WI Poltava Was Major Swedish Victory?

What? I've never heard of this.
In the interwar period there were some suggestions made by Estonians and Latvians of closer collaborations with their other small neighbors, especially Sweden, but this was rejected by these neighbors, so nothing came of it, and all of them except Sweden fell victim to WW2.

This was not only an east Baltic thing. The Swedish foreign minister Sandler proposed something in the mid-1930s, but this was also dismissed.

And the Finns asked for a union with Sweden in October 1940. The wary Swedish government asked what the great powers thought, and Berlin and Moscow were against it, so it fell. In spring 1941 Stalin changed his mind, so Britain and Russia tried to support this idea, but by then Finland was too far into the German camp, so it was no longer possible.
 
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Importantly,is Peter dead?
It would be reasonable to assume that he and his top commanders had retreated to analyse the events and achieve better the next time around. On the other hand, if the battle is such a disaster as postulated, anything could have happened, so he could have been killed or captured.
 
There is absolutely nothing wrong in being Swedish - for those who want to be Swedish. Post-1920 Balts and Finns, for the most part, do not belong into that category.
The lesser part then, might be the Estonian, Latvian and Finnish immigrants living in Sweden in the post-1945 era, for we seem to have been assimilated as far as I have experienced, although larger groups in some places perhaps have been able to retain something of their own languages and peculiarities.
 
The lesser part then, might be the Estonian, Latvian and Finnish immigrants living in Sweden in the post-1945 era, for we seem to have been assimilated as far as I have experienced, although larger groups in some places perhaps have been able to retain something of their own languages and peculiarities.

These immigrants moved to Sweden to live and work there. And they do make up what amounts to a small minority of the Swedish population - without looking at any actual sources, I'd say post-1945 Finnish and Baltic immigrants and their descendants amount only to 5-8% of the Swedish population in 2016.

But imagine a union state of Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, say in 1940. This is its population in OTL numbers:

Swedish: 6,4 million
Finnish: 3,7 million
Estonian: 1,1 million
Latvian: 1,9 million
Lithuanian: 2,4 million

Total: 15,5 million

The Finns and Baltics make together the majority of the population of this union state, even if one would include the Swedish-speaking Finns and Estonians as "Swedes". Clearly this is an essentially different situation from integrating/assimilating what amounts to a small number of Finns and Baltics in Sweden, among a predominately Swedish-speaking, culturally Swedish population. Let us again remember that the Finns, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians will remain absolute local majorities in their own regions.

This is the problem in saying that such a (unlikely) Baltic Union as described here would become a "Sweden writ large" and its population would become "Swedish". Sweden never was a France, a Britain or even a Russia, in that its core population would have been big enough to easily integrate/assimilate the minorities (local majorities!) in Finland and the Baltic areas as "Swedes". It is the demographics, man.:)

I would say that a "Union of Northern Kingdoms and Principalities" or "the League of the Baltic", or something like that, with Sweden as its leading nation, would arguably be possible as a joint nation around the northern Baltic Sea with various PODs in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. But more areas and people it includes, the less it can be "Sweden", that is a unitary Swedish state with its people being "simply" subjects of the Swedish crown. For such a joint nation to hold together, Stockholm would need to allow the minority groups at least some say in their own matters to keep them sated and to stop the other powers around the area to break up this union.

In other words, maybe such a union could be built, if the process is started early enough, in a TL that is at least somewhat a Russia-screw. But if the Swedish, in a post-imperial hubris, then try to run it as a continuation of the Swedish Empire, it will crash and burn pretty damn quick, due to both internal and external factors.

Remember that IOTL the Swedish did have a union in the 19th century, with a people linguistically and culturally closer to themselves than the Finns and the Baltics. But that union did break up in 1905 because the Norwegians wanted a nation of their own. Even the Norwagians had several important rights and devolved political say in their own affairs. Because of national aspirations of their own, and a disagreement over how the union should function, I understand, the Norwegians finally broke away on their own. I think it is an illustrative example of what eventually might happen to a Sweden that retained Finland and/or the Baltics, and that break-up would be the more problematic, more bitter and violent the more the Swedish would try to prevent it with political oppression or military action.
 
