Hello my friends. It's your detective, Noel. How are you all doing? I hope you're all doing good because I'm doing good. I'm really excited. Today is the 53rd Anniversary of one of my favourite Mysteries. I've only known this Story for a few months, but it has already fascinated me a ton! The Story Of The Isdal Woman! One of the most famous and mind boggling mysteries from the Cold War! Credit to Wikipedia and the amazing YouTuber, Mr. Nightmare for the information. I demand you to go Subscribe to him because he makes some of the coolest videos on YouTube. Now that our introduction is finished, let's have a look at the Story of the Isdal Woman. The BIGGEST Unsolved Mystery in Norwegian History...

On this day, 53 years ago, on the afternoon of November 29th 1970, a Professor and his two young daughters were hiking on a nice, cool, beautiful day in the Isdalen Valley in the Ulriken Mountain Range in Bergen, Norway. But what they or anyone else couldn't have predicted was what would happen that day would become the biggest Unsolved Mystery in Norwegian History...

On the afternoon of November 29th 1970, a Professor and his daughters were hiking on a nice, cool, beautiful day in the Ulriken Mountain Range in Bergen, Norway. The valley they were hiking in, the Isdalen Valley was also known as the "Ice Valley". It was a beautiful Norwegian Valley, but it was also nicknamed the "Death Valley" since it was a popular area for suicides during the medieval times and in more recent years, it was also a popular area for hiking accidents...

Despite the eerie myths and legends surrounding the valley, the Professor and his daughters didn't think much of them since the Valley was way more beautiful than it was scary. But they had no idea what kind of horror they would find that day and how much craze and speculation it would cause for the next five decades...

At first, the hike was completely normal and the trio were enjoying the Valley, but they then noticed an unusual burning smell and that's when they discovered the charred body of a woman lying on a rocky hillside...

The trio were very shocked and scared by their horrific discovery and they immediately returned to Bergen and called the police.

The police arrived quickly and they were just as shocked and scared. She was lying in a faced up position and her hands were clenched next to her torso. Her body and her clothes were so burned, she could not be recognized. Next to her body, the police found St. Hallvard liqueuer, two plastic water bottles, a plastic passport holder, rubber boots, a woollen jumper, a scarf, nylon stockings, an umbrella, a purse, a matchbox, a watch, two earrings, a ring, burned paper, a fur hat which had traces of petrol, twelve sleeping pills, a notepad with strange codes written in it, and all of the marks and labels on her items had been removed or rubbed off.

Three days later on December 2nd, police and investigators found two suitcases the woman owned at the Bergen Railway Station and inside one of the suitcases was 500 German dollars and 135 Norwegian dollars. The suitcases also contained clothing, shoes, wigs, makeup, eczema cream, coins from Belgium, The United Kingdom, and Switzerland, maps, timetables, a pair of non-prescription glasses, and a pair of sunglasses with the woman's partial fingerprints. But just like the belongings at the scene of the woman's body, all the identification information from the items was removed... Something was odd with this woman...

Her body was taken to the Haukeland University Hospital for an autopsy and it was discovered the woman had died from a combination of incapacitation by phenobarbital and carbon monoxide poisoning. Soot was also found in her lungs suggesting that she was burned alive. Her neck was also bruised, possibly caused by a fall or blow from a blunt object. When the doctors analysed the woman's blood and stomach for more clues, they discovered that she had overdosed on between 50 to 70 Fenemal brand sleeping pills. Her teeth and jaw were removed due to her unique dental work and the doctors took tissue samples of her organs.

The police were getting far more questions than answers and everyone wanted to know who this woman was and what on Earth she was doing. The police launched an appeal for information in the Norwegian media about the woman. When they launched their second investigation, they discovered she was last seen alive 6 days before her body was discovered on November 23rd when she checked out of Room 407 of the Hotel Hordaheimen. Hotel staff told police that she was good-looking and roughly 5 feet and 4 inches tall, with dark brown hair and small brown eyes. Staff reported that the woman stayed in her room for most of the time she was there and she always seemed to be on the lookout for something. When she checked out, she paid her bill in cash and requested a taxi to take her to the Bergen Railway Station. Her movements between then and the discovery of her body remain unknown. For the next 35 years, police and investigators had no idea what happened between the woman leaving the hotel and her body's discovery...

Police were able to decode the woman's strange notepad writings and concluded that they listed the dates and places the woman had visited. Using the lists and handwritten check-in forms, police and investigators discovered that the woman had travelled around Norway and Europe in general and visited several cities such as Oslo, Trondheim, Stavanger, and even Paris in France. She used at least eight fake passports and aliases. Even though her passports didn't confirm her true identity, she consistently maintained that she was Belgian and she either wrote her checks in German or French.

The police also discovered that the woman had previously stayed at several hotels in Bergen, and was known to change rooms after checking in. She often told hotel staff that she was a travelling saleswoman and antiquities dealer. Many witnesses reported that she wore wigs, smelled like garlic, and she spoke several languages such as German, Flemish, or broken English.

Sketches of the unknown woman were drawn and passed all over the world along with her incomprehensible Story. Despite all the evidence and hope police had, the woman was never identified and the case was quickly closed as the cold 1970 was coming to an end. They hoped they could make more progress and solve the case later on, but for now, all the authorities could do was guess what happened to the woman, and they theorised that she had committed suicide by ingestion of sleeping pills, but others believe that she was murdered...

Even though the woman was never identified, she was given a special burial in an unmarked grave at the Mollendal graveyard in Bergen 2 months later on February 5th 1971. Sixteen members of the Bergen police force attended her burial. She was buried in a zinc coffin to both preserve her remains and for ease of disinterment. Her ceremony was also photographed in case she had relatives who would eventually come to them for more information. But at least the woman was now able to rest in peace.

