The Mystery of the Isdal Woman

The year is 1970. The Cold War is silently raging, the Middle East is still reeling from Black September and, in the Isdalen, a remote valley in Bergen, Norway, tucked between some boulders, an unknown woman lies dead. The Isdal Valley, or Ice Valley, has another name – perhaps more apt considering its legacy: Dødsdalen – Death Valley.

For over 50 years, the case of the Isdal Woman has haunted not only the initial investigators, but all those following in their footsteps. Despite intense investigations, we’re no closer to answering any questions posed by this enigmatic case. Who was this mysterious woman and how did she end up dead in a cold, isolated valley? Why did no-one ever come forward to claim her body or help solve the mystery of her death?

Was there no-one who missed her, no-one who noticed that she was gone, or was the reason for her death covered up by a government unwilling to admit their role in international espionage?

A Body Is Discovered

On November 29th, 1970, two young girls, aged 10 and 12, were out with their father, enjoying a Sunday morning hike while exploring the Isdal Valley. What should’ve been an enjoyable family outing came to an abrupt end when the two girls stumbled across the severely burnt remains of a woman. With the horrific image burned into their memories forever, the children and their father had to make their way down the mountain to find help.

This was the days before cellphones; not that it would’ve helped them much – cell service is still unreliable in the Isdal even today. The two girls who found the body have never spoken to the media which is not surprising; it must’ve been an extremely traumatic experience.

Even 50 years after the body was discovered, one of the last surviving members of the original police party that ventured into the icy valley on that Sunday morning recalled climbing a steep, sometimes impassable, scree slope and the scent of burnt flesh when they finally reached the scene where the unknown woman was waiting. It wasn’t a pretty sight. She was lying on her back, her arms stretched out in front of her in what is known as a “boxer’s” or “fencer’s” position – a position commonly seen in victims who had been burned alive.

Her front was so badly burned it was impossible to make out any facial features. All the police knew at this stage was that she had medium length hair tied up in a ponytail with a blue and white printed ribbon.

Various items, probably belonging to the victim, were found strewn around her. Police recovered clothing, an umbrella, two melted plastic bottles, half a bottle of Kloster Liqueur and a plastic cover that probably held a passport at one time but, unfortunately, no longer contained any form of identification. A fur hat was also found underneath the body.

All the labels had been cut from her clothes, and a wristwatch lying next to her had stopped at ten past ten – is this when she died? Ten past ten is also the standard setting for watches in shop windows, so it’s possible that the watch had never actually been used. The police also found jewelry but, strangely, the woman wasn’t wearing any of it.

Instead, the jewelry was placed next to her. Speaking with the BBC many years later, forensic investigator, Tormod Bønes, remarked that the way the items were placed almost looked like some kind of ceremony had taken place.

Considering that only the front of the woman was burned, those at the scene considered that her death might’ve been an accident. Perhaps she fell forwards into the fire, then lurched backward in panic, stumbled and fell down. Others thought that perhaps the woman had made her way to the icy valley to commit suicide.

A few considered the possibility that she had been murdered, and even wondered if the murderer was still somewhere close by, admiring his handiwork and reveling in the horror on the faces of those discovering his crime. If the scene of the woman’s death wasn’t puzzling enough, the ensuing investigation would uncover a case that, even today, has more questions than answers.

Initial Investigation

An investigation into the death and identity of the woman found in the Isdal Valley got underway immediately under lead investigator Oskar Hordness. Initially, the police considered the woman’s death to be accidental or suicide. Carl Voss, one of the first men at the scene, mentioned the remains of what could’ve been a campfire. However, official police reports make no mention of a campfire which makes an accidental death, or suicide, due to falling into a fire unlikely.

According to the autopsy and toxicological report, high levels of barbiturates were found in the Isdal Woman’s system. The most likely source of this was the Fenemal tablets, a brand of sleeping pills, some of which were still undigested. According to the experts, she had taken around 50-70 sleeping pills, in three doses, the first dose a few hours before her death. The last 12 tablets, probably taken shortly before she died, were still in her stomach.

The toxicological report found that the concentration in her blood was high enough to make her drowsy, but not enough for her to fall unconscious, and nowhere near lethal yet. The report also mentioned that the pills were pink. Fenemal tablets sold in Norway were white; only England sold a pink variety. Unfortunately, the medical examiner’s report couldn’t confirm whether she had taken the pills by choice or force.

A second finding from the autopsy paints a more horrific picture. Soot particles found in her respiratory tract indicated that she was still alive when she burned. The final cause of death was determined to be monoxide poisoning from the fire and the Fenemal tablets. The final dose, once dissolved, would’ve been enough to kill her when the active ingredient was absorbed into her blood stream.

The autopsy further revealed that the Isdal Jane Doe wasn’t pregnant and had never had children. A bruise on her neck also suggested that she might’ve received a blow or perhaps taken a fall. Other than that, and the fact that she was dead, she was in perfect health.

The autopsy findings don’t prove murder, but it raises some questions. If she had taken sleeping pills, she would’ve been drowsy, so how did she get all the way up the mountain by herself? The Isdal Valley was a long way to go to kill oneself.

Did the pills take too long to take effect, so she put herself on fire, or did she make a campfire, which didn’t make it into the police report, and fell into the fire while under the influence of sleeping pills? If she put herself on fire, she would’ve needed an accelerant. According to forensic investigator, Tormond Bønes, traces of petrol were found in the ground beneath the body, but none of the containers found at the scene contained any traces of petrol.

A Swiss forensic psychiatrist, Frank Urbaniok, who studied the case, also concluded that suicide was unlikely. The traces of petrol further support this – the petrol had to get up the mountain in a container of some kind, and someone took that container with them when they left her burned body behind. Whether she took the pills voluntarily or not, someone put her on fire before the pills killed her.

