Surely agricultural northern aururians would domesticate some things worthy of being traded as herbs and spices. Or is the north truly devoid of things to enrich the seasoning traditions of the world?
The issue is that I'm pretty sure that by the time Europeans contacted Aururia, Japan was pretty unavoidably on a track towards Sakoku, if not already having implemented it.
And then, rather clownishly, someone STILL breeds the sugar beet, because they want to enter this pissing contest over who produces the sweeteners too.
Even though they could just grow maples, in all likelihood.
I really love the concept of a world where the vikings had enough time to set up so much maple sugar production that Caribbean and Brazilian sugar are, at most, an underdeveloped competitor industry.
Hooray for maple plantations! Maple syrup, maple sugar, maple taffy.
Though I hope they don't kill off the black maple, since it can also be used to make maple syrup (then again, they aren't in it's growing area yet, so far as I can tell.)
You could all but reach the headwaters of the columbia river by sailing upriver through the principle river feeding Hudson Bay.
Might be semi-possible for the norse.
Edit: Wait, no, that's not the Columbia river. It's the Fraser.