They might put it pretty far in the future, where the all of the game-changing events eventuated one way or another (Emperor assasinated by another group (DB dissapeared), Thalmor took over, Paarthurnax killed by the Blades). I thought the same thing after my second playthrough.
They could simply not mention the events where the player had choices, or only allude to them. 'Glad that civil war up in Skyrim is over.' or guild related - 'No, we don't really communicate much with the guild in Skyrim.' or no mention - 'You're worried about what happened 100's of miles away with everything we have going on here - you need to focus'.
Guess we'll have to wait and see.
I'm sure it'll get mentioned a lot in chatter in inns and comments from various NPCs
But I doubt that the main quest elements will play any significant part, as indeed they didn't with previous games. What we don't know yet, of course, is how far in the future (or indeed, if I may speculate, in the past) the next Elder Scrolls game will be. Or whether they will use its-in Novels to fill in the gap as they did this time.