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The Isdal Woman

rynner2

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Very long and fascinating article:
Isdal Woman: The mystery death haunting Norway for 46 years
By Helier Cheung BBC News, Bergen

In November 1970, the badly burnt body of a woman was found in a remote spot in Norway's Isdalen valley.

Someone had cut the labels off her clothes, and scraped distinctive marks off her belongings - as if to stop her from being identified.
And as police started investigating her death, they uncovered a trail of coded messages, disguises, and fake identities - but never cracked the case.

Forty-six years later, Norwegian police and NRK journalists have decided to reopen the investigation.
This is the story of the Isdal Woman - and the perplexing trail of clues she left behind.

WARNING: This article contains one graphic image

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39369429

Bergen is the only Norwegian city I've been to, but since I was there in hospital overnight I didn't see much of the place!
 
Isdal Woman: The mystery death haunting Norway for 46 years
By Helier Cheung BBC News, Bergen

In November 1970, the badly burnt body of a woman was found in a remote spot in Norway's Isdalen valley.

Someone had cut the labels off her clothes, and scraped distinctive marks off her belongings - as if to stop her from being identified.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39369429
'Major breakthrough' in Norway's 46-year-old Isdal woman mystery
19 May 2017

Scientists believe they may have made a major breakthrough in efforts to solve a decades-long mystery of a burned body found in Norway 1970.
New forensic analysis on the teeth of the unidentified "Isdal woman" found chemical traces which may tell investigators where she grew up.
The results narrow the search to an area along the French-German border.

The case received fresh impetus after journalists from Norway's national broadcaster NRK began an inquiry.
The NRK team, which has been researching the case for over a year, hailed the new information as a "major breakthrough".
And a scientist at the Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service (Kripos) said the results were "much more specific than I could have dreamed of".

The unusual circumstances surrounding the case, and speculation over her mysterious past, have made it an enduring popular mystery for 46 years.

...

NRK's investigative reporters have been working on the mystery for over a year.
"I am starting to believe that we might actually find her real identity," team member Marit Higraff said.
"Now the area that we have to comb is much smaller than even we had hoped for. Maybe this 46-year-old mystery can come to an end."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39978131
 
If you like the "Tamam Shud" or "Somerton Man" case, you will probably enjoy this one:

"Death in the Ice Valley"

An unidentified body. Who was she? Why hasn’t she been missed? A BBC World Service and NRK original podcast, investigating a mystery unsolved for almost half a century.

A real cold war crime case from Norway. The pace of the podcast is glacial, but I like that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p060ms2h
 
New developments.

A woman's badly burnt body is found in a remote spot, Ice Valley, near Bergen in Norway.

Labels have been cut off her clothes and distinctive marks removed from her belongings. Police soon uncover coded messages, disguises, fake identities... That was in 1970 and the mystery was never solved. Last year we discovered further clues in the podcast, Death in Ice Valley. Now listeners have found more.

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48736937
 
The Israel link is intriguing...though it might be a smokescreen....as Israel seldom comments on it's overseas intelligence missions.

I have looked at the forensic drawing of the woman.....does she "look Jewish?"
Jews of course come in many ethnicities, but there are some tendencies for common facial features.
She does not immediately strike me as Jewish.
Neither does she strike me as looking typically like someone from the French/German border area....but if that is what the DNA analysis tells us then it is baffling.

For me her features actually look like someone from Lebanon.......so might she have been an Arab Christian working with Israeli intelligence?
Or might she have been an Arab who was the target of Israeli intelligence?

I put her age at about 30, so if she died in 1970, would have been born around 1940.
Not many Jews from the French/German border area in 1940 made it out alive ... but that assumes she was born there.
It could be that she is of Jewish Ashkenazi descent and her parents or grandparents emigrated to Ottoman or British Palestine prior to 1940?
Her hair styling fits one from Israel 1970...but then it also fits that year in Europe too...styles tend to be international....even pre-internet.
But her facial features do not look typically Ashkenaz.
 
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