Was the killer, or killers, trying to obscure her identity? If that was their intention, they needn’t have bothered. As investigators were about to find out, the Isdal Woman had done a very good job of making sure her true identity would never be found.

Early on in the investigation, a discovery was made that should’ve solved the case. Two suitcases were found in a locker at a train station in Bergen. The rental period on the locker had expired, and when the officials opening the locker found the suitcases inside, they called the police. The fingerprints on a pair of glasses matched those of the woman found in the Isdal Valley, so police knew the suitcases belonged to their unknown victim.

With two suitcases filled with personal effects, identifying the woman should’ve been a breeze. However, this only added more questions.

The suitcases contained clothes, two wigs, eczema cream, and a spoon among other things you’d expect to find in a suitcase. Like the clothes she had been wearing, all the labels had been removed. The label with her name and the prescribing doctor had been scratched off the eczema cream, and the police discovered glasses without prescription lenses; just clear glass. A sewing kit with a logo of the Hotel Regina in Geneva, one of the best hotels in Switzerland at the time, suggested that our lady had travelled outside of Norway which was further confirmed by the presence of Swiss francs.

However, notably missing from the suitcases was any form of identification – not a single passport, letter, or note scribbled on a piece of paper gave any clue as to who the woman was. The Bergen police created a sketch which they circulated to all hotels in Norway to figure out where our mystery woman stayed. After all, if she had booked into a hotel, all her details would be on her check-in form.

As it turns out, our lady was memorable and the police got several hits. They didn’t get a name though; they got seven. The Isdal Woman had checked into multiple hotels using different identities.

Handwriting experts analyzed the hotel registration cards and agreed that the names were different, but it was definitely the same person who filled in the cards. When checking into a hotel, our mystery woman would’ve needed a passport. If we assume one or two hotel clerks turned a blind eye for a little bit of cash, she still would’ve needed at least four or five different passports.

According to some of the hotel cards, she was an antiques dealer visiting for business reasons. The only consistency in her hotel registration cards is her country of origin – Belgium. However, police couldn’t match any of her identities with a missing person in Belgium, suggesting that all of these identities were false.

Waitresses, hotel staff, and taxi-drivers were interviewed, and many of the witnesses who interacted with her remembered her very clearly. She was described as being in her late twenties to mid-thirties with brown eyes and medium length brown hair. She was small in stature, but elegant, self-assured and wearing fashionable clothes suggesting she had money.

Some even described her as exotic because of her dark hair and dark complexion which really stood out in Norway in 1970 when everyone else was the colour of fresh snow. She was quiet and reserved, not really engaging with those around her, and when she smiled, she had a noticeable gap between her upper front teeth. Her hotel registration cards were completed in German, and she spoke very poor English.

She wore a lot of makeup, and those who met her described a strong scent that could’ve been spices or a strong perfume.

Tone Svanes, who worked the front desk at one of the hotels the woman visited back in 1970, mentioned that the woman was wearing a worn out fur hat when she arrived. She remembered it because it was a style she’d never seen before. Many years later, when asked about the woman again, she added that she has since realized that the hat was similar to hats worn in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, both Soviet states back in the 1970s. She also noticed that the woman spoke with a lisp.

One of the suitcases also contained a plastic bag which led police to a shoe store in Stavanger. Using the sketch, the owner’s son recognized the unknown woman as a customer he’d sold a pair of boots to around two weeks before. He described her as a well-dressed, nice-looking woman with dark hair. She stood out in his memory because she took a very long time to choose her boots.

In fact, she only came back to buy them the next day. He was confident that she wasn’t Norwegian. She spoke broken English, asked a lot of questions, and took a long time to make up her mind. He also mentioned a strong, unpleasant scent that could’ve been garlic.

Police believed that these were the same boots she was wearing when she died.

The last important clue found in the suitcases was a notepad with messages written in a code made up of a combination of capital letters and numbers. The notepad was sent to an expert code breaker who managed to break the code in about three seconds flat. What looked like a complex code turned out to be a travel itinerary, probably written in her own shorthand.

For example, 20 M 23 M O meant March 20 to March 23 Oslo. Armed with the hits off the police sketch and the now decoded itinerary, the police were able to trace the woman’s movements around Norway. From 21-24 March, 1970, she was checked into the Viking Hotel in Oslo under the name Genevieve Lancier, from Louvain, and from 24 – 25 March 1970, she stayed at the Hotel Bristol in Bergen under the name Claudia Tielt from Brussels.

On March 25 she changed hotels, moving to the Hotel Skandia in Bergen where she checked in as Claudia Tielt from Brussels again and stayed until April 1.

On April 1, she left Norway. Using the itinerary, police managed to track her movements to the Calais and Altona hotels in Paris and she also spent time in Geneva. The investigators were very keen to visit and investigate both cities, hoping to track down someone she met or travelled with, but, to their greatest frustration, were prevented from doing so by higher authorities.

Some of the investigators, and the children of investigators who worked the case 50 years ago, believe the Norwegian Intelligence Service was behind this. The Isdal Woman returned to Norway after seven months; however, matching a single letter to a city in the greater Europe is a near impossible task, so her exact movements for those seven months are still unknown.

At the end of October, our mystery lady returned to Norway, after a stay in two different hotels in Paris where she checked in as Vera Schlossseneck. She checked into the KNA-Hotellet in Stavanger from October 29-30 under the name Claudia Nielsen from Ghent and on October 30, she returned to Bergen, checking into the Neptune Hotel under the name Alexia Zame-Merchez from Ljubljana and stayed until November 5.

From Bergen she left for Trondheim where she checked into the Hotel Bristol as Vera Jarle, from Antwerp and stayed from 6-8 November only to return to Stavanger again on November 9 and checking into the St Svithun hotel under the name Fenella Lorch. She stayed until November 18, making this her longest stay in one place. Perhaps she needed a holiday after all her travelling, but it’s unclear what she was doing in Stavanger for nine days.

