How would the Brittish, French or Dutch have ruled differently?

Rubbish. Russia isn't an impact? The Danification of England under Canute isn't an impact? The birth of British seapower as a reaction to Scandinavian raids isn't an impact?

Not even that, though I suppose that might have had something of an impact. More their social organization in tribal structures which had the kind of primitivist democracy seen in many tribal groups around the world. They did not have an abundance of outmoded, established institutions.

If the English really were just Anglo-Saxons, this idea would have some merit. Culturally, Denmark and England were very different before the Danes began to colonize England. Danes were seafaring, English were not, to name an obvious example. Danes were mostly pagan, English were mostly Christianized. Etc etc etc, too many massive differences to even mention. Similarities yes, but lets not overstate things by saying they were the "same" - you'd have to cast a net big enough to haul in half of Europe to say that. 

One must remember that the Anglo-Saxons did not wipe away the previous inhabitants, but assimilated them and in the process adopted portions of their culture - else you would not have pre-Roman British folk myths being recorded for the first time in the 1700 and 1800s. It's not clear Britain has ever been anything but distinct, due to its isolation.

Right ... the same is even more true of the Scandinavian societies, this is exactly what I mean by "vigour". The Scandinavians had never even experienced urban civilization at any point in their history (unlike the English). Also their societies were relatively well-disposed to traders, with the elites eagerly engaging in it - the same is definately not true of medieval Europe. The more primitive influences coming from the north also injected a sense of individualism, again, something not really a feature of the majority of medieval Christian Europe. All this predisposed the cultures they influenced to become "first adopters" of new developments, developments which first surfaced in the more civilized centres like Italy but whose implementation and full realization was also difficult due to the conservative weight of such lengthy civilization and all its assorted institutions.

Nor was it only the Norse/Germanic influence ... all the former "fringe" areas around what were once Roman territories became powerhouses during the Middle Ages, including the Middle East and North Africa (and even Ireland, though only in a cultural sense). These cultures too impacted and revitalized parts of Europe, but, Latin Europe was better positioned to resist that impact (and consequently did not reap the same benefits). But even so, the "victims" of the middle ages, like Spain, became the top dogs of the early Renaissance, precisely because of those influences.

I'm at a loss to understand why this thinking should be branded racist ... it has nothing to do with race, it is more about established societies with strong institutions being less adaptable, less flexible, and less likely to become first adopters. When those institutions are destroyed - or never existed - and you add the benefits of the advances made in more civilized lands, you have a potent recipe for a vigorous first adopter. Same principle lies behind the current success of the US, even.

[/QUOTE] Italians were 100% more genuinely individualist and commerce minded then any Norse and so were North African (back to the topic of the subforum). [/quote]

I can't say about the North Africans, but as far as the Italians are concerned: yes, they had a very developed commerical infrastructure, but, the top elites of the society were not traders. They were religious authorities and nobility who disdained that profession. As regards individualism, the aristocracies of feudal societies like Italy were much more entrenched and fixed and had far more control over the thoughts and opinions of the lesser ranks of society than the Scandinavian groups. Scandinavians had some chiefs and petty kings, and a warrior/trader class, but it was not a very top-heavy or rigidly entrenched set of institutions, it was quite primitive and unsophisticated as institutions of authority go, closer to a basic pecking order than an abstract galaxy of authority based in theoretical notions and dogma. Not to mention that a good deal of decision making in northern areas was still by tribal consensus, eg the Allthings of the Saxons and Norse - there was nothing much comparable in medieval Italy that I'm aware of. 

I think your chronology is a little off, or I don't understand your point. The last of the major foreign invasions into England ended more than half a millenia before the Civil War or the Glorious Revolution.

Nor am I entirely clear why a nation has to be a complete tabula rasa before it can have any foreign influence. Modern societies which have existed for centuries are being influenced by foreign ideas all the time; why should this be any different a millenia ago?