  It is demonstrated that in simple soliton models essential features of the
electro-magnetic nucleon form factors observed over three orders of magnitude
in momentum transfer $t$ are naturally reproduced. The analysis shows that
three basic ingredients are required: an extended object, partial coupling to
vector mesons, and relativistic recoil corrections. We use for the extended
object the standard skyrmion, one vector meson propagator for both isospin
channels, and the relativistic boost to the Breit frame. Continuation to
timelike $t$ leads to quite stable results for the spectral functions in the
regime from the 2- or 3-pion threshold to about two rho masses. Especially the
onset of the continuous part of the spectral functions at threshold can be
reliably determined and there are strong analogies to the results imposed on
dispersion theoretic approaches by the unitarity constraint.