After this extended stay in Stavanger, she once again returned to Bergen and checked into the Rosenkrantz Hotel under the name Elisabeth Leenhouwfr for November 18-November 19. Finally, she moved to the Hordaheimen Hotel in Bergen, checking in as Elisabeth Leenhouwfr again, this time from Ostend. She left the Hordaheimen on the 23rd of November. Not long after, on the 29th, she was discovered, burned to death, in the Isdal Valley.

Where she was for the six days after she was last seen and the discovery of her body we’ll probably never know. Had she been kidnapped and held hostage by those who eventually killed her, or had she gone into hiding, only to be discovered by someone meaning her grievous bodily harm?

The police investigation was thorough, but the lead investigator, Oskar Hordnes, announced that the case was closed on December 22, 1970, after just three weeks of investigation, before the results from the autopsy and toxicological report were even available. It seemed like the death was ruled a suicide or accident, and investigations ceased.

The Isdal Woman was buried in an unmarked grave in the Mollendal Cemetery in Bergen on February 5, 1971. A picture of the Madonna with Child found in her suitcases suggested that she was Catholic, and she was buried in a Catholic ceremony, attended by members of the Bergen police department. DNA wasn’t an option in 1970, but investigators hoped that, one day, she would be identified and could be returned home, so she was buried in a coffin made of zinc to preserve the body. The coffin was decorated with lilacs and tulips, and the ceremony was a simple, sombre affair.

In the years following the discovery of the body, many of the investigators working on the case have admitted that they thought the Isdal Jane Doe had been murdered and the case was closed too quickly. One of the investigators, Harald Osland, could never let the case go, and held onto some police records and documents which his son, Tore, later used to write a book about the case.

The Case Re-Opened

For a long time, no progress was made in the case, but this changed in 2016. The NRK, the Norwegian public television broadcaster, along with the BBC, investigated the case using modern scientific advances, such as DNA analysis, that wasn’t available back in 1970. Their search culminated in an award winning podcast Death in Ice Valley, presented by Neil McCarthy and Marit Hagriff, and the Norwegian Police officially reopened the case. Hagriff has spent years re-interviewing witnesses, tracking down evidence that was considered lost, and studying unsealed files related to the case. Her search also uncovered a few witnesses and stories that hadn’t been told before. To my knowledge, her search continues, and hopefully, she’ll be able to give the Isdal Woman back her name and maybe even send her home.

Initially, it was assumed that the last time the Isdal Woman was seen alive was at the Hordaheimen hotel in Bergen where she ordered a cab, presumably to take her to the train station where her suitcases were later discovered. The last entry in her coded itinerary reads M L 23 N M M. This most likely refers to 23 November when she was last seen alive. Six days later, her body was found in the Isdal Valley. The entry has never been decoded, so we have no idea what the ML and MM refers to.

However, after the podcast aired, Hagriff was contacted by a man who could very well be the last person who saw the Isdal Woman alive, and he had an interesting story to tell. Back in 1970, Ketil Kversoy was a sea captain who lived in Bergen. While hiking Mount Floyen in the Isdal Valley, he was surprised to come across a small party of three people which was uncommon at that time of year.

The woman, who matched the description of the Isdal Woman, was walking in front with two men following behind. None of them were dressed for hiking; they were better dressed for going into town – the woman, especially, was too lightly dressed for that time of year. When he passed her, he got a good look at her face.

Kversoy described the woman as looking scared and like she was giving up. She looked at him, and he thought she started to say something, but then changed her mind. The men following her were around 20m behind her and he described their faces as dead and wooden.

They had dark hair and browner skin than was common in Norway, and Kversoy thought they could be from southern Europe. He got the impression that the men were definitely following the woman, and she knew they were there, but he wasn’t sure if the group was actually together. The whole encounter just struck him as very odd.

When learning about the woman found dead in the Isdal Valley, Kversoy was initially hesitant to contact the police, thinking that they might think he was a crazy man telling a crazy story. Hagriff didn’t consider the story to be crazy and neither do I, but there’s a problem. The Isdal Woman was found on a Sunday morning, and her last reported sighting was on the Monday, almost a week before.

However, Kversoy insisted that he came across the strange party on a Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember the exact date for this sighting making it even harder to verify. This all happened 50 years ago, so it’s possible that Kversoy actually met them on a Saturday afternoon, or that he met them on a different Sunday.

He was very surprised to see them, so perhaps they didn’t expect to meet anyone up there either and went back down the mountain only to return for their dastardly deed on a different Sunday.

If the last entry into her coded itinerary referred to November 23, perhaps ML and MM are the initials of people she had planned to meet. Were they the two men following the woman that Kversoy came across while hiking in 1970, and were they responsible for her death?

These two were not the only men she had been spotted with. Usually, when a woman is murdered, the first person the police look at is her romantic partner to rule out domestic abuse or jealousy as a motive for murder. However, despite being seen with multiple men by witnesses, no partner or friend ever came forward to identify the unknown woman. Hagriff re-interviewed witnesses, trying to find out anything about our mysterious lady and the men she had been seen with.

Some of these reports were given to the police 50 years ago, but for some reason, it appears they never followed up on any of these clues.

One interesting meeting with an unknown man was found in the files of the Secret Police who, after years of denying any involvement in the case, finally admitted that there was, in fact, a file on the Isdal Woman. The document is dated December 22, 1970, and tells the tale of a fisherman in Tananger, a coastal town in Norway. Berthon Rott claimed to have seen a woman fitting the description of the Isdal Woman close to his home in Tananger at the time the Norwegian Defence Force was testing their new Penguin Missile System.

He claimed that he saw the woman watching the tests on several different occasions, but couldn’t provide exact dates and times. Rott thought she was Slavic, Russian or perhaps even Romanian. Even more interesting, he saw her speaking to one of the naval officers, presumably Norwegian, at one of the Motor Torpedo boats.

