Beside the railroad tracks of Copenhagen’s train station, right in the heart of the Danish capital, stands a red-brick building with an ornate façade and a copper-clad cupola still turning green over time.
When it opened in 1912 as the Central Post Building, its grandeur echoed the booming postal and telegraph services that crisscrossed Denmark, connecting Danes to one another. A little over a century later and that building, now a luxury hotel, presides over a city, and a country, where the postal service no longer delivers letters.
Denmark’s state-run postal service, PostNord, will deliver its last ever letter on Tuesday, as the digital age brings its 400-year-run to an end. This makes Denmark the first country in the world to decide that physical mail is no longer either essential or economically viable.
The precipitous decline of a national postal service is a familiar story, one echoed elsewhere in the Western world as we rely ever more heavily on digital means of communication.
Denmark’s postal service delivered more than 90% fewer letters in 2024 than in 2000. The US Postal Service delivered 50% less mail in 2024 than in 2006.
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