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Long-term, the Swedes are going to have a major fight with the Danes over control of the Øresund, because dominance of the Baltic coastline isn't as meaningful if you're still having to pay another country a fee every time you ship stuff into or out of the Baltic Sea. Or they'll dig a canal. Maybe both.
Um, what? Canal? Germany can try to bypass Danish strait control with a canal to the south of Jutland as OTL with Kiel. But you said you expect the Danes to try and take more of Germany, not less! So can the Swedes seize Holstein right under Denmark's nose?
From the geography a canal across OTL Swedish territory in Scandinavia is pointless. Its western outlet would be right into the Oresund!
Even absorbing southern Norway would do little good, and that per the author is Danish. "Norway" is a northerly part of the northwest coast, territory extremely marginal and only 10 percent of OTL Norway's population. But with Thule cultivars, they do much better, Trondheim is a bigger more powerful city in a richer region, the scattered fjord settlements to the north sport more population, they are a bunch of sailors presumably picking up Arctic seas survival tricks from their Thule component, and they aren't about to be conquered by either the Danes or the Swedes. South Norway, the center of population of Norway as we know it, may be partially or wholly under the Danish crown, or if not they are under Norwegian rule, either way they are not Swedish.
You aren't proposing a canal over the Jotunheims are you? I should think not. Do you mean taking a little bit of southeast Norway, enough so the west side is past Jutland, and running a canal there?
I think it would be far easier and more realistic to conquer north Jutland; even then one has to essentially fight the core of Denmark, the islands to the east of Jutland, to secure the sea route past their opposition. I suspect battering the Danes into attractive terms for passing their islands would be tantamount to conquering Denmark. A Swedish-Norwegian (Trondheim centered Norway, remember) alliance might work; the Norwegians get South Norway back, if they don't have it already, and the Swedes gobble up Denmark.
The Danes get the least boost of anyone in Scandinavia from the ATL Thule influence; there is little to no reason for them to adopt the crops on their own soil. Only if Denmark had had the political acumen to keep a grip on Norway would its power and reach be multiplied, and only to the extent they had the foresight to develop Norway, and overseas colonies, and the wit and wisdom to keep control of all these. Since the author decided long ago Norway would at least partially break free, and any Norwegian holdings the Danes kept are those that would not benefit directly from Thule packages, the Danes are about as OTL, but up against a stronger Norway and Sweden. You may be right they are motivated to turn their attention south and muck around in Germany, but are they for any reason more likely to be more successful doing so?
The Danes do benefit indirectly by controlling the Oresund of course. The king took those tolls as personal revenue directly, therefore Denmark OTL tended to develop as an absolutist monarchy. Richer more powerful Sweden makes for more trade goods flowing and more tolls--but this depends on royal whims in Copenhagen. If the kings try to clamp down and suck all the revenue they can, they get more powerful--maybe can hire some foreign mercenaries, or might invest in some transatlantic or Asian project that pays off. But the harder they squeeze, the more annoyed the Swedes get, and the Norwegians don't really need an excuse to be hostile. A very astute and judicious Danish dynasty might possibly feel their way to wealth maximization without pissing off the Swedes too much, and leverage their surplus wealth relative to OTL by some kind of investment or other--internal improvements in Denmark, maybe, buying useful territorial holdings in Germany where mere arms would not do, overseas colonies, whatever.
But how much do you want to bet on a string of monarchs all being clever and wise? And the nature of their revenue source is such that they need not be advised by anyone not their creatures; it all hinges on their own personal brains. And whims. And ability to hold their treasure strait despite the keen interest of a state relatively stronger than OTL wanting to be free of the incubus. I don't see why the Swedes would stop short of conquering Denmark and holding the straits themselves; only some foreign alliance the Danes make seems likely to forestall that. Who is keenly interested in common interests with the King of Denmark, and in a position to help them? Maybe the English in this ATL?
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I've mentioned it before, but would the Thule packages have a transformative effect on Scotland, particularly on the Highlands?
A good reason not to go there yet is a need for a vector to bring in Thule culture. Norway had a strong vector and so did Finland and Sweden and the Pomor Russians. I would imagine mixed in with other actors you (the author now, DValdron) have mentioned such as the English, French, Spanish and Portuguese not mention Scandinavians, that some Scots have been involved here and there. But that's nothing like the systematic ties to Scandinavia you've sketched out. So even if it is true that the Thule crops would turn north Scotland into a much more populous zone eventually, it may not have had the opportunity.
Perhaps over the next century? I believe English history has been butterflied, but perhaps the deep forces at work that led to Scottish/English Union OTL are still in play. If Scotland undergoes the general crises it did OTL in the later 17th and 18th centuries, perhaps somewhere in there a portion of the Highlanders would start gradually adopting some Thule staples, and grow in numbers, and when it comes down to the Hanoverian campaign against the Jacobins, suddenly the UK finds itself in something of a bear trap. Combined English and Lowlander elite interests might still steamroller the Highlanders, but perhaps they can negotiate better terms? Or cause enough grief and bloodshed that a north kingdom or clan federation or something hives off the UK?
