The Isdalen mystery | Hacker News Reader

The Isdalen mystery

nrk.no

138 pointsradagast25 comments

I am too young to remember this first-hand, but my parents were studying at the University of Bergen at the time; they vividly remember the case - unidentified bodies being exceedingly rare in Norway, this was the #1 conversational item for weeks, if not months.

Lots and lots of theories as to her origins and the purpose of her tour of Norway not to mention the question of who killed her, and why.

General consensus at the time was (at least in my parents' circles) was that it was too elaborate to have been a suicide - many thought she'd been in the employ of some Warsaw pact intelligence service, possibly being killed by associates after some falling out or the other. After all, if our counter-intelligence had gotten hold of her, they'd simply lock her up or deport her - or, if you are of a more sinister disposition, disappear her.

Anyway - all just conjecture and guesswork; the idea was just to write a short comment to suggest that this case is very special by Norwegian standards - then I got a bit carried away...

Reminds me of the Tamam Shud Case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case

Hmm. Interesting. Both bodies had brands / tags removed from the clothing. Both had "secret codes" on them. Both had left suitcases in a local transit station, again, with labels / brands removed.

Thanks! I thought my mind played tricks on me, wondering if I hadn't read this about a man before.

There are some interesting theories and discussions about the case on the /r/UnresolvedMysteries subreddit[0]. My favorite one is that she might have been part of a check scams league[1].

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/search?q=isdal&...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/3anykc...

Interesting. Also search for Isdalen https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/search?q=isdale...

scree: a mass of small loose stones that form or cover a slope on a mountain

Thanks!

I seriously thought it was their way of sayin ski...Gonna go hit the scree slops!

There appears to be a follow-up story, but it is in Norwegian only: https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/xl/er-dette-isdalskvinna_-1.13...

It is just interviews of the people who worked at the hotel at the time the lady was there. They also got multiple drawings of the lady done, which they showed to these people who remember her. The drawings are not 100% according to the witnesses, but good enough they say. Must have made quite an impact the lady and the event since they remember all that still.

The wikipedia page has some additional information not covered in this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isdal_Woman

Spoiler: "until now" means just some new media thing about it, no news

On the contrary! Here are some of the recent developments in the case:

- A brand new police-sketch of her face (after interviewing witnesses) aiming for photo realism. (As opposed to the sketch from the 70's which is more stylistic in nature.)

- Handwriting analysis of her diary, itineraries, etc. to narrow down where she could've been educated.

- A complete DNA profile from samples of her internal organs. (Samples were previously thought missing, but have recently been rediscovered.)

- Her teeth (also previously thought missing) have been sent for isotope analysis to narrow down her geographic area of origin. Her dental work is also being studied to match repair methods with country.

you mean teeth?

Yes! :)

This is what the series of articles will say. The second article (apparently in Norwegian only, I plowed through the Google-translate version) just talks about the reactions of people to the new police-sketch of her face.

Sadly it takes sensational stories like this get notice but in the US alone more than a half million get reported each year with nearly eight thousand missing at any one time

At least here they have a body. There are tens of thousands of other bodies that cannot be identified in the US alone. So going forward it will probably take genetic sampling at birth so that everyone can be identified or every set of remains can be. How much of society trusts government to do only that?

The FBI estimates about 3,000 people go missing, permanently, in the US every year. People get reported missing all of the time, but they are found quickly.

Genetic sampling of everyone isn't necessarry. It would be enough to match a relative.

While universal genetic sampling probably isn't on the books in the near future, there's an obvious risk of mission creep with samples already collected for another purpose.

Here in Norway we've got an ongoing case in which the police (in Bergen, the same precinct which got the Isdalen case in the parent article in their laps) collected DNA samples from any male who volunteered to provide one to be checked out of a rape case. (They used cell phone position data to determine who had been in the immediate area around the time of the rape).

Anyone who provided a sample were assured that the sample would be destroyed once they were checked out - as would any data derived from it.

Guess what. The samples still exist, the unexpected twist being that the police wants to destroy them to keep up the populace's trust.

The national archives are the ones trying to preserve the samples on the grounds that they are, by law, material which fall under the authority of the national archives.

If the samples are in the end preserved, guess what:

a) Noone will ever volunteer DNA ever again, and:

b) Someone will at some point cross-reference the samples against other unsolved crimes, just in case.

> So going forward it will probably take genetic sampling at birth so that everyone can be identified or every set of remains can be.

How many people are reported missing is irrelevant in this discussion; a better question is, how many unidentified bodies are found in the United States every year?

Yeah. I was once reported missing (by my mother) to the police because I didn't arrive from the big city in the bus she expected. I had just chosen the next one, two hours later.

I was 20 at the time and serving in the army. There I was actually leading company-strength motor marches.

Talk about overly worried parents.

As to your question, a quick Google arrives at a story claiming the number is 4,400:

"U.S. medical examiner and coroners' offices receive an estimated 4,400 unidentified human bodies every year, according to the first national census of medical-legal death investigations, "Medical Examiners and Coroners' Offices, 2004." Of these, about 1,000 are still unidentified after one year, and 600 are buried or cremated."

http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/07/07/11/unidentified-hum...

I get the feeling that a big slice of that remaining 1000 still wouldn't be identified even if they were genetically sampling at birth. Simply because the kind of person who ends up as an unidentified body in the U.S. is less likely to start out being born in a hospital, or being born in the U.S. at all.

Sure, but that's still a human tragedy - there are probably people out there who would like to know that their loved one has deceased.

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