Ideas for future travel wanted

Scandinavia is certainly a great idea! Any particular things you are interested in? And which months are you considering? But 2-3 countries at 2 days sounds rushed. For 8 days a common city visit to Scandinavia is Stockholm + Copenhagen (and a side trip or two).

Never heard of ASAP tickets, and in general I'd say it's better to buy from the airline direct. Many have sales at the moment, and for Scandinavia check what SAS offers at the moment.

I believe my parents used ASAP and it was, indeed, very inexpensive and they had a good experience with them. But that was in normal times. In the current environment of pure uncertainty, do you want to risk the real possibility that they may not be in business in a year? With the crush on the tourism industry in general, I wouldn't personally want to engage in any financial exchange or contract with a party I don't know well whose future may be "in the air", so to speak. I am not even confident that all airlines as we know them today will make it (although it's hard to see them combining even more than they already have).

With only 8 days I would focus on one country or just Scandanavia.
Booking directly with the airline only and paying more to get 100% refundable tickets is the way to go in these uncertain times.
Aer Lingus SAS are legacy airlines that have lower prices
I only recommend well-established Expedia if you want a 3rd party site since I've never had problems booking with them even when a flight was canceled.

Visit Stockholm for five and Copenhagen for three nights . Or split time between Islo and Bergen. Can’t go wrong with either of these plans.
Spending two days at several places is not worth the added effort and travel time.

Hmmm, Scandinavia will be rather bleak (not to mention cold!) in the later months of the year. I'd recommend you look father south, maybe some place south of the Alps ;-)

Have you looked thru this current thread on things people would do differently on booking travel in the future? I know it's got a bunch of replies but you can scan thru them. Recurring themes are - NOT booking so far ahead and booking directly with the airline.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/what-changes-will-you-make-when-planning-travel-when-this-all-ends

I did look at Trip Advisor Air Travel forum to see if I could see anything with the company ASAP and just can't get the stupid search engine to narrow things down for me. They usually have thread after thread of tales of woe if a company is too good to be true.

Before I would book this far ahead I'd want to know what the company's cancellation policies are. Will they just give you a credit? How soon does that credit have to be used? If it's within 12 to 18 months of the time you "purchase" (which is what some of them are offering now) then working out how to use it since you are thinking of buying now could be an issue. What will their policies be going forward if there is a resurgence of this pandemic? They might not have hammered that out yet.

If you want to make payments, consider setting up a separate savings account for travel and pay into that before you do anything else with your money.

Thank you all for your replies. Choosing a couple destinations will be tough, but that would mean another trip as well.

Thank you again.

Hmmm, Scandinavia will be rather bleak (not to mention cold!) in the
later months of the year.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only people who don't know how to dress properly - Swedish proverb (loosely translated).

Joking aside, it depends a lot on when "mid-late 2021" is. If it is october, it might be beautiful autumn colours and the whole country might be lovely shades of yellow and red, if it is December it can be a lovely winter with christmas decorations everywhere. If it is November though, bring a good umbrella.