Yeah, that`s a possibility, too, though what I meant by blunder also included the Hanseatic League not playing the Danish and Swedish kings so well as they did IOTL. Denmark and Sweden could have urbanised and developed economically on their own, I suppose, though that would require some really good governance. Strong kingdoms were at best temporal in that region and time, though. A Danish-Gaelic union? Hm, the alliance was pretty solid in the next centuries for sure, but could a unified state really have helped here? It´s not as if the Danes lacked in naval power... rather, it always looked more profitable for Danish kings to just skim off what Hanseatic progress, wealth and development brought, and otherwise let them be - until it was way too late.