, she temporarily weighs her options before agreeing that breaking away from the church and helping them is the best course of action and worth the risk.
Initially, the plan goes very smoothly up until they collect the gold, but it gets considerably more complicated during their return to Ruvenheigen since they are bombared with heavy rain and a pack of wolves attack them when they're going back through the forest. She ends up getting separated from Holo and Lawrence, during which Lawrence finds out from some men from Remerio Trading Company who attempt to tie him up and leave him to the wolves that they intend to betray them by leaving him and Holo to die while they intend to outright kill Nora due to suspecting her of being a heretic. Thankfully, however, they don't count on the two ending up okay due to Holo's nature as a wolf deity, and later, the two end up saving Nora from Martin Liebert and the other men from the company before they can even attempt to execute her. They then find out from Liebert that Remerio betrayed them due to not being able to afford splitting the money with them since the amount they would have made was barely enough to save their company. After weighing the options, Lawrence decides they should bring the money back to Ruvenheigen rather than try to run away with the gold, which Nora agrees with. Using his business savvy, he then blackmails Remerio into giving him five hundred lumione gold coins over ten years while allowing him to keep the gold to save the company. This allows his debt to be cleared up and for Nora to have the necessary funds to break away from the church, after which she meets up with Lawrence and Holo before they leave Ruvenheigen together.
Shortly after this, she goes out with the two of them to have dinner together to celebrate their success. While she and Lawrence engage in some cheery conversation and interesting stories, they are forced to cut it short when Holo suddenly collapses from fatigue. Despite Holo initially being against it, she eventually allows her to help take of her when Lawarence outright asks her what he's got against her specifically, which makes her realize she's being stubborn and irrational. Later, when Nora comes over to visit her, Holo gets over her dislike of her and they become friends, with Holo even sharing a joke with her at Lawrence's expense where she compares him to a sheep, leading to all three of them sharing a laugh together. After this, they would go their separate ways and she would go on to become a tailor.
Trivia[]
- Her English voice actress, Leah Clark, also voiced Koby (young) in One Piece series, Ever in One Piece Flim: Strong World, Asia Argento in High School DXD, Mavis Vermillion in Fairy Tail, Launch in Dragon Ball Z, Ruby Toujo in Rosario+Vampire, Blair Soul Eater series, Homura in Sekirei, Re=L Rayford in Rokudenashi Majutsu Koushi to Akashic Records, Frau Koujiro in Robotics;Notes, Yuudachi in Kantai Collection, Ikuno in DARLING in the FRANXX, Ezekiel in Maria the Virgin Witch, Fuyuki Hinata in Sgt Frog, Minami Shimada in Baka to Test Shoukanjuu, Mayu in Noragami, Kobayashi in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid series, Shiki in the Senran Kagura video game series, and Nina Alexandrovna in Hina Logic: From Luck & Logic.
External Links[]
- Norah Arendt on the Spice and Wolf Wiki