This article presents my analysis of a geographical narrative of Nordic modern art in Swedish art history between 1923 and 2023. It focuses on statements that indicate discursive links between artistic identity, quality and geography. The aim is to present recurring patterns and to discuss how they reflect an ambivalent attitude - ranging from shame to self-exotification - among Swedish art historians and critics towards the idea of Norden as a region producing a distinctive type of art. The text identifies this narrative as an effect of the 'canonical machinery' of modern Western art, with Paris at the centre and Norden at the periphery, but argues that the narrative should also be seen as part of a broader and more complex discourse that both rejects and exoticises the 'North'. The theory of this discursive space, termed "boréalisme", shows how Norden was understood as an antithetical identity in European science, art and literature, but was also used to affirm a sense of Nordic selfhood within Norden. The article argues that the ambivalent narrative is an effect of this parallel celebration and rejection of Nordic identity and concludes that the key lesson to be learned from this hundred-year history of self-torment in Swedish art history is that the narrative of Nordic modern art highlights the negative effects of canon selection. An art history that seeks only to rewrite a canon, instead of questioning its normative underpinnings, risks not only a limited methodological approach, but also the entrenchment of existing value systems.

The article will by emphasizing a transnational and geopolitical approach, investigate eight exhibitions of modern art from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden presented in Nordic cities 1946–1959. The text highlights the importance of this regional context and argues that the artworks can be seen as socially interconnected signs mediated through the communicative agency of the exhibitions. By focusing on subject matter and artwork titles presented, the article suggests that the exhibitions can be viewed as part of interacting artistic, civic, and political agendas aiming to democratize culture in the postwar Nordic welfare states.

At the center of attention of this issue is trans-local, transnational, regional, and worldwide contacts inside and outside the Nordic-Baltic region from the late 1800s to the late 1900s. As an introduction, this text attempts to give an overview of some of its major themes and findings. It highlights how the interactive function of cross-border contacts is demonstrated by cases of art and design transfers, artistic travels, Scandinavian intellectual contacts, and cross-border connections over 100 years. Together, the texts published in this issue reflect the interdependent nature of international relations and the vital function of intermediate positions.

The project Exhibiting Art in a European Periphery? International Art in Sweden during the Cold War aimed to investigate international exhibitions in Sweden during the postwar period from circa 1945 to the end of the 1980s. The main objective was to find information beyond preconceived ideas of what is important, interesting, or simply good art. In this article, we present our method for searching through the archives and some of the findings and insights generated.

The historical study of art in relation to geographical space has for a long time been biased by the “canonical logic” of the centre–periphery narrative. This text takes as its starting point a methodological critique of this binary framework by using an example from Swedish art history, namely the art historical narrative of 1950s Sweden as a slumbering Nordic province slowly being awoken by the heroic and foresighted efforts of the Swedish curator Pontus Hultén. The text analyses two local contexts between 1944 and 1953: a presumed periphery, Stockholm, Sweden, and a presumed centre, Paris, France, and the collaboration between individuals in these two spaces. In focus is a 1953 exhibition in Paris of Swedish abstract art from 1913 to 1953. The text concludes with a methodological discussion arguing that by considering “the material conditions of encounters and exchange”, it becomes clear that the transnational contacts in these cases were spurred by local competition and that they were mutually dependent, rather than a product of diffusions of aesthetic innovation from centre to periphery.