Historic Danish Postal Service Ends Letter Delivery After 400 Years

Photo: Tony Webster via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

It’s the end of an era in Denmark. After more than 400 years, the Nordic nation is closing PostNord, Denmark and Sweden’s government-owned mail carrier. As a system that has existed since 1624, it is one of the Nordic region’s largest employers. While letters will still be delivered in Sweden, PostNord has decided to discontinue its letter service in Denmark and focus solely on package delivery.

This decision comes after the 2000-2024 statistics showed a significant decline in the number of people sending physical letters over the years. There has been a decrease of over 90% of letters PostNord handles since 2000, from 1.45 billion letters to only 110 million per year. From 2023 to 2024, there was a 30% drop in letter traffic due to higher postal costs.

Continuing nationwide letter delivery is no longer financially viable for PostNord, but Danes will still be able to send and receive their physical letters via a private carrier, Dao. With this carrier, though, they will have to drop their letters off at a Dao location and pay an additional fee.

Besides the higher postal costs, an increasing shift towards a digital lifestyle has contributed to the decline in letter delivery. Denmark is one of the most digitized countries, with apps for everything, digital pay replacing physical money, and even digital ID systems. PostNord will continue operating as a parcel and logistics service, reflecting the growth of e-commerce.

Denmark is now one of the first countries to cease physical letter delivery, and may be a sign of things to come for postal systems elsewhere. PostNord officials delivered its last letters on December 30 2025, and removed 1,500 of their endearing red mailboxes from around the country.