The absolute worst in this fandom is when people make the "Imperials must be Romans" type assumptions because of superficial resemblances. They'll make long, complicated lists based off aesthetics and try to assign some deeper meaning to it. The way I like to put it is that if "Nords are essentially Vikings", they're only such in the ways they clearly are, and not the many ways they're clearly something completely different and unique. Same for all the races and cultures, really. There's gonna be some nods to real world cultures because that's our point of reference as human beings, and that's a simple way to represent what something is like at a glance. You might make a certain mental association between the Forsworn and various tribal groups of Earth based on their dress and weapons, for instance, and that's a type of lore in and of itself, that type of visual aesthetic, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.
I think Todd Howard even suggested such a thing in the "Making of Skyrim" documentary. He was describing how his initial inspiration for making Skyrim was in a Conan the Barbarian action figure on his desk. He said something to the effect of "How do you feel when you look at this image?" and displayed an image of the figure, then says something along the lines of "that's the essence we wanted to capture with Skyrim." So, Skyrim isn't literally Cimmeria, obviously, but there was that basic aesthetic feeling. Same with feelings you get when you see that Talos statue. It evokes associations of things you've seen or read about in other places, without having to actually represent those things. Rather, it's a representation of how they make you feel. It's "the days of high adventure" personified. Trying to be an armchair historian and assign a deeper meaning to it, or some real world parallel misses the point of the emotion it's supposed to instill into you as a gamer/explorer.
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