Well, yes and no. I had the idea of a region of my game world to sort of Rohanish, with riders and plains. Then the more history I wrote for my campiagn, and the more I studied history of europe and western Asia, I decided to base the region on varangians . Since the plan for that region in my campaign was always to have it settled by vikings, it made sense to base the people on the swedish vikings that went east to Russia and whose armor and equipment was influenced by the steppe warriors, and huns.
To sum up, i went more with a historical model of a medieval russian warrior than LOTR's but came up with the same outcome. Which I am happy with.
Hope that made sense.