Gibson Lawlor

Gibson Lawlor was born in County Clare and read history at University College Galway, where a long-standing fascination with the peripheral peoples of early modern Europe drew him steadily northward, toward the forests of Scandinavia and the Balti world's forgotten conflicts. He has spent fifteen years researching the social and military history of the Swedish realm's eastern provinces, with particular attention to the Finnish peasantry and its relationship to the dynastic politics of the Vasa dynasty. The Cudgel War is his most sustained engagement with the subject, and one he regards as among the most important overlooked episodes in the history of the early modern north. He lives in Galway and is at work on further books in the field of Nordic and Baltic history.