In the 1970s, Tananger wasn’t exactly a tourist hotspot, and the woman’s presence there during the missile testing is definitely noteworthy. We’ll never know what exactly the Isdal Woman was doing in Tananger, but we do know that the naval officer she was seen talking with never came forward to identify her or help solve the mystery of her death.

After the podcast aired, Hagriff was contacted by Sverre Rott, the son of Berthon Rott, who had an interesting story to add to the mystery. Shortly after reporting this sighting to the police, the Rott family was on their way to London for the Christmas Holidays. While waiting at the Stavanger railway station, the family was approached by two police officers who took his father aside and spoke to him for about 15-20 minutes.

Rott senior, being a man of few words, didn’t say anything to his family about what the police wanted and the family continued on their trip to London. Sometime later, Sverre learned that the police officers had given his father a knife and a handgun for protection. Sverre believes that his father was told to keep his mouth shut about what he had seen, but Mr Rott the elder had no idea who was behind it, or, if he did, he kept that to himself.

Sverre also got the impression that many years after reporting this sighting and the mysterious visit from the cops, or someone disguised as cops, his father was still looking over his shoulder.

An interesting side-note to this story is that the fisherman made it all the way to London and back carrying a gun and a knife. Clearly border checks weren’t as strict back then as they are now. This would explain how the Isdal Woman was able to move across borders so easily using multiple fake passports.

Another meeting was witnessed by Lillian Menas Kohne, a waitress at the Neptune Hotel in Bergen who saw the Isdal Woman in the company of an as yet unidentified man. She described the Isdal Woman as very serious with sad eyes. One evening she was serving the woman dinner and found her in the company of a man. They sat together, so they clearly knew each other, but they rarely spoke and, when they spoke, they spoke German.

It looked like a meeting as the man was reading something written on a sheet of paper – perhaps a report or an article. The man had grey hair and the waitress thought he was probably Norwegian. Kohne claimed that she told the police about this meeting back in 1970, but there’s no mention of this dinner in police reports.

The Isdal Woman was also seen in a home-furnishing shop in Bergen in 1970 by Siri Reikvam, a young clerk at the time. She was with a man, and they were shopping for a mirror. They took their time and weren’t particularly friendly to each other. After a lot of discussion, which could’ve been arguing, they finally chose a cheap, medium sized mirror.

The clerk couldn’t tell what language they were speaking, but was fairly sure it wasn’t English, German or Italian. The woman had dark curly hair, a description that fitted one of the wigs found in her luggage, and dark eyes. Based on appearance, he thought the couple was eastern European. Usually, shopping for a mirror wouldn’t be that strange; however, if you’re living in a hotel, why would you be shopping for a mirror to hang on your wall?

Finally, the Isdal Woman was seen at the Rosenkrantz Hotel in Bergen with an unknown man. A maid reported to the police that she went into the room that evening to prepare the bed as was customary at the time. She was surprised to find the woman sitting on the bed with a man sitting on a small couch beside the bed.

The woman got up to allow the maid to do her job and the maid, in a hurry, did it as fast as she could. During the whole time that she was in the room, neither the man nor the woman spoke a word. She described the man as around 25-30 years old, tall, well-built with broad shoulders, blonde hair, a nice face and dressed in a grey coloured suit.

The Isdal Woman only stayed at the hotel for one night. The next day, after the visit from the mystery man, she left and moved across the harbour to the Hotel Hordaheimen. Was she running from someone?

Once again, it seems like the police didn’t make much effort to find this man.

In the 50 years since the body of the woman was found, no-one has come forward to identify her despite the fact that multiple eyewitnesses reported seeing her in the presence of men. Whoever these men were, they were determined to keep their connections to the woman a secret, and it seems that they succeeded. Clearly eyewitness accounts are about as useful as the suitcases, in other words not very, so Hagriff turned her attention to something that wasn’t available in 1970 – DNA.

Who Was the Isdal Woman?

Despite having seven different identities, none of which could be confirmed in Belgium, multiple eyewitnesses, personal belongings, and a crime scene to work with, the police were never able to confirm her identity during the initial investigation. Back in the 1970s, the concept of DNA was floating around, but it wasn’t used to solve a crime until 1986. However, before we get to the DNA, let’s review what we already know about the Isdal Woman that could be useful in determining where she came from which might bring us one step closer to figuring out who she was.

Our mystery woman claimed to be from Belgium, but all the hotel registration forms were filled out in German and many witnesses also reported that she spoke German. However, based on some language errors, it has been speculated that German wasn’t her first language; she might’ve been using German as another way of hiding her true identity. As an experienced language teacher and editor, I’ve met first language speakers with atrocious grammar who couldn’t spell if their lives depended on it, so I’m not convinced this proves anything.

In fact, according to one article, she listed the Brussels District Office as her passport issuing authority. Apparently, this expression was only used during the Nazi Occupation, suggesting that German was, in fact, her first language.

In more recent years, a handwriting expert also joined the search for the unknown woman’s identity and took another look at the hotel registration forms hoping to learn something about the elusive woman from her handwriting. Based on this analysis, the expert concluded that our woman probably received her primary education in France or a French-speaking part of either Belgium or Switzerland. The expert spotted some idiosyncrasies such as the double strokes used for the lowercase letter “t” that was commonly used in France at the time, and the underlining of the signature.

French speakers typically underlined their signature starting from the initial of the first name. Of course, this is not conclusive but if she was a first-language French speaker trying to hide her identity, it might explain the language mistakes. However, French, German and Dutch are the three languages most commonly spoken in Belgium so, at this point, whether she was a French or German speaker, she probably came from Belgium.

