The Faröes

Time Traveler | Cool Facts! | Technology | Post Explorer

Time Traveler
  The first Faroese post office was started in 1870 and right until 1976, the Faroese postal system was under the control of the Danish postal network. Basically, the post offices in the Faroe Islands were organized in such a way that the bigger ones were meant for letter collection and the smaller ones were for postal exchange.

Problems of being under control by a bigger brother was inherent. Transport links between Denmark and the Faroe Islands were often disrupted by icy cold winters and this resulted in insufficient stamps reaching the nation. Worse still, the Faroese postal service had to conform to the requirements of the Danish postal system, i.e. in terms of postal rates.

Cool Facts!
  Stamps of The Faröes are so popular that they make a significant contribution to the state's export revenue, right to this very day.

Can you imagine if the Mint ran dry of 50-cent coins and one-dollar bills torn into halves were used in place of them? In the Faröes, it was ruled that they had to follow the Danish postal system strictly, especially the postal rates.  Whenever postal rates changed, new stamps of new denominations had to be shipped in from Denmark. Yet ships plying the Denmark-Faroes route met inevitable delays and the Faröese people had to use "bisected" stamps instead.

Technology
  Mail from Denmark or Iceland to the Faroes could only be received by ship in the past. Now the seamail service is improved by faster, bigger ships and is also complemented by scheduled airmail services too.
It is said that the Faroese mail service's efficiency is on par with most Nordic and European countries. Mail for addresses within the central region can be sorted and distributed immediately upon arrival.

Post Explorer
  The Faroe Islands have a three-digit postal code with codes for each particular district. On an envelope, it is to be written with a prefix FO , like in this format: "FO-620 Runav, The Faroe Islands".