As the police had hoped, there have been many updates to this Story over the last five decades, but none of them answered the most important question. Who was this woman and what was she doing?

Police and investigators never found the taxi driver who took the woman from the hotel to the Bergen Railway Station. But 21 years after the case closed in 1991, a taxi driver wishing to remain anonymous said that he was the man who took the woman back from the hotel and after picking up the unknown woman at the hotel, they were accompanied by another man for the ride to the train station.

46 years later in 2016, the case was reopened and Norwegian police and investigators were finally given another chance to solve this baffling Story. The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation commissioned American artist Stephen Missal to create six new sketches of the Isdal Woman, which were shown to witnesses who had seen her before her death.

A year later in 2017, an isotope analysis of the woman's teeth was done using her unburied jawbone and the analysis suggested that she must have been born between 1926 and 1934 in or near Nuremberg, Germany, but she eventually moved to France or the France-Germany border when she was a child. This theory also matched earlier analysis of the woman's handwriting, which suggested that she had been educated in France or a neighbouring country. The analysis also indicated she had been to a dentist in either East Asia, Central Europe, Southern Europe, or South America.

The next year in 2018, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC World Service created a podcast series about the Story called "Death In Ice Valley" which included interviews with eyewitnesses and forensic scientists who also suggested that the Isdal Woman's birthplace may have been southern Germany or the French-German border region, and that she was likely born in or around 1930. They also suggested that she was likely raised in French-speaking Belgium.

A year later in June 2019, the BBC revealed that listeners of the podcast had given more clues about the Story. DNA Doe Project Geneticist, Colleen Fitzpatrick contacted the "Death In Ice Valley" team to offer her help in identifying the woman through genetic genealogical isotope testing of autopsied tissues. The test was successful as it revealed that the woman was a MTDNA Haplogroup suggesting that her ethnic background was somewhere from South East Europe or South West Asia. The woman also owned a French passport based on the fact that an unidentified French national was registered on one of the flights she took to Norway.

Author Dennis Zacher Aske theorised that the Isdal Woman was a sex worker since she travelled frequently. It also could explain her wish to remain anonymous, her behaviour at hotels, and the fact that the men she was witnessed meeting never came forward. Aske even suggested that another person was likely with the woman when she died, based on the strange objects that were with her along with her medically intoxicated condition in the hours before her death. He believed the woman was murdered and she didn't commit suicide, nor did he believe she even committed an assisted suicide.

Later that year, an article in the French newspaper titled Le Republican Lorrain was published and a man from Forbach, France reported that he knew the Isdal Woman and they even had a relationship with each other in the summer of 1970. The person said the woman was a polyglot with a Balkan accent and she often dressed herself up to look younger than her age. They also said she refused to share personal details and often received scheduled phone calls from other countries. The informant also found various wigs, colourful clothes, and even a photograph of the woman riding a horse when he was looking through her belongings one time. He worried she was a spy, so he considered contacting the authorities, but he was worried about what the woman would do to him if he did, so he never contacted anyone about her. But he did keep the photo of the woman on the horse and it was finally published after it was kept away for 49 years.

Over the years, there have been many updates and successful progress in the Isdal Woman Story, but unforunately, we still don't know the two biggest questions. Who was this mysterious Woman and what was she up to? We've gotten a lot of evidence, but we've never been able to figure out her true identity.

But there's one more update to this Story and it is by far the most DISTURBING part of the Story and it's what makes it take an even more Mysterious and Creepy turn...

35 years after the woman was discovered in 2005, a 61 year old man from Bergen told a local newspaper that after seeing the sketches made by police and investigators, he had believed the Isdal Woman was a woman he had seen five days before her body was discovered when he was hiking in the mountains of Floyen. According to the man, on November 24th 1970, when he was only 26 years old, he was hiking in the mountains of Floyen when he came across a young woman who was dressed like she was in the Summer instead of the end of November. It was very strange, especially because she was on a hiking trail. But there was something even more strange about the woman than what she was wearing. He noticed that her face was full of fear and she looked like she was about to speak to him, but she kept her mouth shut when two large men in black coats who looked southern stepped behind her...

Confused and disturbed, the man reported what he saw to the police, but what's arguably the creepiest part about this whole Story was when he reported what he saw, the officer he was reporting to told him: "Forget her... She was dispatched..."

As a result, the man's name nor his alleged sighting was accounted for in the investigation, which is why he waited 35 years to come forward with his bone chilling Story...

Over the last 53 years, many people have tried to answer and solve all the questions regarding the woman's identity and her unexplained travelling. Most people believe she was a spy involved in espionage or criminal activity during the Cold War. Multiple people had disappeared in Norway throughout the 1960's close to military installations, which traced back to international espionage. The declassified records of the Norwegian Armed Forces also reveal that many of the women's movements corresponded to top secret trials of the Penguin missile. A fisherman also reported seeing the woman in the area where the Penguin missile was being tested in Stavanger, and she was also seen in the same city by a shoe salesman who sold her a pair of rubber boots. Out of all the possibilities of who the woman was, it's most likely that she was a secret agent serving in the Cold War.

But even with all the evidence and theories we have, we still haven't been able to solve the Mystery of the Isdal Woman even after all this time. 53 years later, we still have no idea who she was and what she wanted and we may never solve her Story...

To this day, 53 years later, the Story of the Isdal Woman still haunts the minds of everyone who knows about it and it continues to be one of, if not, the BIGGEST Unsolved Mystery in Norwegian History...

The end...