Denmark saw its last ever delivered letter on Tuesday as the onset of the digital age pulled a shutter on the country’s 400-year-old state-run postal service and made it the sole country to officially decide that physical mail is not essential or economically viable anymore.
PostNord, although aged a lot, opened its central post building in 1912. Tucked beside the railroad tracks of Copenhagen’s railway station and in the heart of the Danish capital city, the red building has been nothing less than a signature. In its prime, the central post building’s grandeur echoed the booming postal and telegraph services that crisscrossed Denmark, connecting Danes to one another, CNN reported.
In the present day, the building stands at the very same place, but now as a luxury hotel, presiding over a city, and a country, where the postal service no longer delivers letters to anyone.
In the era of digital communication that features emails and apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and so on, Denmark’s postal service saw a sharp decline as it delivered more than 90 percent fewer letters in 2024 as to that compared to 2000.
PostNord will however continue to deliver parcels, given online shopping remains ever popular to the newer generations.
No more red mailboxes
Probably the most associated symbol with the postal service, the red mailbox have been extinct from Denmark. PostNord has been removing 1,500 mailboxes scattered across Denmark since June, the report said.
Being one of the most digitalized nations in the world with even its public sector utilizing online portals, Denmark had reduced its dependency on postal services. Today, it became obsolete in the nation.
Advocacy groups however argued that it would pose a difficulty towards the older generations who are most reliant on postal services.
Adding on to the point for the postal services, individuals from the education fraternity told CNN that letters represent an element of nostalgia and a permanence that technology cannot match, noting that the demise of the postal mail services has already sparked nostalgia in Denmark.