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Wikipedia has some conflicting information that pertains to this topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Finns
In the 16th and the 17th century large groups of Savonians moved from Finland to Dalecarlia, Bergslagen and other provinces where their slash and burn cultivation was suitable. This was part of an effort of the Swedish king Gustav Vasa, and his successors, to expand agriculture to these uninhabited parts of the country which were later on known as "Finn woods" (Finnskogar).
In the 1600s, there were plans to set up a new region Järle län that would have contained most of the skogsfinnar. It should be noted that in Sweden at this time, all legislation and official journals were also published in Finnish. Bank-notes were issued in Swedish and Finnish etc. After 1809, and the loss of the eastern part of Sweden (Finland) to Russia, the Swedish church planned a Finnish-speaking bishopric with Filipstad as seat. However, after the mid-1800s cultural imperialism and nationalism lead to new policies of assimilation and Swedification of the Finnish-speaking population. These efforts peaked from the end of the 1800s and until the 1950s. Finnish speakers remain only along the border with Finland in the far North, and as domestic migrants due to unemployment in the North.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Finns
By the end of the 18th century, a large part of the descendants of the Forest Finns had become culturally assimilated into the Swedish mainstream population. During the previous two centuries, various laws and regulations had been passed to speed up the "Swedification" process to the Forest Finns, including total banning of the use of Finnish language.
During the reign of Christina, Queen of Sweden, a proclamation of 1646 called for the burning of houses of all those Finns who did not want to learn Swedish in the area of Sweden Proper. Reading books written in Finnish led in some cases to imprisonment still in the 18th century.
 
Wikipedia has some conflicting information that pertains to this topic:

About the issue of laws and official journals being translated to Finnish - of course that happened, as a large part of the population was essentially monolingually Finnish. It is hard to make the crown's subjects follow the laws if they can not even understand them. And that such translations happened illustrates exactly what I have been saying, that the Finns could and would demand more rights for themselves in the realm. But as the central government and its bureaucracy was deeply Swedish, such translation efforts were not based on the Finnish language having any official status de jure, they just reflected the de facto situation where the Finnish-speakers made up the majority in the Eastern provinces. It is easy to see that if Finland stays part of Sweden post-1809, many Finns would start demanding that such de facto measures should be made into de jure ones as a part of a wider effort to give more legal rights to Finnish-speakers in the realm.

As to the Finnish-language bank notes the article mentions - that sounds a bit iffy. I can see private banks or firms, especially in Turku/Åbo, releasing notes of their own that would have texts in both Finnish and Swedish for more easy use, but the Stockholms Banco/Riksbank itself? I'd need to see such notes first-hand before I'll accept that (unsourced) claim at face value. Notice that neither the Finnish or Swedish Wikipedia articles include the same claim.

EDIT: Luckily I do own a copy of a history of money in Finland... The reference to Finnish language on Swedish notes is based on the fact that after 1748, the Riksbank's notes included their value in Finnish as well as in Swedish. Apparently the Finnish farmers had not taken the shift from coins to paper money well, and the adding of the Finnish value was done in effort to placate them - in effect to prove that paper money is indeed real money.:) So, again an example of the Swedish crown compromising with the Finns in some matters, de facto if not de jure, and another precursor of things to come in the 19th century if Sweden retains Finland.
 
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These immigrants moved to Sweden to live and work there.
Or just to survive.

The Finns and Baltics make together the majority of the population of this union state, even if one would include the Swedish-speaking Finns and Estonians as "Swedes". Clearly this is an essentially different situation from integrating/assimilating what amounts to a small number of Finns and Baltics in Sweden, among a predominately Swedish-speaking, culturally Swedish population. Let us again remember that the Finns, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians will remain absolute local majorities in their own regions.

