What effect would a united scandinavia by 1600 have on the colonial race?
Denmark PLUS Sweden PLUS Norway PLUS Finland PLUS Iceland would be sizable and militarily very strong for the time, at least on land.
I can envision such a colonial empire by 1700, likely date for a war that would frgment/reduce this Nordic empire:
- control over Estonia, Courland as vassal. Ingermanland controlled, maybe even the Kola peninsula, with de facto monopoly over the Russian trade in furs to the west (plus the Sound Levy in the Baltic straits).
- Bremen
- Hamburg
- Schleswig and Holstein
- Vorpommern
- Greenland, maybe reconnaissance and Christianization before the OTL 1721 date?
-Newfoundland (island only), taken from the British after some victorious conflict over the Russian trade in the first 1600s.
- New Sweden, recognized as such and modestly but efficiently colonized, with full rights of passage and free trade for the surrounding English. Pennsylvania could be a shared colony if relations remain good.
- Trinidad & Tobago
- Suriname, taken from the Netherlands in some conflict over the Sound Levy.
- Gold Coast (Ghana), strong coastal presence with local allies
- a colony in southern Madagascar
- a couple towns in eastern India
- a developing interest toward those isolated big islands down there at the Antipodes, that New Zealand so reminiscent of Norway with those little-explored fjords...