FYI all of the Scandinavian Kingdoms more-or-less came to be unified in their current shapes under pagan Kings, they just weren't formalized in mutual treaties until afterwards. It's one of those myths that Christian apologists like to popularize, claiming it was necessary in order to move on from just ruling your local tribe. Those treaties were still just as arbitrary as any of the agreed upon borders prior to that though, as all three of us were definitely Petty Kingdoms at this stage, as there wasn't really much of a cultural/linguistic difference at all yet during CK2. Dialects at most.
If you are incapable of enjoying the game without constant rape and pillage then that's your problem. I'd certainly try to expand, but I don't want it to be a breeze and I want to have to fight for every step forward Ásatrú or Romuva would make for their future. Potentially also with reforms helping their religious stability, but at the expense of support from hardliners and perhaps some mechanics shifting to a more mainstream form or allying the Hardliners against change etc. Also you wouldn't be all that isolated. You would be interacting less with Christendom outside of the North, but you'd also be closer to the Baltic. The Viking conquests didn't actually stop after they Christianized. They just shifted from West (England, France etc.) to East (Crusading against the Baltic and Finns). You'd get on decently with them. Several Kings in Scandinavia had marital alliances with Wends and so forth.
He might have. He might not have. That's the point. He also faced much steeper difficulties inside his realm. It also evidently was not particularly deeply entrenched in the upper-classes in Sweden. It'd be like you had an entrenched Western Emperor with almost uniformly State-sanctioned Roman-polytheist lands and roughly equal military power with an Eastern Emperor that is Christian, but ruling over an East that is still mainly pagan aside from his primary cities, lacking strong authority over several significant regions of his half due to local pagan leaders and then getting into a close-fought Civil War with said devout Western Emperor. He'd be in a far stronger position in his reunited realm than Julian ever was. Who had to sneak around and undermine Christianity by promoting religious freedom (and thus setting loose the Heresies on each other).
I'm not claiming that Julian's attempt was a likely success had he survived. But in Sweden it would've been. At least for the time being. I certainly agree that if their dynasty fell it could get back on that path, albeit delayed, of course. But if you start a game in that region obviously your goal will be to keep the new regime stable so that doesn't happen. We also tend to not surrender to the Seljuks if we start up as Byzantium.
Well, that's just flat-out wrong. The Empire was not a uniform brand of paganism. At all. What-so-ever. The reason it didn't matter all that much prior the threat of Evangelical Monotheism was simply that with their overall toleration it wasn't much of an issue anywhere except with the Monotheists (IE mainly Jews earlier on).
It takes hundreds of years to thoroughly convert a region - in real life - with them in power. Obviously in this case they aren't in power, so the landowning elite wouldn't be Christian. I don't understand where you're even coming from with this. It does nothing but contradict you.
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