I understand why everyone complains about Sweden, but isn't a base tundra plain more useful than a base desert plain? I mean, it has +1 food over the desert, and can also have dance of the aurora, which isn't picked by the AI often. Whilst the Petra won't be there to back you up, tundra seems to have higher chance of spawning oil and uranium, so whilst your early game might be a bit week, you will make up for it later in rarer resources (I'd be surprised if a tundra start didn't yield at least 8 oil or 4 uranium)
Tundra often lands you close to snow, which is bad.
Tundra has no flood plains
The pantheon only works on non-forested tiles, and I guess it might be a hassle to deal with early game?