When the investigation was re-opened in 2016, authorities hoped that the DNA might finally provide an answer. In 1970, despite not having access to DNA testing, it was standard practice to keep tissue samples from an autopsy. Thankfully, these samples were stored properly, still usable after 50 years, and provided a complete DNA profile of the Isdal Woman.

Using her Mitochondrial DNA profile, the DNA that connects us with our ancestors on our mother’s side, forensic expert, Prof. Walther Parson, determined that the Isdal Woman was definitely of European descent. With a DNA profile in hand, police re-checked all their databases and even sent the new profile to Interpol hoping for a match, but came up empty.

This leaves the databases of private genealogy labs and companies, like the ones helping people find lost relatives. Unfortunately, there are ethical and legal issues in Norway regarding the use of these private databases in the course of criminal investigations since not everyone who hands over their DNA to these private companies have anything to do with criminal activity. Hopefully, these databases can be checked in future to provide, if not the Isdal Woman’s identity, perhaps the identity of a close relative.

Before being buried, the Isdal Woman’s jaw was removed with the hope that the teeth might help identify her at some point in the future. Initially, the jaw and teeth were kept by a professor of dentistry, but after his death, it was assumed that the jaw had been thrown away. However, after renewed interest in the case, some investigation led to the discovery of the jaw and teeth in a cellar at the Haukeland University Hospital’s forensic archives. With new forensic techniques available, the jaw and teeth became a valuable clue.

Much like the Isdal Woman herself, her teeth were distinctive. She had 14 fillings and several golden crowns. This was odd considering her age – she was supposedly in her late twenties to mid-thirties. It also wasn’t typical of the dental work done in Norway at the time – gold work was done in Germany and Austria, and commonly seen in Eastern Europe.

Carbon 14 testing was also done at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in order to determine the Isdal woman’s age. By matching the level of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere with the Carbon 14 found in the dental enamel, scientists can get a fair estimate of when someone was born. Based on her hotel registration cards, and witness reports, the woman was probably born in the 1940s; the registration cards usually indicated 1942 or 1943. However, the results of the Carbon 14 test revealed something unexpected.

According to the tests, the woman was around 45 years old when she died, meaning she was born in the 1930s or even in the late 1920s. Carbon 14 testing on teeth is apparently very accurate, according to the experts, and people are very bad at judging ages; however, I find it unlikely that all the witnesses would mistake a 45 year old for a woman in her late 20s, early 30s, no matter how much make-up she was wearing. It’s clear from this test, even if the dates are a little off, that the Isdal Woman was lying about her age, pretending to be younger than she actually was.

This makes sense – in the 1970s, a woman in her 40s was expected to be married with children; a woman travelling alone was already a rare sight. A married woman travelling without her kids and husband would’ve raised even more eyebrows. It’s possible she was pretending to be younger in order for her status as a single woman travelling alone to be more acceptable.

The Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service, along with the University of Bergen, also conducted isotope analysis on the teeth. Traces of chemicals in the ground and water are deposited in the teeth as they’re being formed. By analysing these chemical signatures, scientists can determine what area a person might hail from originally.

Based on the isotope analysis, our lady was most likely born in south-eastern Germany, around Nuremberg. The analysis also shows that she probably moved around in her youth and areas she could possibly have lived in include Northern Wales, western Germany, Belgium, and parts of France. She spoke German and probably learned to write in a French region so her most likely place of residence in her teens would be the French-German border or the Luxemburg-Belgium area.

Historically speaking, the late 20s and early 30s in Nuremberg was a significant place to be. It was the spiritual heart of Nazi Germany and fully supported, with great enthusiasm, the rise of Hitler with the Nuremberg Rallies. The pre-war and war years saw a lot of population movement around Europe, especially in Germany.

We have no way of knowing whether the Isdal Woman’s movements as a child had anything to do with the war, but living in Nuremberg would’ve given the Isdal Woman and her family a front row seat to the rise of Hitler. Many Jewish families saw the writing on the wall and left Nuremberg at the first opportunity; it’s possible that the Isdal Woman and her family were among these refugees. Her broken English and dental work suggest that she wasn’t one of 10,000 children who escaped Germany for Northern Wales through the Kindertransport after Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, however, many families, both Jewish and non-Jewish, sent their children to family and friends living westwards, so towards Belgium and the border between France and Germany.

The isotope testing and handwriting analysis certainly supports the theory that the Isdal Woman was sent west as a child.

While doing research for their podcast, Hagriff and McCarthy came across the Maria Rosenberg School. I couldn’t find any records for this school, but I don’t have access to German school records, so I have to rely on their research. Apparently, the Maria Rosenberg School housed young women and girls without families.

According to one historical expert, the Maria Rosenberg School was also used for children with behavioural problems, many of them from Nuremberg, but to his knowledge, no Jewish children were hidden at the school during the war. When looking at student records for the school, a familiar name popped up: Claudia Tielt, one of the names used by the Isdal Woman. However, the records were incomplete so there’s no way of following up on this lead.

A refugee, orphan, or child alienated from their family due to behavioural problems would make an ideal candidate for any clandestine operation, be it espionage or a criminal enterprise. With vague or non-existent documentation of their lives, and no family or friends to miss them, they could easily disappear without anyone noticing they’ve gone.

The police followed up on all the names the Isdal Woman used and they never found anything, but I have to wonder if, perhaps, just on the odd occasion to remember who she actually was, the Isdal Woman used her own name – Claudia Tielt. By the time WWII ended, people had gone missing, families were separated, getting stuck on the wrong side of the Berlin wall, and records had been destroyed in bombing raids and fires. If our woman had gone missing in Germany or Belgium during or even right after the war, there’s a good chance that her case simply fell through the cracks.

There was no-one left to miss her and follow up with the police. It was like she never existed.