You'll note I brought this up in the context of leaving the Kings of Denmark looking for allies.
There is also the whole confessional thing; IIRC you gave it a good stir versus OTL and I wonder how far that reverberates. Were the secessionist Trondheimer Norwegians Lutherans already, or as I think I recall, had the Reformation not reached them and was part of their national identity remaining Roman Catholic? That would complicate relations with both Denmark and Sweden I'd think, and also England, unless the Reformation got short-circuited there too. I tend to think the English were going to go Protestant sooner or later, since throughout the Middle Ages they'd always had quarrels with Roman authority. But then again Anglicanism OTL was a pretty mild dissent from Roman doctrine (which did not prevent the English from fearing, loathing and despising Popery of course). Will the confessional divide work out much as OTL, with political alliance of southern European princes and the Roman Catholic Church making a solid bloc to the south and varieties of Protestantism taking the northern lands for the most part? Is Norway already and still an anomalous exception and will the Scots Highlands join them in adhering to Rome? Will Poland switch to Protestantism, or remain Catholic? They are up against a stronger Sweden and OTL I believe there was a forgotten surge toward some kind of Protestantism that the Swedes (if they are Lutheran) might reinforce, which might change the dynamics of the southern Baltic completely. What if a Polish Vasa dynasty is Protestant ruling a deeply converted populace--or alternatively strongly aided by Sweden but ruling a population that does not want to convert? Maybe a sort of English situation where on paper the kingdom or whatever it is called is Protestant but has a tacit truce with Catholics? Might the whole thing turn into a political checkerboard?
The Sandman also alluded to ATL developments in New France, assuming NF has not been butterflied away anyway. Indeed the first order effect is to throw Cree and others sandwiched between NF and Thule into a press that might forge them into more advanced nation-states, and the non-Thule layer also tends to block any possible enrichment of the north side by adoption of Thule crops. But in the longer run--might not the French eventually reach past their presumptive new Indian clients to make diplomatic relations with some ambitious Thule photo-state up in the far north? I want to remind everyone of the notion I had that a Thule-French alliance might take the form of the French hiring Thule as shock troop mercenaries, arming them with state of the art guns and employing them for attacks on New England in the mid-winter. Thule might not be much more of an asset than any other Indians in mid-summer, but in deep New England winter they might be a real terror, moving over the snowbound land with ease and comfort. Under French direction could they tip the balance in the late 17th-early 18th century and perhaps drive the English right out? Or via negotiated settlements tightly confine them and guarantee New French supremacy north and west so that the French cannot be dislodged later in the 18th century?
The English too (or UK) might be able to counter this by relations with other Thule, putting pressure on the homeland of the French shock troops or conquering them. But the upshot of such maneuvers I think would tend to empower the north continental Thule generally. Neither French nor Britons are in much of a position to move in and dominate, and with both powers intriguing to recruit clients there savvy local Thule leaders can play them off against each other, establish plum trade relations that keep them supplied in advanced arms, and generally strengthen themselves. Meanwhile they are being hit with Eurasian plagues but the longer that goes on the more immune they get, so when an era of really aggressive European expansionism opens, despite their proximity they are tough nuts to break, chew and digest. Arctic Fastness/Ice Arabs theory again!
Of course we've also considered the dark side--Europeans might get savvy that Thule cultivation in the far north depends on carefully maintained earthworks that are vulnerable to being wrecked by deliberate acts of sabotage, and scorched earth campaigns can wreck genocide on them. But if their states and network of alliances with European powers are strong enough they might be able to stop the invaders from getting all their croplands and take a bitter revenge that holds them in check.
The more such interactions go on, the more developed technologically and politically the Thule become. I should bear in mind the analogy of West Africa--another zone where Europeans have had long interaction with native peoples who enjoyed local advantages, such as resistance to endemic tropical diseases fatal to Europeans, but still managed to putter along without being pulled into the European technosphere, or forming strong local states that could hold eventual colonialist conquerors at bay.
But I think the Arctic is qualitatively different, more like the deserts of Arabia and Sahara. Sure the French claimed control of most of North Africa, but how much control did they really have out in the desert? By the time their technology formed an overwhelming advantage and they had the infrastructure, they were facing sophisticated insurgencies in the densely settled strongholds of Algeria that eventually drove them out. No foreigner ever got to the point they claimed even nominal control of the heart of Arabia--the desirable coast lands, yes, but not the heart of the peninsula, and European direct rule over even parts of Arabia did not last long.
So I wonder if the eventual outcome of French/British rivalry in the northeast of America will lead to strong local Thule powers that either never bow to European rule at all, or when nominally held are restive and weakly ruled, and whether there are always going to be, in the deeper parts of North America, sovereign if impoverished Thule lordships.
You know I went nuts years ago for the idea of some Thule land pulling a Meiji and developing high tech refrigerated Prycrete ice ships cooled with chilled nitrogen as cold as liquid nitrogen, that can venture far south on steam power and are damn near unsinkable, armed with guns as good as any mainstream European power's, and ruling the Arctic. I don't suppose the TL will get anywhere near the 19th century any time soon, but I do look forward to that.
