Fantasy Counterpart Culture

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

although there are certainly aspects of heroic Northern culture that are in their make up.

I'd agree with this. Certainly in their youth as seen in The Silmarillion their passion and vigour is reminiscent of many characters from the Sagas.

At the same time, I'd argue that virtually everything in Professor Tolkien's work is fundamentally influenced by ancient Germanic literature. Almost all cultures in Western Middle-earth (apart from the Shire) have something of an early Medieval Northern European flavour. In that regard I'd suggest that, even though I'm aware Professor Tolkien explicitly compared Gondor to the Egyptians and the Byzantines, in a sense I'd argue that the Dúnedain evoke to a significant extent the idea of "if Norse/Ancient German peoples had built and operated the way the Egyptians and Byzantines did."

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

The dwarves are commonly held to be a Viking themed culture (although I personally do not subscribe to this view)

This is really one of those things that has grown up after Professor Tolkien's work, isn't it? This bizarre modern conception of Dwarves as short bearded Scotsmen with Viking helmets on.
As we know, Professor Tolkien compared the Dwarves to the Jews, which I think is an interesting comparison, but again they have very Norse/Germanic traits as well.

Overall I'd suggest that it might be possible to say that in a sense most of at least Western Middle-earth is essentially less a counterpart of real world cultures and more an exercise, in some respects, of imagining a world deriving from the style of the Germanic world rather than, as occurred in reality, the Graeco-Roman Classical world.