A Spy in Our Midst

Messages written in code, wigs, multiple identities, no history – our lady was a spy, right? If we consider the Isdal Woman’s movements and her final hours, this certainly seems like a very good possibility. According to the lead investigator, Oskar Hordness, there was no indication that the victim was involved with any kind of espionage, stating that “we can rule that out with certainty”. However, many people disagree.

The 1970s was a busy time politically. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was in full swing, and nuclear war had barely been averted just 8 years before in October 1962. In the far north, above the Arctic Circle, Norway and the Soviet Union shared a 200km long border.

However, Norway was firmly allied with the United States. The city of Bergen, where the Isdal Woman spent a lot of her time, was home to the biggest naval base in Norway. Soldiers in the streets were a fairly common sight, and NATO exercises with warships from the US, Germany, and England was a regular occurrence.

This made the Soviet Union quite nervous, so a lot of submarine sightings were reported in the fjords, most likely the Soviets keeping an eye on what NATO was doing. Bergen also housed an international airport. With all this activity and access, Bergen would’ve been a good place for a spy to pick up intel.

Starting in the 1960s, Norway, with financial support from the US Navy and Western Germany, began developing the Penguin Missile System, a short-range, anti-ship missile. The development took around a decade, and the missile was finally put into service in 1972 and became NATO’s first operational Naval Strike Missile, so the project was of great importance to all the players in the Cold War. Investigations into the Isdal Woman’s movements showed that her visits to Stavanger and Bergen coincided with tests of the Penguin Missile System, and personnel from the FFI, the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, stayed at hotels in Stavanger during the tests.

According to the tale of our fisherman, the Isdal Woman was watching the exercises of the 25th missile boat squadron in Tananger where she was also seen talking to a naval officer. While none of this proves that she was a spy, her presence is definitely suspicious and, considering the importance of this newly developed weapon system, the Isdal Woman being a Soviet spy is certainly within the realm of possibility.

However, the Cold War wasn’t the only thing happening in the world in the 1970s. In the summer of 1973, a special unit of Mossad assassinated Ahmed Bouchiki, a waiter, openly in the street in the town of Lillehammer, a ski-resort town in southern Norway. The Mossad agents had mistaken Bouchiki for Ali Hassan Salameh, a Palestinian man involved in the Munich massacre at the Olympic Games in 1972.

The incident in Lillehammer opened a whole new can of worms. The Norwegian authorities were very lenient towards the Mossad agents that shot an innocent man in the street, giving them a very short prison sentence. This all happened three years after the Isdal Woman was found dead, but it suggests that the Mossad was operating in Norway in the 1970s.

So, if not a Soviet spy, was the woman connected to Mossad in some way? According to Prof Stephen Dorrel of Huddersfield University, an expert in western counter-intelligence, the Mossad was quite adept at passports and certainly had the capacity to manage an agent with multiple identities. Unlike the Soviets, they were also more likely to use female spies.

If the Norwegian government was so lenient towards foreign secret services agents operating openly in Norway, perhaps the case of the Isdal Woman was closed so quickly to hide the involvement of Intelligence agencies, either foreign or domestic.

Now, other than hunting down terrorists and Nazi war criminals, what interest would Israel have in Norway? Well, Norway is a producer of heavy water, a component used for nuclear fission with both civilian and military applications. In 1970, Norway delivered 1 ton of heavy water to Israel, following Israel’s guarantee that the water would be used for a nuclear reactor and not for anything military, like, you know, a nuclear bomb.

The whole transaction was kept secret. Perhaps news of Israel’s interest in a component that could be used for nuclear weapons made its way to Palestinian ears, prompting the Palestinians to take a closer look at what was happening in Norway. If this was the reason behind the Isdal Woman’s visit to Norway, it would make sense that the Norwegian intelligence services wanted it kept quiet.

The Cold War was still going strong – getting openly involved in a second conflict was not a good idea. So, do we have anything linking the Isdal Woman to Palestinian groups? There is one, very tenuous, link, but it might also explain another question regarding the Isdal Woman – the money.

The Isdal woman was well-funded – she was described as elegant, stayed in an upmarket hotel in Geneva, and travelled around Europe constantly. Clearly our lady had money and lots of it, so where was the money coming from? An independent fact checker made an interesting connection – Francois Genoud, a wealthy financier from Switzerland with close ties to Belgium having married a Belgian national.

Genoud was a man with all the wrong friends. Long after the Third Reich toppled, he still remained an avid supporter of National Socialism and Hitler and continued his fight against the Jews via the Israel-Palestine conflict. Genoud visited Paris on June 26 and June 27, 1970, to meet with Wadi Haddad, a well-known Palestinian militant.

While there are no reports of a woman present at this meeting which was observed by intelligence agents, we know that the Isdal Woman was in Paris at the same time. Paris is a big city visited by thousands of people every year, so this link is tenuous at best, but after 50 years, we’ve reached the point in the case where arm-chair detectives start grasping at straws. But, if the Isdal Woman was involved with Genoud and Haddad, it would explain where the money came from.

While the spy theory certainly makes sense to us mere mortals, those with a little more insight into spy-craft have a different opinion. According to Iver Neumann, director of Norwegian Social Research, spy operations at the time was set up as follows. As a spy, you had an officer you had to report to.

In the Soviet days, there would be one person working in the embassy known as the resident. This would be the ranking intelligence officer. Their job was to maintain relationships and recruit agents.

Next in your hierarchy, you would have the professional or career spies. They, in turn, would have networks of informants passing them information as well as couriers and messengers. Some of these informants would be paid while others did it for ideological reasons.

A proper spy would be provided with a legend – a backstory which includes a full life history with the proper documentation to back that up. A spy would certainly have one or two false identities, but it was unlikely for a spy to have seven different identities. Keeping that many backstories straight without tripping yourself up would be very difficult, even for a professional spy.

