In this article, I explore tenderness as a concept in aesthetics that relates to both care and vulnerability. Arguing that tenderness is currently a central sensibility in contemporary Nordic literature and art, I define it as a relation of openness, sensitivity, and curiosity between the subject and sensuous stimuli from its surrounding environment. In an affective reading, I show where moments of tenderness as an affective relation arise in the short story collection Omsorgsdage by Pernille Abd-el Dayem (2022). I argue that the scenes of tenderness in these stories create spaces of disinterested empathy that do not serve other narrative purposes than existing in the text as reflective spaces of sensitivity and relationality which potentially act as a commentary on the need for more of these spaces in society.
Joachim Aagaard Friis (Fri,) studied this question.