The Isdal Woman’s Magic Triangle
On the 29th of November 1970 a body was found in the Isdalen in Bergen. In trying to determine the 1970 Isdal Woman’s place of birth Jurian Hoogewerff from Canbera University was asked to create isotope heat maps of likely locations where she spent her formative years. Nuremberg was considered a likely candidate.
Transcripts from the Death in Ice Valley podcast:
(01:10) Jurian Hoogewerff is a Dutch isotopes expert at the University of Canberra in Australia. He understands what we’re made from, down to stardust, and he applies his knowledge to forensic science, helping the police to crack identification cases. And he studied the isotope results of the Isdal Woman. — Remember, these are traces of elements in the teeth which can indicate where a person grew up, based on the food and water they consumed as a child.
(01:38) — I’d like to have a very professional approach as a forensic scientist, do my case work. So when our colleagues contacted me, I said well just give me the the results of the teeth and don’t tell me anything about the case, because I don’t want to be biased about where the police might think the person might come from.
(01:56) So when our colleagues sent the data, I compared it with the databases that we have, I do a statistical analysis of it, and I come up with the most likely areas where a person might have come from. — Good, this is a completely unprejudiced analysis. So what did he find? — For early childhood, I was quite intrigued by it myself: We see only a few areas that have a higher likelihood in Europe, and we see that in the eastern part, middle Germany, there’s some areas maybe in eastern Europe, the balkan area, there’s a spot in Spain. — Looking at the isotope map he gave us,
(02:31) there are a few spots highlighted as he says. But the real hot spot is in the south-eastern part of Germany, and it’s centred on the Nuremburg area. — That’s incredible to think her teeth can give us a vital clue like this.
(02:49) So that’s her early childhood but different teeth form at different times. What about when she’s a bit older? — There’s evidence of movement of the person, from the teeth that we analysed, between early childhood and the teenage years. We see some changes. Looking at the time frame, that’s around the Second World War. There was a lot of movement going on in those years.
(03:10) Why did she move? We cannot tell, but there was a lot of movement. So we see areas, parts you can see in the UK, we see areas more western Germany, Belgium, that area, parts of France, part of Spain, Italy, there’s different areas. So she’s moved away from the Nuremberg area by her teenage years. But there are a few options as to where she went next.
(03:36) Looking at this second isotope map, the biggest hot spots are the French-German border area, and also the sort of Luxembourg-Belgium area, and there’s another good hot spot over North Wales, and there are some other spots scattered about in Europe
But from the Karolinska Institute testing data (in Case 16 of the table), the three crowns from the Isdal Woman’s teeth each showed δ¹³C values of approximately −14.3, −14.8, and −13.7 (‰). These were not considered by Hoogewerff.
Hoogerwerff also didn’t consider her DNA haplotype map:
Using AI (Deepseek, 01 and Claude Sonnet 3.5) to combine and check all this data the following conclusion was formed:
The Isdal Woman’s measured isotopes indicate a four‐point match (Sr, O, C, DNA) with three Central European cities — Krakow (Poland), Brno (Czech Republic), and Győr (Hungary) — based on local strontium ratios, oxygen isotope ranges, carbon isotope levels from typical regional diets, and her mitochondrial (or autosomal) haplotype distribution. These align well with the Isdal Woman’s isotopic profile, suggesting she likely spent her formative years (childhood/adolescence) in or near those regions.
In contrast, Nuremberg matches only on Sr/O isotopes but not on carbon isotope values (a “three‐point match” rather than four), making it a less likely candidate than the others. Contesting dietary signals, geological influences, or other environmental factors near Nuremberg lead to a mismatch in δ¹³C, thereby reducing its probability of being her place of origin.
According to the Karolinska team’s tooth analysis (Case 16 in the table), all three tested crowns showed “pre-bomb” (i.e., <1.0 fraction modern) ¹⁴C values:
- Tooth 25: ¹⁴C fraction modern ≈ 0.980 ± 0.004
- Tooth 33: ¹⁴C fraction modern ≈ 0.990 ± 0.004
- Tooth 48: ¹⁴C fraction modern ≈ 0.980 ± 0.004
Because these values are below 1.0, they indicate the enamel formed before large-scale nuclear weapons testing elevated atmospheric ¹⁴C levels in 1955–1963, marking her likely birth date sometime before the mid-1940s.
To find the Isdal Woman this area may need to be searched for birth records before 1945 in the areas shown above Krakow, Gyor and Brno.
On one hotel card she said she was Alexia Zarna Merchez born 1943 from Ljubliana (note not Ljubljana).
