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The 17th century Japanese is not a good model for native Americans. They have a whole suite of precursor techs the Native Americans lacked. You might as well say the 17th century Russians could copy European ships, so the Iroquois could too. Not being European does not make the Japanese...

Skallagrim puts it well I think. Horses should be a fairly easy tech to copy. You see a man riding a horse, its pretty intuitive what is going on. More importantly, there are no real prerequisite techs. You can go straight to horses from the stone age. You may have to develop some caretaking...

Yes, which is how you'd get a Christian Norway and a Muslim Sweden. Sweden was eastward focused with most of the trade (and raiding) going up the rivers on the east coast of the baltic. Norway traded and raided west across the North Sea. If, as Behemoth suggest, we have Vladimir go for Islam...

I think its generally believed here that for Scandinavia to go Muslim, you need the Russias to go first. And even then, you could end up with an eastern-oriented and trading three crowns of Sweden, with the Denmark-Norway areas christian and westwards-oriented.

I believe no less of an authority than Leo Caesius himself once wrote about John Lackland converting to Islam

In 1806, the US had no better chance of stopping the UK from doing what they wanted in the southern hemisphere than Madagascar had of physically stopping the gulf war.

I think they'd normally stop somewhere in the British Isles. However, storms or trying to escape someone hostile and bigger could easily result in going somewhere unplanned. Yes, if you sail from the Azores, you almost have to work not to hit the Canaries.

Absolutely. However, Russias perception of threats from its neighbours have at times lagged geopolitical development. They may still have had concerns. I do have an image of Sweden buying it in the expectation that they are going to discover the Northwest or Northeast passage any day now. And...

Could there be other potential purchasers ? Not the most probable candidates, but no-one-else-wanted-to-pay-for-it purchasers? Sweden/Norway exported millions of people to America after 1850, and would not consider the climate as big a drawback as other powers. However, Russia might not want to...

Surviving Vandal Kingdom? Bit less religious tensions, avoid the sack of Rome, and some more competent kings following Genseric. Say, his son Huneric predeceases his father, and upon Genserics death, the crown passes to someone younger. A son of Huneric and Emperor Valentin IIIs daughter...

Maybe Russia loses a series of wars and gets partitioned between a number of other nations?

I don't think its that difficult. The Norse had the best shipping and navigation package in the centuries just before 1100. And it was not exceptional for them to sail to places like Spain, Northern Africa etc. So one ship off-course finds the Azores. The Norse would be quite pleased about...

The medieval warm period lasted for 250 years after the Norse first landed in North America. That is a slightly longer timespan than the United States have been in existence to get established and grow while the climate is better than today. Also don't forget that even after the warm period was...

I think you may be underestimating how quickly a colony could grow in terms of natural increase. First Viking to Columbus is half a millennium.

Speculation: I was reading about the Hansa league the other day. And what caught my attention was their war against King Valdemar IV of Denmark, which went quite well for them. In 1368 they captured Copenhagen and forced the King to flee. He appointed Henning Podebusk to negotiate, and Podebusk...

Harald Hardrada was a Norwegian prince, who prior to taking the throne of Norway spent a considerable amount of time in the Varangian guard. He is reputed to have had an affair with the Empress, and was apparently considered for marriage. He was a man of imposing physical presence said to be...

This did not seem to happen though. Nobles sons who were on the wrong side of a political argument always ended up somewhere with ale and whores, never in the howling wilderness. Of which there was plenty to go around.

They seem to have managed to resist the temptation in regards to places like Northern Russia. The story of how Colombus overstated the amount of gold he found is quite interesting. There are still copies extant of the letters he wrote I believe. That was really when the notion that there might...

I've sometimes though an interesting setup would be Russia goes Muslim, then Sweden, while the more western-oriented Norway and Denmark goes christian.

At this point in time, the Scandinavians were the ones with the ship and navigation tech to get there though. Of course, Britain could easily have ended up with a Nore dynasty on the throne. Kind of did, really.