In the present method a wound roll of paper is loaded against a nip roller and the measured values of the nip width and the roll indentation are compared with the corresponding calculated values of the non-linear problem. The nip width is measured by a sensitive sensor film and the roll indentation by a laser displacement sensor. The nonlinear numerical problem is solved using the Finite Element Method with four-node isoparametric quadrilateral elements and Newton-Raphson-type iteration. A suitable form of the constitutive equation and the stress state dependence of the moduli of the incremental stress-strain law will be discussed. A least squares fit to the experimental results determines the values of the paper roll elastic moduli