With its depictions of ploughing, felling, shaping and refining, the Exeter Book riddle collection offers us an insight into the way the Anglo-Saxons perceived their relationship with the rest of creation. In the riddles, humanity is seen taking from the natural world and using its resources to create weapons, clothes, food and other objects for human use. These depictions, with their apparent emphasis on nature's usefulness to mankind, led Frederick Tupper to make the following observation in his 1910 edition of the riddles:

There is, however, another, far less anthropocentric, way to read the riddles. Whilst it is true that the riddles depict ‘man and his works’, often remarking on their subjects’ usefulness to humans,or else using the familiar human world as a point of orientation within a vast, overwhelming cosmos, the riddles also offer an alternative, ecocentric view of their subjects, one that considers the natural origins of manmade products and the individual integrity and personal plight of these useful human resources. In this book, I argue that there is a programme of resistance to anthropocentrism at work in the riddle collection, whereby the riddles challenge human-centred ways of depicting the created world. In doing so, I forge new pathways into riddle analysis and interpretation, drawing on ecocriticism and ecotheology to offer insights into a largely underdeveloped area of Old English scholarship.