Finnish author Jaakko Mikkeli was accused by Norwegian author Kirsten Halden of plagiarizing a book that she had written and that had been published 20 years before Mikkeli' s. The two books, although set in different periods and regions, contain enough plot similarities to make coincidental resemblance unlikely. Mikkeli' s defense rests on his argument that plagiarism was impossible in this case because Halden' s book has been published only in Norwegian, a language Mikkeli does not understand, and because no reviews of Halden' s book have ever been published. The argument in Mikkeli's defense depends on the assumption that ["nobody related the plot of Halden's book in detail to Mikkeli before Mikkeli wrote his book", 'there is a common European myth to which both authors referred subconsciously in the books in question', 'Mikkeli is not familiar with Old Icelandic, an extinct language related to an earlier form of Norwegian', 'Mikkeli has never met Halden']