This is the problem in saying that such a (unlikely) Baltic Union as described here would become a "Sweden writ large" and its population would become "Swedish". Sweden never was a France, a Britain or even a Russia, in that its core population would have been big enough to easily integrate/assimilate the minorities (local majorities!) in Finland and the Baltic areas as "Swedes". It is the demographics, man.:)

I would say that a "Union of Northern Kingdoms and Principalities" or "the League of the Baltic", or something like that, with Sweden as its leading nation, would arguably be possible as a joint nation around the northern Baltic Sea with various PODs in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. But more areas and people it includes, the less it can be "Sweden", that is a unitary Swedish state with its people being "simply" subjects of the Swedish crown. For such a joint nation to hold together, Stockholm would need to allow the minority groups at least some say in their own matters to keep them sated and to stop the other powers around the area to break up this union.

In other words, maybe such a union could be built, if the process is started early enough, in a TL that is at least somewhat a Russia-screw. But if the Swedish, in a post-imperial hubris, then try to run it as a continuation of the Swedish Empire, it will crash and burn pretty damn quick, due to both internal and external factors.

Remember that IOTL the Swedish did have a union in the 19th century, with a people linguistically and culturally closer to themselves than the Finns and the Baltics. But that union did break up in 1905 because the Norwegians wanted a nation of their own. Even the Norwagians had several important rights and devolved political say in their own affairs. Because of national aspirations of their own, and a disagreement over how the union should function, I understand, the Norwegians finally broke away on their own. I think it is an illustrative example of what eventually might happen to a Sweden that retained Finland and/or the Baltics, and that break-up would be the more problematic, more bitter and violent the more the Swedish would try to prevent it with political oppression or military action.
The Norwegians did have a non-Swedish identity to start with, and the 1800s was the nationalistic era, and there was nothing uniting in the union except having the same king. There were two separate states developing separately, while having some pressure to have the same foreign policy and trade. The historical Norwegian lands taken in 1645 and 1658 are still in Sweden.

In this Swedish kingdom, there was a Swedish identity from the 1600s and common people in Estonia and Latvia seem to have regarded themselves as "Swedish" many decades after the Russian conquest, according to travellers' tales in the later 1700s. Consider that Scanians acquired a Swedish identity rather soon, although some Scanian nationalists today talk about historical Swedish oppression, while other Scanians consider that ridiculous. Even the Pomeranians got themselves a "South Swedish" identity.

In this ATL Sweden, there could be a large number of Russians as well. Charles XII had no interest in conquests ("Wij hafwom land nogh."), so he only annexed Courland, and that might mean that he would install some puppets as Swedish satellite rulers, and leave the border as pre-war, but we do not know. As is stated earlier in the thread, lots of people mention that Sweden had a too small population base, and that has to be adjusted if the state is to survive against its enemies.

Anyway, if we have a larger Sweden, is it so implausible that the population could be content? Austria-Hungary was strong until WW1, and Switzerland still exists. Now Sweden might be more monolithic, but does it have to be so?

A continuation of the Swedish Empire? Apart from the Danish provinces, newly taken lands still had their local governments in power, did they not? It was the smaller later Sweden that centralised power, such as in Pomerania by Gustavus IV.
 
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Anyway, if we have a larger Sweden, is it so implausible that the population could be content? Austria-Hungary was strong until WW1, and Switzerland still exists. Now Sweden might be more monolithic, but does it have to be so?

A continuation of the Swedish Empire? Apart from the Danish provinces, newly taken lands still had their local governments in power, did they not? It was the smaller later Sweden that centralised power, such as in Pomerania by Gustavus IV.

Austria-Hungary broke apart due to war and ethnic nationalism. Switzerland has stayed together much due to the different cantons having a lot of local say and the language groups being treated in an equitable manner.

