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.