Former spy, Alexander Vassiliev, believe that if our lady was a spy, she wasn’t a Soviet spy. She cut all the labels out of her clothes, like she didn’t want to be traced through her purchases. A proper spy wouldn’t do that – instead, a spy would be wearing clothes brought in Norway or another country that fit her legend.

Since she claimed to be from Belgium on her hotel registrations, a proper spy would be wearing clothes from stores commonly found in Belgium to further cement her false identity. The Isdal Woman also had too many different identities for a Soviet spy. Faking an identity requires a lot of effort and paperwork.

A paper trail needs to be established, and she would need more than just a passport. She would need birth certificates, driver’ s licences and identity documents from her home country. This takes time, money and effort to organize.

You don’t just buy these things off a shelf. Ideally, a spy would take the name of a deceased person so seven identities would mean seven deceased people. In the 1970s, it also wasn’t common for women to travel alone.

A woman on her own drew attention, so the Soviet Union didn’t use a lot of female spies in order to fly under the radar. Finally, more than one person commented on the smell of spices, strong perfume or garlic. Once again, this is out of the norm making it memorable.

According to Vassiliev, a soviet spy would smell of Chanel No. 5.

Our lady was also travelling too often to be a spy. A spy needs to build up a network of informants in an area, make friends and become a trusted member of a community. If she was interested in something like the Penguin missile tests, she would’ve been staying in Bergen or Stavanger for years, making friends with the locals and taking her dog for a walk to watch the tests without drawing attention. Travelling extensively would make it impossible to build up a network.

Vassiliev considers the money and multiple identities to be suspicious, but if she was a spy, she definitely wasn’t a Soviet spy.

However, just because she wasn’t a spy doesn’t mean she wasn’t involved in espionage. This was the days before super-fast internet and overnight delivery services. The only way for a spy to get important information into the hands of handlers was through couriers.

Considering some of the high profile cities the Isdal Woman visited, such Hamburg in Germany, Basel in Switzerland, Paris and Rome, it’s possible that our woman wasn’t a spy but a courier working for an espionage ring operating in Norway – a ring involving some high-ranking Norwegian officials. Perhaps she made a mistake, and as a result she was killed and put on fire to hide her identity and cover up the involvement of some very important people with a lot to lose.

Considering her behaviour, I’m inclined to believe the professional spies. The Isdal Woman was a memorable woman travelling alone. Even 50 years later, witnesses who were re-interviewed when the case was re-opened still remembered her. Her dark hair and eyes drew attention everywhere she went.

Spies are supposed to blend and fit in, not stand out. Hotel staff also mentioned odd behaviours like changing rooms multiple times – in one hotel, she changed rooms three times. She moved furniture around in her room, and hotel staff just considered her to be strange and different. In Tananger, she was seen talking to a Naval officer while visiting the same town where the Penguin Missile System was being tested - if she was a spy, gathering intelligence by talking to a naval officer, standing on a quay in plain sight for anyone to see would make her an incredibly bad spy.

There are many unsolved mysteries surrounding the Isdal Woman, and her behaviour seems suspicious; however, if she was involved with espionage, she probably wasn’t a career spy. She was simply too memorable for that. So, if not a spy, what else could she have been involved with that got her killed?

Other Theories

A number of theories have done the rounds since the discovery of the unknown woman on that winter’s morning; however, no theory has given a satisfying explanation for who the Isdal Woman was and what she was involved with. No matter how good the theory, there’s always something that doesn’t quite fit.

A woman travelling alone in the 1970s probably had one of three occupations – spy, sex worker, or business woman. Considering that she used multiple identities, none of which could be traced, and she lied about her age, it’s unlikely that she was a legitimate businesswoman or tourist, and we already considered spy. This leaves sex worker or high-class escort. Since this was still illegal in most places, it would explain the fake identities and lying about her age.

Among the belongings in the suitcases at the train station was a matchbox with the label of an erotic underwear postal service in Germany that has since become a well-known chain of sex shops. This would certainly explain why she had so much money to spend and why all the witnesses saw her in the company of men. If she was travelling around Europe, she must’ve been in high demand so this lady had some skills.

However, police reports describe the lingerie in her luggage as beautiful, which doesn’t necessarily mean erotic, and I think we can all agree that calling a woman a sex worker because she liked to wear pretty undergarments is highly problematic. As for the matchbox, she could’ve picked that up anywhere. German soldiers were a dime a dozen in Bergen, so someone could’ve lost it or left it behind in a pub or restaurant.

It’s also worth noting that some of the hotels she checked into were Christian hotels with strict rules such as no alcohol or drugs and definitely no prostitutes. In fact, Hordaheimen in Bergen, where she spent her last days accounted for, was a Christian hotel as was St Svithun in Stavanger where she spent nine days. A Christian hotel isn’t a good place to pick up clients or to take clients if you’re a working girl.

You’ll probably get kicked out at best and reported to the authorities if you’re really unlucky, so I doubt that our unknown woman had anything to do with the sex trade.

A more likely theory to explain the extensive travelling and the funds to support this lifestyle while still turning heads with your elegance would be crime. More than one of her hotel registration cards lists her reason for visiting as antiquities dealer. An antiquities dealer could visit out of the way places under the guise of evaluating antiques and meet with high-profile or sophisticated looking men in hotel restaurants without drawing too much attention. Her interest in the Penguin Missile System could suggest that she was involved in the arms trade or she was selling information to the highest bidder – Stavanger was the oil capital of Norway, so lots of corporate offices for a little corporate espionage to fill up a lazy afternoon.