The 19th century was a century of nationalism. For some reason you can concede this when we speak of Norway, but reject the idea of a national awakening in Finland for the same token which I find curious. Remember that the rise of nationalism would affect Sweden as well - like Russia, Sweden would be likely to try to assimilate the minority groups, in this case to a Swedish nationality, to make the realm stronger internally by removing potentially untrustworthy minorities. And such a drive for "Swedification" would run head-on into a Finnish nationalism, much like the OTL policies of Russification only fueled the nationalist sentiment in Finland.

For the nth time - a Sweden that includes Finland has two options. One: aim to suppress nascent Finnish nationalism and try to make the Finns linguistic and cultural Swedes. Two: accept Finnish nationalism and give the Finns political and cultural rights as a nation within a federal state, or at least as an autonomous unit. In both options, Sweden can well retain Finland into the 20th century, but in both options, it also runs a big risk of the Finns trying to eventually break away as an independent state. In the first option it might happen through a violent insurrection and war, as a result of a backlash to Swedish oppression. In the second option independence could be seen as the natural end result of the rise of Finnish cultural and political autonomy - somewhat like after the OTL period of autonomy under Russia.

Only the second of these options includes the high possibility of the Finns staying along as content citizens of a Swedish state. But it has to be a state that accepts their cultural and political identity as Finns as well as Swedish citizens. You can't have a happy multi-ethnic, multi-cultural citizenry without more-or-less equal rights under law and more-or-less equal political representation for all the major ethno-cultural groups.
 
For some reason you can concede this when we speak of Norway, but reject the idea of a national awakening in Finland for the same token which I find curious.
No, you just misinterpret the tone of my comments as implying something more than I write. We are not disagreeing, just discussing, and for my part I have not really touched on that particular topic in my vague shallow comments on something that might have been.

If we say something about that, I think it is said that standard Finnish was based on eastern dialects, since they were considered more pure. If the Swedish government would support the creation of a Finnish standard language around 1800, might that mean that a more western Finnish, somewhat more influenced by Swedish, or at least by the more western dialects would have come around (however that looks)?

As we have seen, the Swedish actions have been both for and against the other languages of the realm, so any policy is plausible here, and both ways have been successful or failures in other countries, in respect to holding the realm together.

If Norway had been ceded to Sweden in 1658 instead of Scania, then every comment I have encountered (not very many, but anyway) seems to agree that Norway would then have gotten itself a Swedish identity, which the Norwegians feel is a very scary thought.

Belgium has something of this Swedish/Finnish problem in the relation between Flemish and Valloons, and they have yet to solve it.

For the nth time - a Sweden that includes Finland has two options. One: aim to suppress nascent Finnish nationalism and try to make the Finns linguistic and cultural Swedes. Two: accept Finnish nationalism and give the Finns political and cultural rights as a nation within a federal state, or at least as an autonomous unit. In both options, Sweden can well retain Finland into the 20th century, but in both options, it also runs a big risk of the Finns trying to eventually break away as an independent state. In the first option it might happen through a violent insurrection and war, as a result of a backlash to Swedish oppression. In the second option independence could be seen as the natural end result of the rise of Finnish cultural and political autonomy - somewhat like after the OTL period of autonomy under Russia.

The problem might not be as precise as it can look now, since in the 1700s most people spoke their to others incomprehensible dialect, and used "härräsäj" (lordly language) when communicating with outsiders. In rump-Sweden OTL most dialects were killed off by the regime, just as it killed the minority tongues, and the state became almost entirely monolingual.

When speaking of that, perhaps a cantonisation of the realm might lead the way to a third option - divide and conquer. If Swedes and Finns and Estonians and everyone else are governed in small units, these units could be used (by the wicked) to enhance local peculiarities, so there will be no nationwide standard Finnish, instead you get a number of local Finnishes, which at least might delay large-scale unified separatism until traveling gets easier and the economy needs a wider audience for newspapers and literature.
 
