I live in a small town in California and one time received a letter with my name and zip code only. I can totally believe Icelandic letter carriers could get it done.
Well yeah, it’s because only 7 people live there and one is the postie.
I have just been cataloging letters home from a Canadian soldier in the first world war.
All of them are addressed to:
Mrs. L. Moore Douglas, Ont. Canada
And clearly, since his mother saved them all, they were all delivered properly.
Me and one of my exs used to fantasize about running away from everything to Iceland.
It was really dumb, but it seemed like such a nice way to escape everything.
It happens surprisingly often in the UK too. Royal mail take a smug pride in figuring out where it needs to go, and delivering it. I know of several times they have successfully delivered postcards to tents at a festival.
Most postal companies treat it as a challenge and a break from the more mundane work. A chance to show off their local knowledge.
I’m willing to bet this would work in Finland too. I think I should try it.
My mother was sent a letter from Australia to New Jersey. The lady knew my mother’s unique first name and the state/town name and that was it. (And what country obviously)
So it was just addressed to First Name, Country, State, City Name
It got to the town where it was pinned to the board for unknown letters. Our mailman went “oh that’s on my route” and brought it to mom lol
Meanwhile I sent a birthday card last month with a correct and fully clear address and it got returned “unable to deliver unknown address” in Wisconsin. I double checked, it was the correct address. Not even a hard to find one. Literally a house in a neighborhood. Not even some middle of nowhere, need to know it’s there to find it kind of place.
Postal workers are actual wizards.
A kid can write a giant To MOMMYin Crayon and they’ll figure out who it goes to.
As someone who works as a courier but is sadly not a postal worker (Lucky unionized bastards) I can say with certainty that after awhile you start to develop a weird sixth sense for just where places are, it’s weird.
Some of them should be criminal investigators the way theyve managed to deliver my brother’s handwritten notes (he has a tremor but refuses to print labels)
Probably works in rural areas. A friend of mine addressed a postcard to “the red house by the lake” in a small Norwegian town, and they were able to deliver it. Other people I know in Norway didn’t have street names until there was a big push for naming all the streets around 2015 or so. Prior to that they just used the name of the farm or skipped it entirely if their last name matched the farm.
None of these examples were from Iceland, but considering Iceland is even less populated than Norway, it seems plausible that drawing a map could work.
Skyrim treasure maps be like:
When I was living in Bhutan, we were having a competition to see who could receive the mail with the least information. My boss won with a letter from the US that only had “white guy law school Bhutan” on the envelope
We bought our house in 2020. First day I had keys I had to dig up the sewer line. Drunk and exhausted I ordered a hoagie for delivery, called the pizza place. Guy was like ok where do you live? I was like here’s my address. He was like no just describe the directions on how to get there we only deliver to our little neighborhood in the city so what main roads are you close by?
Pretty cool that still happens I guess, felt like I was transported back to the 90s
Bill Bryson wrote about this in one of his books…
HILL JOHN MASS
Which translates as John Underhill, Andover, Massachusetts
Not sure if it’s a joke though
I hope the postal worker deciphering this gets paid by work time
Either they have a monthly salary and work a set schedule, or they’re hourly and get paid more if they work more hours. At least that’s how it would work in any first world country. I do know there’s a pretty big one where you might have a salary and have to work unpaid overtime, but we don’t consider that to be a first-world country in the modern sense of the word.
The street address is a relatively modern invention. Same with the mailbox.
In Finland it’s possible to just put their name and it will probably get there. As long as it’s a unique name, it will get there on the first try.
