Denmark’s postal service to end letter delivery after 400 years

DENMARK: The growing trend of digitalization has ended a centuries-old tradition in Denmark, where the national postal service has announced that it will stop delivering letters after 400 years. The service will be discontinued nationwide from December 30.

Denmark’s postal service ‘Post Nord’ will deliver its last letter on December 30 this year, closing a historical chapter spanning more than 400 years.

Post Nord was established in 2009 after the merger of the Swedish and Danish postal services.

According to Post Nord, the demand for letters has decreased significantly due to the ‘rapidly increasing digitalization’ in Danish society, as a result of which the company decided to stop delivering letters and focus on parcel delivery.

Under this decision, 1,500 jobs will be cut in Denmark, while 1,500 red postboxes will also be removed.

According to The Guardian, the company says that Denmark is one of the most digital countries in the world, where the trend of sending letters has decreased by more than 90 percent over the past 25 years, while the trend of online shopping is also increasing.

The thousand special red postboxes used by PostNord, which have already been removed, were put up for sale this month and sold in just three hours.

Postboxes in good condition were sold for 2,000 Danish kroner, while relatively old boxes were sold for 1,500 kroner. Another 200 postboxes will be auctioned in January.

According to the report, the process of sending letters in Denmark will not end completely. Delivery company Dow aims to expand its services from January 1 and deliver 80 million letters next year, up from about 30 million in 2025.

However, customers will have to visit a Dow store to send letters or have them picked up at home for an additional fee, while postage costs will have to be paid online or through an app.

According to Danish law, there must be an alternative to sending letters in the country, which means that if Dow also stops this service, the government is obliged to entrust this responsibility to another organization.

On the other hand, experts fear that if the digital system fails, it will be extremely difficult to return to the traditional postal system, especially in a country that is already highly digital.

Under Denmark’s national digital identity system, MitID, banking, government documents and other official correspondence are shared through digital post. 97% of the population over the age of 15 is registered with ‘MeetID’, while only 5% have opted out of digital post.

Although the trend of writing letters by hand seems to be resurgent to some extent among the younger generation, the Danish public as a whole has accepted this change in the postal service as a practical necessity.

According to Kim Pedersen, deputy chief executive of PostNord Denmark, ending the tradition after 400 years was not an easy decision, but the continued shortage of letters has made this market unprofitable.