What I mean is, I would like to wear something that looks archetypical Dragonborn - light armor that looks Nordic as hell, but with a good enough AR to hold up. I use the Deadly Combat mod and a couple others to make combat harder, so I would be DESTROYED with scaled armor.

Anything come to mind?

Easy, fire up CK and duplicate the said armors, change their AR, and either get them through console command, or make the original armor upgradable to your version.

http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Customizing_Weapons_%26_Armor. Have fun.