Just to clarify. There is at least one chosen and contractually bound Mail Service provider in Denmark. Their terms are set in public tenders. The old state owned company - Post Nord - basically decide not to compete for the contract. A newer company - DAO - won the tender. What this means in legal terms:
Under law:
DAO must comply with its postal permit obligations (nationwide service where offered, pricing transparency, quality monitoring).
But there is no absolute legal universal delivery duty for all mail anymore.
Under government contract:
DAO has a specific binding duty to deliver blind mail as defined in the tender it won - this is a contractual obligation, not a general statutory duty for all mail.
Be mindful that in principle the service provider could chose to not cover certain parts of the country. That has to be clearly stated in their terms of service.
The Danish government are expected by the public to continue to subsidize delivery to people with special needs, in the contract identified as "blind mail"
Many USPS outlets seem to be run down. But in my experience, mail delivery is pretty solid. And there is indeed a country without postal mail service. Panama!
So if I’m in Denmark and I want to send my friend a piece of paper with something written on it, what happens now?
I assume I have to go into the post office and send it as a parcel (at higher cost), rather than slapping a stamp on it and dropping it into the post box, but the effect is otherwise mostly the same.
> Danes will still be able to send letters, using the delivery company Dao, which already delivers letters in Denmark but will expand its services from 1 January from about 30m letters in 2025 to 80m next year. But customers will instead have to go to a Dao shop to post their letters – or pay extra to have it collected from home – and pay for postage either online or via an app.
Will companies be willing to pay more to send junk mail if it is no longer largely subsidized? In this regard it could be a good thing assuming they don’t already have a regulation against junk mail there.
Fifty years ago, I was given a coin bank styled after the red Danish Post letter box. That was in Solvang, CA. As these Danish immigrant-character communities (look also in Elkhorn, Racine, Greenville, etc) are little time capsules, you may have to travel to America to find a replica red slot to drop your letter.
The article wasn't clear how letters from outside Denmark will be handled, but maybe that's implicit in the Dao contract.
EDIT: maybe Royal Mail was never the Danish term, but I thought it was on a Lego set too...
When this came up earlier in the month (Denmark gets ready to cancel Christmas cardshttps://www.economist.com/europe/2025/11/27/denmark-gets-rea... ) it seemed more like PostNord was just stepping back opening the market up to other 'rivals' to continue service.
It is still the 2nd largest company in Sweden. They just gave up on Denmarks mail contract after the vast majority of people stopped sending mail and now another company is taking over the much smaller operation.
Which makes taking the time to send a letter have a lot of importance. I wrote a note to my mother and it meant a lot to her to get a hand written correspondence.
I live in Sweden, and I can confidently say... Once.
As in, literally as long as I've lived here (11 years now) I mailed one thing by post and it was, somewhat ironically, a self-assessment form for an ADHD diagnosis from a company called Modigo.
I have received a lot of mail though, from the government also, so I'm not sure how that is gonna fly.
Under law: DAO must comply with its postal permit obligations (nationwide service where offered, pricing transparency, quality monitoring). But there is no absolute legal universal delivery duty for all mail anymore.
Under government contract: DAO has a specific binding duty to deliver blind mail as defined in the tender it won - this is a contractual obligation, not a general statutory duty for all mail.
Be mindful that in principle the service provider could chose to not cover certain parts of the country. That has to be clearly stated in their terms of service. The Danish government are expected by the public to continue to subsidize delivery to people with special needs, in the contract identified as "blind mail"
> citing a 90% decline in letter mail since 2000
https://expatcircle.com/cms/underrated-quality-of-life-indic...
Many USPS outlets seem to be run down. But in my experience, mail delivery is pretty solid. And there is indeed a country without postal mail service. Panama!
I assume I have to go into the post office and send it as a parcel (at higher cost), rather than slapping a stamp on it and dropping it into the post box, but the effect is otherwise mostly the same.
> Danes will still be able to send letters, using the delivery company Dao, which already delivers letters in Denmark but will expand its services from 1 January from about 30m letters in 2025 to 80m next year. But customers will instead have to go to a Dao shop to post their letters – or pay extra to have it collected from home – and pay for postage either online or via an app.
When a society becomes fully efficient, people start craving the slow, the physical, the intentional.
The article wasn't clear how letters from outside Denmark will be handled, but maybe that's implicit in the Dao contract.
EDIT: maybe Royal Mail was never the Danish term, but I thought it was on a Lego set too...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43278934
I doubt this will end well, but Denmark is a small country so maybe it will work.
After a year it would be nice to see stats and compare delivery time, lost mail, cost between Dao and the old service,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostNord?wprov=sfti1#
It is still the 2nd largest company in Sweden. They just gave up on Denmarks mail contract after the vast majority of people stopped sending mail and now another company is taking over the much smaller operation.
As in, literally as long as I've lived here (11 years now) I mailed one thing by post and it was, somewhat ironically, a self-assessment form for an ADHD diagnosis from a company called Modigo.
I have received a lot of mail though, from the government also, so I'm not sure how that is gonna fly.