An antiques dealer would also be a good cover for an art thief or smuggler – one witness saw her buying a mirror. A flat canvas hidden behind a cheap mirror would certainly be a good way to get a stolen painting out of Norway. If our fisherman could get a gun all the way to London, getting a mirror over the border couldn’t have been that difficult. Many of the cities she travelled to, like Paris and Geneva, are still connected to the art world, and a lot of artworks were stolen during WWII – most of these have never been recovered. Considering her childhood ties to Germany, this certainly becomes a possibility. However, since Norway isn’t exactly one of the art capitals of the world I’m not convinced there were enough remarkable works of art or buyers in Bergen, Stavanger, and Tananger to justify so many trips to Norway. Of course, 34 paintings from well-known artists, including Edvard Munch, that’s the guy who painted The Scream, disappeared from Oslo 50 years ago, but according to authorities, it was the work of students. I’m no expert, but this seems like something that warrants a little more investigation, so maybe someone might want to look into that.

Finally, some have speculated that the Isdal Woman was suffering from some kind of mental illness. While much progress had been made in the field, by 1970, many psychiatric conditions weren’t that well understood and people suffering from mental illness were often overlooked and shunned by society. The life of a spy, sex worker, or criminal would probably be very lonely, so our woman might’ve experienced depression.

Some of her odd behaviours that point to her not being a spy certainly make sense for someone experiencing paranoid delusions. Changing hotel rooms, moving from one hotel to another frequently, wearing wigs, using fake names, getting rid of anything that could identify her, and keeping a coded itinerary would make perfect sense to someone trying to avoid imaginary followers. One article mentioned that the Fenemal tablets found in her stomach could’ve been prescribed for seizures which might indicate our woman suffered from epilepsy; however, delusions aren’t a typical symptom of epilepsy.

While a mental illness might explain her behaviour, it doesn’t explain her meetings with several unidentified men, her visits coinciding with missile tests, or the source of her funding – a rich socialite going missing would’ve made the headlines. She also came across as organized and functioning relatively well; she definitely had some quirks, perhaps even some mild mental health issues, but full blown paranoid delusions or schizophrenia seems unlikely in my opinion.

There was also some speculation that the Isdal Woman was the victim of an unknown serial killer, or that the various sightings of the Isdal Woman wasn’t actually the same person but two different women – apparently, the police was also looking for an American woman whose description was very similar to the Isdal Woman at the same time. In my humble opinion, someone should take another look at the paintings that went missing in Oslo – my money is on art thief or smuggler.

Conclusion

It’s been over 50 years, and the identity of the Isdal Woman is still unknown. No passports were ever found in her belongings or hotel rooms – if they existed, they probably burnt with her. What she was doing in Norway remains as much of mystery as her name; however, the interest of the Norwegian Secret Police suggests that her death wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill accident or suicide.

Was she a spy, a double agent, or working either with a criminal organization or with the police to infiltrate a criminal organization? Whether related to espionage or just plain crime, it appears that our lady was up to something shady – possibly shady enough to get her killed in a most horrific way.

Despite being seen in the presence of multiple different men, no-one has ever come forward to identify the woman or even admit that they knew her, and time is running out. Within another ten or twenty years, anyone who ever met her will be dead and gone and, with them, any answers that might lead to her killer or, more importantly, lead her home. With no history, no story, and no name, all that remains of the Isdal Woman is a lonely unmarked grave, and a mystery which, at this point, may never be solved. It’s doubtful that we’ll ever know who the Isdal Woman was, who she loved, and what she imagined her life would be.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the Isdal Woman’s cause of death?

The Isdal Woman’s cause of death was determined to be monoxide poisoning from a fire and the ingestion of Fenemal tablets, a brand of sleeping pills.

What items were found with the Isdal Woman’s body?

Items found with the Isdal Woman’s body included clothing, an umbrella, two melted plastic bottles, half a bottle of Kloster Liqueur, a plastic cover that probably held a passport, a fur hat, jewelry, and a wristwatch.

Why was the Isdal Woman’s death initially considered accidental or a suicide?

The Isdal Woman’s death was initially considered accidental or a suicide because only the front of her body was burned, suggesting she might have fallen into a fire. However, the official police reports made no mention of a campfire, making these theories less likely.

What was found in the Isdal Woman’s suitcases?

The Isdal Woman’s suitcases contained clothes, two wigs, eczema cream, a spoon, glasses without prescription lenses, a sewing kit with a logo of the Hotel Regina in Geneva, Swiss francs, and a notepad with coded messages.

What was the significance of the coded messages found in the Isdal Woman’s suitcase?

The coded messages in the Isdal Woman’s notepad were decoded to reveal a travel itinerary, which helped police trace her movements around Norway and Europe.

What was the Isdal Woman’s apparent country of origin?

The Isdal Woman claimed to be from Belgium on her hotel registration cards, but her true origin remains unknown. Isotope analysis on her teeth suggested she was likely born in south-eastern Germany, around Nuremberg.

What was the role of the Norwegian Secret Police in the Isdal Woman case?

The Norwegian Secret Police had a file on the Isdal Woman and were involved in the investigation. Some investigators believe the Norwegian Intelligence Service prevented them from investigating certain leads, possibly to cover up her involvement in espionage or other sensitive activities.

What theories exist about the Isdal Woman’s occupation?

Various theories suggest the Isdal Woman could have been a spy, a sex worker, an antiques dealer involved in crime, or even suffering from mental illness. Her extensive travels, multiple identities, and interactions with unidentified men support these theories.

What was the significance of the Isdal Woman’s visits to Stavanger and Bergen?

The Isdal Woman’s visits to Stavanger and Bergen coincided with tests of the Penguin Missile System, a short-range, anti-ship missile developed by Norway with support from the US Navy and Western Germany. Her presence during these tests is considered suspicious and supports the theory that she might have been involved in espionage.

What was the outcome of the initial investigation into the Isdal Woman’s death?

The initial investigation into the Isdal Woman’s death was closed on December 22, 1970, after just three weeks, before the results from the autopsy and toxicological report were even available. The case was ruled a suicide or accident, and investigations ceased.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: The Mystery of the Isdal Woman
• Hero image source by Francesco Bini / openverse, by-sa.