On November 29, 1970, a man and his two daughters hiking in the Isdalen valley, in the hills above Bergen, Norway, came upon the burned body of a woman. Identifying labels had been removed from her belongings. Three days later, police traced two suitcases at Bergen railway station to her: inside were wigs, cash in several currencies, cosmetics, and a coded notepad — later deciphered as a record of dates and places she had traveled — but no passport was ever recovered. Investigators found she had moved through Norway under at least eight false identities, and witnesses described her speaking German, Flemish, and broken English. An autopsy attributed her death to a combination of sleeping pills and carbon monoxide poisoning, and police closed the case as a likely suicide. She was never identified. The case drew renewed investigation beginning in 2016; isotope analysis suggested she was born around 1930, possibly in the region of Nuremberg, Germany. She was buried in Bergen in February 1971.
Sources
- Wikipedia — Isdal Woman
- NRK / BBC World Service — “Death in Ice Valley” podcast (investigative series, 2018)