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If now Finland becomes independent from Sweden, instead of from Russia, how would its flag look?

The Estonian flags seem heavily based on Russia's, but with different colors, so that might also be different with independence from Sweden.
 
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No, you just misinterpret the tone of my comments as implying something more than I write. We are not disagreeing, just discussing, and for my part I have not really touched on that particular topic in my vague shallow comments on something that might have been.

If we say something about that, I think it is said that standard Finnish was based on eastern dialects, since they were considered more pure. If the Swedish government would support the creation of a Finnish standard language around 1800, might that mean that a more western Finnish, somewhat more influenced by Swedish, or at least by the more western dialects would have come around (however that looks)?

Standard Finnish as it is spoken today is based more on the Western than the Eastern dialects. I believe this goes back to the Swedish period - when Finnish as a literary language was first codified, it happened in Turku/Åbo and the Finnish spoken in those areas had more effect on it. In the 19th century, a lot of elements from the Eastern dialects was added, as a result of the new interest in traditional storytelling and poetry in the east, but still today the Western influences are stronger.

I believe that a standard Finnish developed under the Swedish government in turn of the 18th and 19th centuries would be recognizable to a current OTL Finnish-speaker, it would just seem a bit more Western and include a lot more loan words from Swedish (and possibly German). It would likely seem somewhat old-fashioned and bring Estonian to mind, if only because of the heavy Germanic influence.

As we have seen, the Swedish actions have been both for and against the other languages of the realm, so any policy is plausible here, and both ways have been successful or failures in other countries, in respect to holding the realm together.

If Norway had been ceded to Sweden in 1658 instead of Scania, then every comment I have encountered (not very many, but anyway) seems to agree that Norway would then have gotten itself a Swedish identity, which the Norwegians feel is a very scary thought.

Belgium has something of this Swedish/Finnish problem in the relation between Flemish and Valloons, and they have yet to solve it.

The example of Scania differs from the situation in Finland in both that the area is geographically continuous with other parts of Sweden on the Scandic Peninsula. Scania, in terms of geography, seems "naturally" a part of Sweden, even if such an idea does not borne out from historical or cultural facts. The eastern provinces, on the other hand, were always like an island from Stockholm's POV (another comparison to Ireland). Even if maritime trade is brisk, this makes integration work in a different way. Norway as well is beyond the mountains from the other parts of Sweden, so I believe this geographical isolation would protect a distinctive Norwegian identity - like it arguably did in the previous centuries in regards to Denmark.

I think the Belgian example is good, thank you for pointing it out. Here we see that a nation that has a 35% language/cultural minority can have a lot of problems with reconciling the different groups and their demands. A Sweden that includes Finland would not have exactly that much Finnish-speakers, but it would have from 20% to 30% of them, and without truly oppressive Swedish policies or massive internal immigration, I would say that the eastern provinces would never come to have a majority of native Swedish-speakers.



The problem might not be as precise as it can look now, since in the 1700s most people spoke their to others incomprehensible dialect, and used "härräsäj" (lordly language) when communicating with outsiders. In rump-Sweden OTL most dialects were killed off by the regime, just as it killed the minority tongues, and the state became almost entirely monolingual.

When speaking of that, perhaps a cantonisation of the realm might lead the way to a third option - divide and conquer. If Swedes and Finns and Estonians and everyone else are governed in small units, these units could be used (by the wicked) to enhance local peculiarities, so there will be no nationwide standard Finnish, instead you get a number of local Finnishes, which at least might delay large-scale unified separatism until traveling gets easier and the economy needs a wider audience for newspapers and literature.

This would require that the development of the Finnish language is only up to the Swedish state and that the state manages to consistently hold on to such a policy for an extended amount of time. If there is any kind of Finnish nationalist movement in the 19th century, it would very likely aim towards a pan-Finnish idea and would aim to unite the Finnish dialects into one main language. The idea, after all, was to raise the Finns as a people of culture as well as to foster a Finnish identity. A standard language is part and parcel of that.

