Originally Posted by SK AAR

To chime in; I gave up reading half way through your post - way too long and where are the paragraphs?...

You need to take this up with your travel insurance. There is no way you are going to get SAS to pay for a return ticket that you purchased on your own. As you said yourself this is an unprecedented situation and you will not be able to reply on EC Reg. 261/04 to recover a ticket you purchased on your own when SAS told you that you would offered a return flight under reprotection agreements and eventually did offer you flight (albeit a flight that didn't suit you).