End of an Era: Denmark’s 400-Year-Old Postal Service to Stop Delivering Letters

Denmark’s state-run postal service, PostNord, is ending its letter delivery operations after 400 years, marking the conclusion of a national tradition due to a more than 90% decline in mail volume over the past 25 years.

Starting in January, a private company named Dao will take over all letter delivery, requiring customers to visit Dao shops or pay extra for home pickup.

Despite the overall collapse of the letter market, a counterintuitive resurgence is being driven by younger Danes aged 18-34, who send two to three times as many letters as other age groups, viewing physical mail as a conscious, meaningful antidote to digital overload.

In one of the world’s most digitalized nations—where 97% of the population uses a national digital ID for official communications—the scarcity of physical letters has ironically increased their perceived value as a rare and thoughtful gesture.