This special issue on queer Nordic ruralities is guest-edited by Evelina Liliequist and Anna Olovsdotter Lööv. The articles deal with a wide range of themes: the forest and the garden in the poetry of Eva-Stina Byggmästar, erotic encounters between humans and nature spirits in Finland-Swedish folk legends, and queer readings of the notes of a grandmother who used to work as a teacher in the northern inland of Sweden in her twenties. The We’re Here section consists of a discussion between academics, who among other things address questions of how to reach beyond the urban hegemony in academic research on queer ruralities. The guest editors also centrally seek to reclaim and queer the Swedish spatial concept ‘*bygd’ as a way to queer rurality. Taken together this special issue makes visible a specific geopolitical context while also contributing to a growing field of Nordic rural queer studies.