Also, remember that Finns did have and do have local, "tribal" dialects and identities as it is, and still were very amenable to a joint Finnish project. The Swedish state/elites might well try this kind of a policy of divide and conquer, but I don't know how successful it would be to promote actually separate ideas of Finnishness - at least in a way that other forms of Finnishness would be seen as more foreign or more suspect than, you know, linguistic Swedishness. A Savonian will still aim to communicate with someone from Finland Proper in Finnish, even if the Finnish they speak is very different. The more east you go, the less practice the ordinary people would have in Swedish anyway, so most people in the interior would only have fluency in Finnish of the local dialect's kind.

Think of this thing the other way around as well. If almost one third of the Swedish subjects/citizens is made of Finns or at least people living in the majority Finnish areas, then they will also have a bigger effect on Sweden itself than IOTL. Many noble and otherwise wealthy families from the eastern provinces would have an effect on the economy, culture, politics and governance of the entire realm, and even if they would be officially Swedish-speaking, more often than not they would also likely support the rights of the Finnish-speakers, to an extent. At the very least they would promote various issues native to the eastern provinces on different levels. We could easily compile a long list of individuals and families from the eastern provinces that had an effect on the development of Sweden in the 17th and 18th centuries, and this would not be different in Sweden in the 19th and 20th as well. So the influence will not be one way only. The Finns would have an effect on what happens in Sweden, and arguably even more in comparison than, say, people born in Ireland or Scotland had an effect on the development of Great Britain IOTL.

The Finns (in terms of both Finne and Finländare) would definitely have more of an effect on Sweden than they did have on Russia IOTL in the 19th century. And even that effect was in no way negligible. In between 1809 and 1917, for example the Tsarist military had over 420 generals and 48 admirals born in the Finnish Grand Duchy. And they did reach very high offices at times, including being the Tsar's ministers and, say, Navy commanders and chiefs of staff.

Or consider, for example, that the old and traditional University of Åbo/Turku would likely be one of the top four institutions of higher learning in the realm, come the late 19th century, and it would benefit from getting the best and brightest students from a catchment area made up by one fourth of the realm. In this university, also the ideas of Finnish linguistic and cultural nationalism would get a big foothold, as they already did in the last part of the 18th century IOTL, and this is where the future intellectual leadership for Finland would grow. I'd estimate that in the 1850s at the very latest, there would be demands of university-level teaching in Finnish, as well as teaching positions in Finnish at the university. IOTL, this happened in Helsinki in the 1830s after the university was moved there.
 
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First of all, a Swedish victory (that includes a victory at Lesna before Poltava) that also results in Peter being dead or prisoner would allow Karl XII to dictate a peace,

I see Courland and Polish Livonia annexed into Sweden. Far Karelia and Kola from Russia, with Archangelsk, Pskov and Novogorod held as guarantees of a very large war indemnity.

Alexej and the conservative opposition takes over, or revolts when Peter returns from Swedish captivity, Russia may very well suffer a civil war. If Russia also tries to go after the Ottomans they might end up as they did OTL at Prut 1711 - which would be the last of the prestige of the Russian army and Peter's reforms - defeated both by the Swedish and by the Ottomans.

As for Finland, while I agree that there will be a 19th century revival of the Finnish language and Finnish nationalism, I still think that Finland will remain part of Sweden and look for more autonomy, better treatment of the Finnish language and maybe its own local parliament, but not for its own statehood,

As opposed to Norway, Sweden and Finland will have similar economies and similar security concerns. Norway was a liberal shipping nation that only needed to be friendly towards Britain and Sweden and would never face any security issues. Sweden and Finland during the same era will both be more conservative, more based on free-holding peasants, nobility and emerging wood industry and both will be deeply worried about any Russian advancements towards the Baltic Sea.

