In an age when food often arrives in plastic-wrapped anonymity-stripped of sensory, ecological, and ethical connection- this book examines cultural works that challenge the alienation embedded in industrial food systems. A growing number of food practitioners are revaluing interdependence-not only among humans, but with animals, plants, and microbes. This study traces how this shift is reflected and shaped through storytelling, using a theoretical framework the author introduces-eco-conviviality- a way of living and working with the land, marked not only by labour and necessity, but by joy, attentiveness, and ethical relation. The author explores the ways aesthetic form mediate multispecies relationships and agricultural ethics focusing on contemporary literature and film from Northern Europe-Scandinavia, Iceland, Germany, and the UK-that engage with and reimagine cultivation beyond extraction and efficiency, as a practice grounded in care and reciprocity.

Sophie Wennerscheid is professor of Nordic literature in the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at University of Copenhagen.