Denmark’s final stamp

Denmark, a nation that has earned a name for embracing digital living, made history last week by pulling down the curtains on its state-run letter delivery service after 400 years. The decision, which came into effect on December 31, 2025, makes the Scandinavian country the first in the world to accept and determine that traditional physical mail is no longer a viable or essential public service. This historic shift is a direct outcome of a tremendous societal transformation, where e-mails, digital mailboxes, and instant messaging have almost totally replaced ink-and-paper letters. Official reports said that the digital revolution has brought down the volume of letters sent through the post office to less than ten percent since the turn of the millennium. It was a moment to remember and place on record when PostNord, the government postal company of Denmark, delivered its last lot of letters in the last week of December 2025. This episode signaled the end of an era that had started in Denmark way back in 1624 under the rule of King Christian IV. The postal service was, for centuries, the most essential backbone of communication, carrying everything from royal decrees to personal correspondence, including love letters and letters carrying news of death, across the country’s islands and mainland. Denmark last year discovered that the postal infrastructure was becoming uneconomical. As the iconic red mailboxes, once considered omnipresent, were last week removed from street corners and auctioned off for charity, they fetched emotionally high prices as people sought a physical memento of a bygone tradition. It is important to note that while the government in Denmark made the historic decision on the strength of the 90% shift to digitalization, advocacy groups have expressed concern over the fate of those 10% of people comprising the non-digital segment of the population, most of them elderly, who may be disadvantaged by the changes.