A WOMAN whose murder shocked Iceland was thrown from a bridge into the freezing North Atlantic while still alive, her autopsy found.

The grisly details of Birna Brjansdottir's death are likely to further horrify residents of the tiny Nordic nation – which has one of the world's lowest murder rates.

The leaked report found the 20-year-old shop assistant drowned after she was hurled into the icy waters of the Atlantic 20 miles north of capital Reykjavik.

Brjansdottir was alive when she was thrown and bruises were found on her neck suggesting the attacker had attempted to strangle her.

Her naked body was found washed ashore near a lighthouse a week later.

Hundreds of mourners, including the country's president, attended her funeral service at Reykjavik's Hallgrimskirkja cathedral.

And one top crime writer compared the case to the renowned Scandinavian noir murder mysteries.

Yrsa Sigurdardottir told The New York Times: "She was just an innocent girl walking down the street.

“In the past we have only witnessed murders like this in works of fiction."

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Brjansdottir vanished after a night out and was last seen swaying as she walked down a street in Reykjavik after a bar crawl at 5am on January 14.

The mystery has captivated the remote island country which has a population of 336,000 and the third lowest murder rate in the world.

Questions still remain about what happened to the fun-loving shop assistant whose snow covered Doc Martens were found despite there being no recent snowfall.

A few days after her distraught mother reported her missing, police found her boots at docks outside the city centre over 20 miles from where her body was eventually discovered.

A red Kia car was also found near the dock which was similar to a vehicle she was pictured near in the CCTV footage.

And according to local reports, Birna's blood was found in the rented vehicle which was traced to two men, from Greenland, working on a fishing trawler.

Iceland’s only armed squadron, known as the Viking Swat Team, tracked down the fishing boat using a helicopter and dramatically arrested the two sailors aged 25 and 30.

An astonishing 775 rescue volunteers helped look for tragic young woman as the story dominated news coverage in the peaceful country where cops do not carry firearms.

On Sunday, her remains were found while authorities are in the process of questioning the two suspects.

Birna’s final Facebook message was a light-hearted post about ‘Kiss a Ginger Day’ and how no one had kissed her yet.

Helgi Gunnlaugsson, a sociology professor at the University of Iceland, insisted the story’s colossal impact is not just down to the country’s low murder rate but also because the suspects are foreign.

Speaking with the New York Times, he said: “Most murder cases in Iceland are not mysteries — the victims and their killers usually know each other, the murderer rarely seeks to cover up the crime, and cases are usually solved quickly.

“Foreign involvement is almost unheard-of. The reaction would be different if the suspects would’ve been two Icelandic boys.”

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