The Half-Century-Old Mystery of the Isdal Woman
A woman's badly burned body is found in a remote Norwegian valley, and over 50 years later we still don’t know who she was. A slew of strange clues along with her manner of death has captured people's attention since the day she was found.
On November 29, 1970, the body of an unidentified woman was found in a remote area of the Isdalen Valley near Bergen, Norway. The case has become one of Norway’s most enduring mysteries, with investigators still struggling to unravel the woman’s true identity and the circumstances of her death.
The woman’s body was discovered by a man and his two daughters who were hiking in the area. The woman’s badly burned body was barely recognizable. She had apparently died from carbon monoxide poisoning, had enough sleeping pills in her system to thoroughly incapacitate her, and she was surrounded by burned-out matchsticks. Her fingerprints had been sanded off, and the labels had been removed from all of her clothing.
The woman was unprepared for a hike in the freezing wilderness. She was wearing clothes for a much warmer climate or at least wasn’t able to put some warm clothes on before she went out into the cold.