Composers have been moving between the Nordic and the Central European countries since the nineteenth century, resulting in a cul- tural transfer of aesthetics and music craftmanship. This process also shaped reception structures that have lasted through the twen- ty-frst century. After introducing a three-step model for this trans- fer that demonstrates the reciprocity of this process of exchange of agents and the media coverage of music from Northern composers on the continent, some concrete examples shall be investigated: the Swedish composer Andréas Hallén (1846–1925) and the Finnish na- tional composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). Both dwelled for longer pe- riods in the German capital of Berlin, where they networked, attended performances, and followed the reactions of the media to newly-written music. Both tried to achieve a breakthrough in Germany, but did not succeed in doing so during their active years. The reason for this may not only have been the actual quality of their music, but rather the asymmetric interpretation of their works in the media, which empha- sized the foreign origin of their creators despite their continental music education and—in Hallén’s case—a perfectly continental music idiom. The (non-)reception of their music exposes the frame of the continental perspective on the North, which appears to have been rather narrow.