Countryside Street Art

We were actually a bit surprised that it was on Blidö, far from the hectic city, we were find this particular style of mailbox decoration:

Bottled mail

When we got off the boat in Stämmarsund on Blidö we discovered a mailbox of a kind we had never even anticipated finding: a message-in-a-bottle-box!

A century of mailboxes

This picture was sent to us from a faithful reader and it shows - in a few selected highlights - the last 100 years of development in mailboxes in Taiwan.

Tallinn

Lisbeth has been wanting to cross the Gulf of Finland for quite a while, so when her job took her to Helsinki once again she booked a ticket to Tallinn with Viking Line.



Tue obviously wasn't with her in Helsinki but he was able to fly from Stockholm to Tallinn so we could explore the old town of Tallinn together.



The etymology of the name Tallinn is debated, but one of the most widespread theories is that Tallinn derives from Taani-linna which means 'Danish City' or 'Danish Castle' in Estonian. As is well-known the Danes took the city on June 15 1219 in the famous battle during which legend has it that Dannebrog fell down from heaven and inspired fighting spirit in the Danish troops. After this victory Valdemar II decided that this flag should henceforth be the flag of Denmark.



Keeping to the historical aspect of the city we may mention that Tallinn also boasts a pharmacy that has been running for at least 588 years.


In Estonia one uses the Estonian kroon (yes, that is essentially the same name as 'kroner' - the name of currencies widely used in Scandinavia) and it wasn't until our last day there that we discovered that they have coins. Notes are by far the most used as they have notes all the way down to 2 Estonian kroon (being equivalent of some $0.17 at the current exchange rate).

Beware of low-flying purse snatchers - Estonian mailboxes - the 'watering holes' of the city are easily recognisable

Some art in the cityscape

The Fan Mail Box

Even if only few people outside of Sweden have heard of him, Sweden has it's very own pioneer of electronic music.

Ralph Lundsten was building his own electronic instruments already in the 1950's and has released roughly one album per year in the period from 1966 to 2008.

In Nacka municipality (south-eastern greater Stockholm) one finds the town Boo where Ralph Lundsten is living in a large pink wooden house called Frankenburg.

As is fitting for a great artist with his own fan club (Andromeda Fan Soceity) Ralph Lundsten of course has an especially large mailbox which can hold loads of fan mail.

Miscelaneous Mailboxes

In Copenhagen we saw the large mailbox pictured above. We understand they are becoming more widespread in Denmark these days. If we have got it right the idea is that you can pick up your parcels around the clock all days of the year - rather than being restricted to the opening hours of the post office.

Since we don't live in Denmark we haven't tried the system. But we would like to add here that in Sweden there are very few actual post offices. In stead the post service cooperates with some nationwide chains. Thus, one most often has to pick up (and send) mail at either Pressbyrån (kiosk) or ICA Nära (small grocery store).

And speaking of Sweden that is precisely where we found the little mailbox with the squirrel pictured on the right. To be more exact we found it on Lidingö along our new bike-way to and from work.

Lastly we want to mention a special kind of mailbox which we didn't actually see - we only saw the sign pictured below. We can inform those not proficient in French that we are talking about a special mailbox for motorists.

Mailboxes on parade

The mail is a bit different on Fårö: For one thing there are so few inhabitants that they don't care to bother street names and house numbers on the letters - name, town and zip code is sufficient.


Secondly, one finds in certain spots clusters of mailboxes - not unlike what we have seen earlier, but with the difference that in this case the cluster contains all the mailboxes for the whole town in question.

On top of that we found surprisingly many decorated mailboxes on Fårö. Most of them appeared to be made by the same person: over half of those we saw were signed by 'Yvonnie H.' Many of them looked like they'd been made especially for the owner.

Greenlandic Mailboxes

It comes as no surprise that Greenlandic mailboxes are quite similar to the Danish ones, but interestingly they are found with a couple of different logos on them.


Greenland too has - which is obvious from a Danish and/or Greenlandic perspective - a Christmas mailbox. As anyone should know, Santa Claus lives in Greenland - not in Finland.

