Urd (Oh My Goddess!) - Creation and Conception

Creation and Conception

Urd was one of a series of characters created by Kōsuke Fujishima, and is depicted as the older half-sister of Belldandy. Belldandy, Keiichi Morisato, Skuld (Urd and Belldandy's younger sister) and Urd make up the four major characters in Oh My Goddess!. Urd first appearanced in the manga in chapter 14, Sexy sister, but she has also been depicted in a novel (Ah! My Goddess: First End), three anime series (Oh My Goddess! (OVA), Ah! My Goddess and The Adventures of Mini-Goddess) and in Ah! My Goddess: The Movie.

As with her fictional sisters, Belldandy and Skuld, Urd has her origins in Norse mythology. Urd is one of the three Norns and represents the past, (the Norse Verdandi representing the present, with Skuld representing the future). Nevertheless, other than her name, Urd (like her Oh My Goddess! sisters) has little in common with her Norse namesake.

Unlike the problems with transliteration that were encountered with Belldandy, "Urd" presented no significant difficulties for translators. While Toren Smith determined that "Urtht" would be the more accurate translation of the Old Norse, when translating the manga series into English he acknowledged that "Urd" was an accepted alternate translation, and thus was comfortable using the spelling.