This chapter introduces mandates in mediation and provides a rationale for why we need to study them if we want to understand the process of mediation. The chapter also provides a list of Nordic mediation interventions stretching over a period of over seventy-five years. Mediators are individuals. Yet an overwhelming majority of those individuals who act as mediators between warring parties do so as representatives of what we here call a mandator – an organization, a country or countries, or both – that has sent them to mediate, and mediators can utilize the connections, reputation, leverage, and resources that the mandator possesses. The link between the mandator and the individual is the mandate. The mandate comprises the goal, instructions, and authority that together create the foundations for all that the mediator sets out to do. Still, despite their fundamental role in the mediation process, previous research on international mediation is largely silent on how mandates create the framework for the mediation efforts.