AHC Baltic Civilsation with POD before 1500

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Could the baltic states become a centre of civilisation equal (or greater) than Medieval Italy?
What it would take to make Litvinian, Livonian or Prussian tribes more succesful? Or perhaps Novigrad Republic could dominate the region? Prehaps it's the regional villans, the Teutonic Order would have instigate an age of progress, if they hadn't broke their back in 1410. Or am I looking for oportunities on the wrong side of the shores...Could the region be ruled by Swedish... former vikings growing into merchants, and then to craftsmen and schollars?

I feel that potential were there, but something went wrong. How could it be done right?
 
The Medieval Baltic Sea had very little in common with Medieval Italy - neither education, nor technological skills, nor economic or political structures.

Millennia of differences in population growth had provided for that. It´s hard to reverse that, even with the the impressive collapse of the Mediterranean civilization from the 5th century onwards.

The two closest candidates for civilizations with a Baltic background are the Rus (with Varangian elite background) and the Norman states (with Viking elite background). There`s a reason why they were no longer centered around the Baltic Sea when they became powerful, see above.

IF Varangians and Vikings had operated under a single leadership, then their geographic centre would naturally have been the Baltic Sea, but that`s totally not how their society was structured and I don´t see how could handwave it. Even with the (later) centralising influence of the Roman Catholic Church, centralisation of power took another couple of centuries in the region.
 
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