A major outbreak of stomach sickness is raging among tourists at Kebnekaise. The mountain station was forced to close urgently. Among other things, due to a lack of toilets.
“We see that guests are falling ill at a faster rate,” STF Kebnekaise mountain station wrote on Facebook on Saturday.
Around 200 guests who stayed at the mountain station have had to evacuate the facility and cleanup work began on Monday.
Lack of bajamajor
Some who were met by the vomiting chaos were Marianne Henningsson and her family.
– When we got there and saw an under-dimension of the number of bajamajors compared to the people who were there and we then on the first visit we made we noticed that they were completely overcrowded. And then it made people go to the toilet everywhere, she says and continues:
– They joked there and said “go a bit into the forest and dig a hole”. No one had shovels with them. Surely no one has time to go into the forest when you have a stomach bug.
“Started vomiting”
The family made the decision to descend from Kebnekaise mountain station to Nikkaluokta on Thursday. Due to bad weather, they were forced to take a helicopter. Once they got down, it wasn’t long before they noticed something wasn’t right.
– When we got down to the mobile home, Anna felt hungover and it probably didn’t take more than a second until she started vomiting. Then it took a couple of hours before I started vomiting. After a while, Ulf, my husband, also started vomiting in the same way. Then we understood that this must have come from there.
Wasn’t warned about the stomach drama
The family had received no advance warning or information about the stomach disease drama at the mountain station before they arrived.
– It should be much earlier information when they notice that there will be so many people who will have such a rapid course. Then it is not just one person who happens to be affected. But then it is something that is very contagious. So we were disappointed that we didn’t get that information when we were on our way up, says Marianne Henningsson.
When TV4 Nyheterna talks to mountain manager Maja Persson, she explains why they didn’t choose to release the information early.
– We always have occasional cases of stomach sickness at the mountain cabins. It could be exhaustion, dehydration or, in the worst case, some infectious variant. With our routines, however, we often succeed in preventing it from spreading. That was the situation before Friday, she says and continues:
– It was only when we noticed on Friday that there were more cases than normal that we took further measures.
The stomach bug spread
Kebnekaise mountain station was not the only place where the stomach bug spread last week. Other cabin hosts around the northern Kungsleden also reported that more fell ill.
– There were isolated cases, but it decreased at the end of the week. We had no new cases reported over the weekend, says the mountain manager.