Andreas Birch’s very first job as a young boy was sticking postage stamps on envelopes. Week after week, he helped his father, the veterinarian in a rural village in central Denmark, mail bills to clients.
The post office where his father used to drop off bags full of letters is now a kindergarten. And like many Danes, Mr. Birch, now 31, hasn’t licked a stamp in years.
“I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I sent a letter,” he said.
For months, the carrier, PostNord, has been removing its red mailboxes, once a ubiquitous public fixture.
Denmark has had a postal service for more than 400 years. But a steep decline in its use has led the Nordic country’s longtime postal carrier to stop letter deliveries entirely, a change set to take effect on Tuesday.
Danes have seen it coming for months: The carrier, PostNord, has been removing its red mailboxes, once a ubiquitous public fixture.
The disappearance of the mailboxes is “what actually made people emotional,” said Julia Lahme, a trend researcher and the director of Lahme, a Danish communications agency, “even though most of them hadn’t sent a letter in 18 months.”
Letter writing in the country has declined by more than 90 percent since 2000, according to PostNord, which is owned jointly by the Danish and Swedish governments. Next year, in Denmark, it will only deliver packages, although in Sweden it will continue to deliver letters.
The change comes partly as a result of a drop-off in government mail. Denmark is one of the world’s most digitized countries. Only 250,000 people, or less than 5 percent of the population, still receive their official communications in the mail.
“People simply do not rely on physical letters the way they used to,” Andreas Brethvad, the communications director of PostNord Denmark, said in an emailed statement. He said that because nine in 10 Danes shop online each month, the change “is about keeping up with times to meet the demands of society. It’s a natural evolution.”
Denmark is not forgoing snail mail entirely. Remaining pen and paper enthusiasts — as well as the few who have opted out of digital government communications — will be able to send and receive letters through Dao, a private company.
While some Danes are quietly mourning a service that, for the most part, they had largely stopped using, the transition feels like a sign of the times.
Physical mail delivery has declined around the world, hurting postal carriers in Germany, Greece, Britain and elsewhere. In March, PostNord announced layoffs in Denmark for 1,500 people, from a work force of 4,600.
But Denmark appears to be the first country where the longtime designated postal carrier will stop delivering letters. The Switzerland-based Universal Postal Union, the United Nations’ postal agency, said it had “no records” of a similar move.
Mr. Birch, who now works as a communications officer in the Danish city of Odense, said that progress “isn’t wrong. But we should acknowledge what we lose along the way.”
In Mr. Birch’s rural hometown, he said, the postal worker was a “human link in the local community. He knew the route, and he knew the people.” And something tastes sour to him about a private company taking over letter deliveries: “The old postal service existed as a public responsibility. To me, that’s a meaningful difference.”
Many Danes were shaken when PostNord began taking down the bright red mailboxes in June.
When 1,000 of the boxes went online earlier this month, they sold out in less than three hours for the equivalent of $315 or $236, depending on their condition, with the proceeds intended to help children in poor areas.
Danes clamored to own a piece of history, just like the New Yorkers who bought old orange seats and retired metal signs from the city’s subway system at a Metropolitan Transportation Authority pop-up sale in the fall.
“It was overwhelming,” said Mads Arlien-Soborg, a lifestyle trend researcher in Copenhagen, the capital. “There’s a nostalgia in this that is super important.”
Next month, 200 additional boxes will be auctioned, many decorated by local artists. PostNord said it expected them to sell quickly, and at varying prices.
“An entire era is coming to an end,” said Magnus Restofte, the director of Enigma, a communications museum in Copenhagen.
Still, some experts have noted signs of younger generations returning to letter-writing — if not as a regular habit, then at least as a countercultural embrace of vintage technology.
“Fifty years ago, people received so many letters that they were almost taken for granted,” Mr. Restofte said. Today, letters are more precious, he added, “precisely because we receive so few.”
Amelia Nierenberg is a Times reporter covering international news from London.
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