AHC Sweden Wank

Your challenge is to create the greatest wank imaginable for Sweden.
You must have the following:
1) A population 10 million strong
2) A popular monarchy
3) Sweden as a current major power

Bonus points for:
A large Pagan population
Continued widespread usage of Runes

Have fun
 
Sweden has already 10 million people and monarchy is pretty popular now already.

But major power is bit more difficult. Best cases might be if Sweden can keep Finland or Norway.
 
From any point in time where a separate Swedish identity or nation exists. So basically as long as they are Swedes of the North Germanic tradition, anything goes.
 
As Lalli points out, the first two points are OTL already. The third point... well, you don't get to be a world power with 10 million people. You can try to project soft power onto a larger power, the way Sweden tries to pull EU humanitarian policy in certain directions, but honestly I'm not convinced a country of this size class can do more than Sweden's already done.
 
What if Sweden keeps all the territory it acquired by 1648 and then gains Denmark (including Schleswig-Holstein) as well as Norway in 1815?
 
Perhaps earlier would be better?
Have Magnus Erikson's reign go better and he and his son would remain joint Kings of Norway and Sweden at a time when the Danish Kings are practically exiled by their courts.
Having an economy linking trade west from Iceland and east from Finland with the Baltic should secure this union in the region with population tending it towards Swedish dominance.
Throw in a later political union Great-Britain-style and there's your Swedewank
 
Would a unified Scandinavia really be a Sweden-wank? It wouldn't be Sweden as we recognize it. Its capital would almost certainly not be in Mälaren Valley; Copenhagen and Malmö are more natural locations, and this would have knock-on effects on the standard language and such. The ruling dynasty may come from Sweden, but, well, in the Union of the Crowns, the English crown passed to a Scottish royal house, and I doubt anyone would consider the past 400 years to have been a Scotland-wank.

Usually, when I think about wanks, I think about wealth, and secondarily territory. Well, you can't wank Sweden's wealth level, because it's already one of the richest countries in the world. Most you can do is little tweaks, like give Sweden a share of Norway's oil revenues (Norway offered this to Sweden in exchange for technical help when it was exploring; Sweden refused, Norway found the oil anyway, and now Norway is way richer).

Ad territory... what could be Swedish territory that isn't? Finland, maybe... but it would not survive modern nationalism. I have a TL in which a union with Finland does survive, but only in the context of a pan-Nordic federal state. The same is true of Livonia and 17c Swedish territory in Poland and Germany - those aren't staying Swedish once industrialization hits. Within Europe, the only way you get more territory is ethnic cleansing, and at no point in its history is Sweden capable of doing that. Outside Europe, Sweden is just about the worst-located European state with a coastline for trans-Atlantic expansion - it has the worst coastline for it among the Scandinavian countries, and Scandinavia generally faces the most agriculturally useless part of the Americas and wouldn't have any incentive to get to the interesting parts.
 
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