The almost 50-year-old unsolved mystery of the identity of the woman found dead in Isdalen, near Bergen, fascinates many. The podcast series “Death in Ice Valley”, produced by NRK in collaboration with the BBC, tops Wednesday night download charts in the United Kingdom and Australia, it is second in the United States and third in Canada.
– It’s completely wild. We worked a lot and hoped it would go well, said the Norwegian presenter, NRK journalist Marit Higraff.
Together with the Norwegian editors, she worked on this case for almost two years. First in Norwegian, then in English with BBC journalist Neil McCarthy.
In 1970, a woman was found dead and badly burned in Isdalen, near Bergen. Police investigated the case, but never discovered who the woman was. For many years, tissue samples from the woman were stored at Haukeland Hospital. With the help of these, the editorial staff, among other things, obtained a complete DNA profile of the woman and new information from chemical examinations of her teeth which show that she most likely came from Europe.
BBC journalist Neil McCarthy and NRK journalist Marit Higraff traveled to Isdalen to produce the podcast “Death in Ice Valley”.
Photo: Eirik Gjesdal / NRK
Brings out the listeners
The trend of podcasts delving into real crime cases and trying to solve them is not new. What Higraff says can make “Death in Ice Valley” so special is that listeners can go to where it actually happened. While other podcasts are often recorded in a radio studio, both presenters are out.
– We take listeners to the Norwegian countryside. This is precisely what makes the storytelling and listening experience different. Listeners are sucked into the experience.
Higraff says he received feedback from people who then searched for photos of Isdalen to better visualize where they were taken.
The collaboration started with an online article
“Gåten i Isdalen” started as an NRK project in Norwegian, but eventually there were reactions and inquiries from other countries about it.
One of the inquiries came from an online journalist at the BBC World Service. She was taken to Isdalen and the online article she wrote garnered so much attention that the BBC’s podcast department contacted NRK for a collaboration.
