I have been reading bits and pieces about the history of the Viking age. Mostly I am interested in the eastern (Varangian) section of the the Vikings rather than the western (Danelaw, Vinland, etc.), and one thing made me thinking. In OTL, the Scandinavians conquered the Finnish and many Rus tribes, founded Kievan Rus and managed large trade routes down the Volga and the Dniepr rivers even down to Constantinople. However, the Baltic tribes were relatively untouched, except for a few incursions (Apuolė 864 I know of, there were some others, but minor ones). In the latter part of the Viking era, it was even the Scandinavians who got raided by Curonic "vikings". All this time, the relations between the Baltic tribes (mostly the maritime ones, i.e. Curons, Prussians and Latgalians) and the Varangians (Swedes) were tense.
So my question is - if the Baltic tribes embraced the Viking lifestyle earlier, and united with the Swedish vikings in some way (maybe adopting the hierarchial structure and legal system), could this have been enough of a leverage for more Norse-descendent realms to form in Eastern Europe? Could this have improved the Scandinavian-Byzantine trade enough for the Viking realms to last longer? Could this have allowed a Norse-Baltic (or maybe predominantly Baltic) country to emerge 200 years earlier than Lithuania did OTL?