We study the generic invariant probability measures for the geodesic flow on connected complete nonpositively curved manifolds. Under a mild technical assumption, we prove that ergodicity is a generic property in the set of probability measures defined on the unit tangent bundle of the manifold and supported by trajectories not bounding a flat strip. This is done by showing that Dirac measures on periodic orbits are dense in that set.In the case of a compact surface, we get the following sharp result:...