E. I. Kouri is Professor Emeritus of General History at the University of Helsinki. He is a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions. Jens E. Olesen holds the Chair for Nordic History at the University of Greifswald. He is a specialist on Nordic history, dealing especially with late medieval/Reformation and early modern history of Scandinavia and Finland. He has published extensively on the Kalmar Union and on the struggle for the Baltic between Denmark-Norway and Sweden.