ChrisButch wrote:There are several reasons why the risk of Giardia in the Norwegian mountains is vanishingly small.
The population is small, and most of it is concentrated in the Oslo area: but the area of high ground is vast. There are no resident human populations above c. 1000m (which is roughly the altitude of most of the huts). The hillwalking tradition in Norway has always been travellng through the mountains from hut to hut rather than bagging tops (although top-bagging has become more popular in recent years). This means that if you take water from a source above the waymarked hut-to-hut route, the chances of it having had any human contact are remote. Add to this that other larger mammals are few and far between at this altitude - they're mostly in the forested valleys. Most streams in the mountains are fast-running and carry a large volume of water.
All the huts, apart from those in forests or lower valleys, draw their water from a nearby source, unfiltered. I've never known a Norwegian boil or use sterilising treatment on this water before drinking.
Agree with this, though we did use a big Katadyn filter bag when we were there, as much for convenience (10L available hanging in a tree) as filtration and as it was a paddling trip, sometimes we were on smaller lakes with a bit of cloudiness and debris near the edges. I happily drank from streams at other times.
I read somewhere that places where beavers are common are more prone to giardia, which makes sense I guess. They have beaver in Scandinavia, so maybe avoid taking water from anywhere near their dams/lakes.