There will be no three invasions of Finland and feeling that Sweden cannot protect Finland in Finland either.
 
I see Courland and Polish Livonia annexed into Sweden. Far Karelia and Kola from Russia, with Archangelsk, Pskov and Novogorod held as guarantees of a very large war indemnity.
Taking the rest of Latvia more or less happened OTL, but is there some mention in any source about Charles XII having a wish to annex Russian Karelia, or Kola, or any other Russian territory?

(If I had been in that position, I would have taken parts both of Poland-Lithuania and of Saxony, but not cared about deposing Augustus in any of these, unless I took the whole country.)

Attacking Pskov was suggested in 1700-1701, but was keeping it something to strive for then, or just a bargaining chip?
 
Taking Far Karelia is just to ensure an end to the long-standing conflict on who gets to tax the Sami - Sweden did at times try to claim all territory up to the sea - see for example this Swedish map from 1695:

file.php


So Sweden wanted to be alone on taxing the Sami.

Sweden did at times try to claim Far Karelia or parts of it as parts of Finland (claiming the peace of Nöteborg 1323 included all of Finland to the White Sea and the sea routes between the White Sea and Ladoga).

Sweden would want a land connection with Archangelsk while holding it as a guarantee of war indemnities.

More importantly, this is territory Russia would not mind losing that much - which is why they would agree to losing it in a peace. Sweden would probably set the war indemnities very high and hope that the Russians are unable to pay and that they can thus keep those cities. Especially Archangelsk would be profitable, as Sweden then controls all Russian trade routes.

As for taking parts of Saxony, I would say against it. Don't mess in the Empire if you can avoid it.

The proper way to fight the Great Nordic War is probably to realise that Poland-Lithuania will never be a reliable ally and is in decline. Strike a deal with the Emperor or ignore him, and cross into Saxony 1702 or 1703, after the Battle of Kliszow. Meet up with the German garrisons, force August to abdicate his Polish throne and keep a garrison in Saxony as a guarantee until Sweden is at peace, and turn aganst the Russians in 1704.

Peter should be much less prepared then.
 
As for taking parts of Saxony, I would say against it. Don't mess in the Empire if you can avoid it.
Sweden's enemies could do so, and this is the most obvious place for Swedish expansion - close by, the same creed, almost the same language (hm, Sorbs live there as well), and reasonably well populated.

The proper way to fight the Great Nordic War is probably to realise that Poland-Lithuania will never be a reliable ally and is in decline. Strike a deal with the Emperor or ignore him, and cross into Saxony 1702 or 1703, after the Battle of Kliszow. Meet up with the German garrisons, force August to abdicate his Polish throne and keep a garrison in Saxony as a guarantee until Sweden is at peace, and turn aganst the Russians in 1704.

Peter should be much less prepared then.
In that case I would rather use August's unreliability, and make an alliance with him against Russia after Narva 1700. Then we could have two offensive forces in 1701, north and south of the Düna river, making some progress, and then a general peace in 1702 with Russia ceding a few border towns to each of the opponents.
 
The most likely place for Swedish expansion is Courland and Polish Livonia.

The big price Sweden would love to have is Danzig, with all the tolls on Polish trade, including all the grain grown in Polish Ukraine shipped to the Netherlands.

In reality, Poland-Lithuania would never agree to relinquish Danzig, since it would make them an essentially landlocked nation and leave their trade at Sweden's mercy. Britain and the Netherlands might even support a Danish re-entrance into the war over such an issue.

Saxony is landlocked, in the Empire (and any peace giving Sweden land is thus subject to the approval of the Emperor) and very far away from any other Swedish posessions. Remember that all other Swedish holdings in Germany have been approved by the Emperor and is on the coast and can thus be reinforced by the Swedish navy.

Marching troops to Saxony would have to be done over Brandenburg-Prussia, a nation that wanted Swedish Pommerania.

rhine_oder_1700.jpg
 
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