BT7: Correios 2

Not surprisingly, the Brazilian mail service has the same name as the Portuguese one - but their mailboxes look quite different.


We did not see many private mailboxes in São Paulo - not of the free-standing variety at least. Most places we saw mailboxes built into the houses. But of course, we are talking about a city where lots of people surround their homes with tall walls topped with barbed wire.

Yule Post 2

Denmark can't just stand back and ignore Swedish and Finnish special Yule mailboxes - especially not in Varde, a town known as town of gnomes.

And with that we've come to the end of Christmas this time around. Which is quite fitting as we've been told that in Sweden Christmas is considered over today. That is: Christmas ends on the twentieth day after Christmas, a day known in Swedish as Tjugondag Knut. This also means that they will finally (from our point of view) be taking down the Christmas decorations.

Yule Post

One does not only find special Christmas mailboxes in Finland - here in Sweden, during the month of December, one has the choice of posting in three different mailboxes:


And since it is the season, we would like to take this opportunity to wish our readers a happy holiday.

Sailor Mail

One day as we were biking around a harbour area in Stockholm we noticed another variation of a theme that is well-known by now: Multiple mailboxes in a cluster in a convenient location to solve the problem that the mail man does not necessarily have an easy time getting to the "house" itself to deliver the mail.

Spare mail

Concerning their personal mailboxes the Finns give priority to visibility in the wintertime landscape (green and red are the most popular) and general weather-resistance (plastic is most common) over such issues as individuality.

However, since we were there in the summer we were much better able to appreciate the unique foot this mailbox had been given.

Posti

For those less fortunate than to be living right next to Santa Claus' post office, there's the standard Finnish mailbox - but remember: no loose dogs!

Joulupukin Pääposti

The previously mentioned Christmas theme park may have reminded some of our readers that the Finns believe Santa Claus lives in Finland. One might then think that he lives in this Christmas land just outside Rovaniemi but that turns out to be completely wrong. Instead, it seems to be a southern outpost as he is supposed to have his home by a fell quite a bit further north. What this Christmas park does have, however, is Santa Claus' Main Post Office - where letters for Santa Claus are collected and Christmas stamps are sold all year round.


Additionally one has the choice of two mailboxes: one for earliest possible delivery and one for delivery around Christmas...

Nisse mail

As it turns out, -nisse is a common ending of Dutch town names, such as the village Stavenisse where Leontine's parents have a vacation home. Interestingly, 'nisse' is Danish for a certain kind of gnome (particularly associated with Christmas) and 'stave' is Danish for spelling. When we were out for a walk, Drew noticed this mailbox and was of the opinion that it had to quite the special mailbox - Leontine disagreed. In fact, she thought it a typical mailbox and through-out the rest of our little walk around the village, we noticed several mailboxes identical to this one.

Mine mail

As some of our readers may have noticed there has in certain circles been a debate as to whether or not the US is turning in to Sweden. As we have previously observed there are curious similarities between the two countries regarding the mail boxes. On our recent trip to Värmland we found another example - on the dirt roads in the old mining country we found clusters of painted mail boxes, reminding us of Big Sur.

Not Ads!

This mailbox is adorned with a slightly angular, but easily recognised, version of the the logo of the Swedish postal service - a logo which reminds us that the company known today simply as Posten AB^[1] back in the day (that is 1636) started out as a royal agency (Kungliga Postverket).

Apart from that we like the terse message on the flap "Not Ads!"

^[1] AB = Aktiebolaget, the Swedish equivalent of Inc.

Island Mail

If you didn't know any better, you'd almost think Vaxholm was in the US - her, in the inner Stockholmian archipelago, we found this mailbox which couldn't help but make us think of a couple of Hawaiian mailboxes..

Posten

Hey?!

Isn't there something from our new country we've forgotten to present?

mmmm...

aahhh-yeeesss...

the Swedish mailboxes, often seen pairwise in appropriate colours - as in other large European countries separated into local and ..less local.. mail.