Danish postal service PostNord has been delivering letters uninterrupted for 400 years, but it will no longer do so - Danes have almost completely switched to emails.
Denmark's postal service is permanently stopping the delivery of paper letters. On the eve of the New Year, PostNord is ending the service that was launched in 1624. Starting in 2026, it will focus solely on parcels. The reason is simple: the total digitalization of Danish society has made traditional correspondence unprofitable for the postal service.
They reported that the peak of letter exchange in Denmark occurred in the year 2000 (when Danes sent one and a half billion envelopes), but since then, volumes have dropped by more than 90 percent. Although PostNord is leaving this segment, Danish legislation guarantees citizens the right to send and receive paper letters. Starting in January, a private delivery service, Dao, will take over this task.
Other countries' postal services are moving in a similar direction. In Germany and Poland, for example, the workforce handling letters is being reduced.
A symbol of change in Denmark's postal service has been the dismantling of 1,500 iconic red mailboxes. The company put them up for sale: the boxes were sold out in three hours.
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