Eight Fake Names, a Coded Diary, and a Body Burned in "Death Valley." The Isdal Woman.

On Sunday, November 29, 1970, a man and his two young daughters were hiking in Isdalen, a steep, rocky valley just outside Bergen, on Norway's west coast.

Locals sometimes called it Death Valley. In the Middle Ages, people said, it was a place of suicides.

Among the rocks, the family smelled something burning. Then they found her.

A woman lay on her back, her body badly burned, as if she had been lying beside a fire. Around her were scattered belongings, many of them melted or charred.

The police would spend months trying to find out who she was. They would find eight names. None of them was real.

The scene

The woman was lying face up, with her fists clenched near her chest, the way people's limbs sometimes draw in when exposed to great heat. The front of her body and her clothes were badly burned. Her face could not be recognized.

Around her were the remains of a small fire, and a strange collection of objects: an empty bottle of a Norwegian liqueur, two plastic water bottles, a passport holder, a pair of rubber boots, a wool sweater, a scarf, stockings, an umbrella, a purse, a box of matches, a watch, two earrings and a ring.

A fur hat lay nearby with traces of petrol on it. There was burned paper.

Every label, brand mark and identifying detail had been removed from the items, even from the watch.

Beside her body were twelve sleeping pills.

The autopsy

The pathologists found that she had taken a large number of sleeping pills, a barbiturate sold in Norway under the name Fenemal. Tests suggested 50 to 70 pills.

There was soot in her lungs, which meant she was still breathing when she burned. She died from the combined effect of the pills and carbon monoxide.

There was a bruise on the side of her neck. It could have come from a blow, or from a fall.

Her teeth had expensive and unusual dental work. Dentists said it was not the kind of work done in Norway, and pointed to southern Europe or Latin America. Her jaw and teeth were kept as evidence.

The suitcases

Three days later, on December 2, police found two suitcases she had left at Bergen railway station.

Inside were clothes, shoes, wigs, makeup, eczema cream, maps, train timetables, glasses with plain lenses, and sunglasses. Her fingerprints were on the sunglasses.

There was money: Norwegian kroner, coins from Belgium, Britain and Switzerland, and five 100 Deutsche Mark notes hidden in the lining of a suitcase.

There was a notepad. Some pages held a series of letters and numbers.

Once again, every label and identifying mark had been removed.

Eight names

Police cracked the code in the notepad. It was a simple system recording dates and places she had been.

With that, they traced her through hotels across Norway, in Oslo, Trondheim, Stavanger and Bergen, and to Paris. At each hotel she had checked in under a different name, using a different false passport.

Among the names she used were Geneviève Lancier, Claudia Tielt, Claudia Nielsen, Alexia Zarne-Merchez, Vera Jarle, Fenella Lorck and Elisabeth Leenhouwer.

She usually said she was Belgian. She filled in forms in German or French. She told people she was a traveling saleswoman or an antiques dealer.

Hotel staff remembered her. She often asked to change rooms after checking in. She kept to herself. Some recalled that she spoke several languages.

A shoe shop in Stavanger confirmed selling her the rubber boots found beside her body.

The last days

On November 23, 1970, she checked out of Room 407 at the Hotel Hordaheimen in Bergen. She paid in cash and asked for a taxi.

That was the last confirmed sighting.

Years later, more witnesses came forward. In 1991, a taxi driver said that when he drove a woman matching her description from the hotel, a man joined the ride.

In 2005, a man told a local newspaper that around November 24, 1970, he had seen a woman matching her description on the mountain above Bergen, walking ahead of two men in coats. He said that when he told police, he was advised to forget it.

None of this has been confirmed.

The verdict

In 1971, Norwegian police closed the case. Their conclusion was that she had most likely taken her own life.

Many people never accepted that. Why would someone planning to die remove every label from her belongings? How did she set herself on fire after taking enough pills to make her unconscious? What about the bruise on her neck?

The Cold War was at its height. Norway was testing new missiles near Stavanger at the time, and some of her travels seemed to follow the testing. Spy theories began almost at once. None has ever been proved.

She was buried in Bergen on February 5, 1971, in an unmarked grave. Sixteen police officers attended. The funeral was photographed in case a relative ever came forward. None did.

New science

In 2016, the case was reopened, and Norway's national broadcaster NRK and the BBC began a joint investigation that became the podcast Death in Ice Valley.

In 2017, scientists studied the chemical traces in her preserved teeth, which record where a person grew up. The results suggested she was born around 1930, probably in or near Nuremberg in southern Germany, and moved to France or the area near the French-German border as a child.

Later DNA analysis identified her mitochondrial DNA group, a genetic family line, and a genealogy project joined the effort to find her relatives.

Listeners sent in thousands of tips. Some were promising. None has produced a name.

What we still don't know

Who was she? Born around 1930, probably in Germany, raised in France, fluent in several languages, and traveling under at least eight names.

Why did she need so many identities?

Was she alone in the valley that day, or was someone with her?

And if she did take her own life, why did she go to such lengths to make sure nobody would ever know who she was?