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NORWAY CLOSING NEARLY ALL POST OFFICES, BUT LONGYEARBYEN’S WILL REMAIN: 25 of the country’s 31 post offices to be shut, replaced with postal outlets in stores

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Norway is closing 25 of the country’s 31 dedicated post offices beginning in November, continuing a massive downsizing that began in 2013 as declining demand resulted in a shifting focus to postal outlets in stores, but the post office in Longyearbyen is among the few that will remain, officials said Tuesday.

The termination of a banking services agreement last September with DNB, Norway’s largest financial institute, along with fewer letters being sent are the main reasons for the large-scale closures, Posten Norge stated in a press release.

“Society has become more digital and we have to deal with that,” the release states. Opening satellite locations in stores that generally are open longer hours “will make Posten Norge services more accessible.”

Svalbard’s mail service has seen some cutbacks and adjustments in recent years due to a reduction and rescheduling of postal flights. But, as with many aspects of everyday life that differ from the mainland, the postal service in Longyearbyen is vital for often immediate necessities such as food and medicine in addition to mail.

Besides Longyearbyen, the other five locations with post offices are all in areas within Oslo. The last dedicated location scheduled for closure is Tromsø’s – a key hub for much of Svalbard’s mail – in October of 2022.

Posten Norge has been restructuring its operations due to the digital world since 2001, but the large-scale shutdown of dedicated postal outlets began in 2013 when 149 locations were closed during the next two years.

In addition to outlets in retail locations, Posten Norge also plans to offer “parcel boxes” in 1,000 locations throughout the country where customers can pick up items 24 hours a day using an app.

 

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
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