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.
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2026
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Well yeah, it's because only 7 people live there and one is the postie.
Some 20 years ago we wrote a postcard, where we didn't know the address. But we knew how to reach the house from the train station. So we just wrote directions on it and it arrived.
This year I wrote two postcards with perfectly valid addresses, they never arrived 😢
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.
Probably there was just one Moore in Douglas with a son in the service. Else it's the postman recognition the handwriting after doing a ton of legwork for the 1st (few) letter
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.
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.
I used to live somewhere where the post office often claimed not to be able to locate the property, mostly because it involved going down a very long driveway and they couldn't be bothered. Weirdly the cash on delivery pizza guy was always able to find the house. Can't imagine why.
In slight fairness it was really long, half a mile and it bent so you couldn't see the house at the end so I suspect that at least some of it was that they're on a timer and didn't have time to go all the way down the drive.
I don't live in a place like that, but I've passed quite a few in my life and generally I will see the mailbox next to the street in those cases. Sometimes if it is a very small community with very long drives all the mailboxes are together near the entrance, like you often see in apartment complexes. Did you ever try to move the mailbox to be at the driveway entrance?
Yeah this is a cookie cutter neighborhood that has a mailbox in front of every house and the HOA requires pretty large house numbers. For the US they're very small lots too. ~15' from the street to the front of the house. And every mailbox is labeled as well.
I've had quite a few issues at my last house as well. A roommate of mine was waiting on a check for 3 months. We had what's called "informed delivery" where anything scanned to your address at the post office would end up in your email so you knew it was being delivered that day.
He could see it saying it was going to be delivered. Checked the mail, not there. A few days later it was returned to sender. This happened 3 times with the same check. It only made it when the sender finally used their home address as the return instead of the business address.
If [you] can't walk/drive to deliver post, shouldn't have become a postman. Probably a coat attendant would be more suitable for that person
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.
A full Royal Mail postcode typically resolves to ten buildings.
True, but you can send a letter etc without a postcode. They will get it to a local (ISH) sorting center, and let their local knowledge get it further. The postcode just automates the process a bit.
I'm willing to bet this would work in Finland too. I think I should try it.
Just circle the Nordic countries "I don't know man, but it's one of these"
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)
Whwn i was little i would always write joke postards. I wrote maybe the town name but then only explain what the house looked like. Like the only yellow house on the (roadname) or whatever. The postcards always found their way as far as i remember. One time the postcard didn't make it, and i was bummed. Then it arrived month later and it took a detour trough multiple countries. As an adult i wonder why that worked, and i doubt it still will and if it helped that these letters were clearly written by a child.
I remember when the US Postal Service used to be considered impressive.
Then we elected fascists.
I like how postal services are genuinely a marvel everywhere they're established. It's honestly a huge feat of society and has been for hundreds of years.
And like Nazi Germany probably had a postal system they were really proud of. Maybe it was just that much more important back then.
I get a weird fight-or-flight response when I hear someone trash talk the USPS and immediately start verbally swinging about what Republicans did to it
Most countries' postal services try their very best to route mail with scant information. It's not specific to Iceland.
At least in countries where the postal service has not been privatised.
Fuck postnord, all my homies hate postnord
Postmord
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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.
A friend of mine in Bergen once got a letter addressed to "Den store stygge blokken på Laksevåg" (The big ugly apartment building in Laksevåg), so it might work in urban areas as well.
Until there were two big ugly apartment buildings in Laksevåg.
“the red house by the lake”
Finland: um, that does not narrow it down at all.
Prior to that they just used the name of the farm
Again in Finland, this is the root of most official names of places that are somewhat smaller than a village.
Honestly wouldn't normally narrow it down that much in Norway either, although most red buildings are barns and not houses. "The lake" is not a problem in Norway, most towns are in a glacier-carved valley with exactly one lake. There are small lakes in the mountains, but not in places which would usually receive mail. In this case, there just weren't a lot of houses right next to the lake for whatever reason.
This is the case in rural France as well. They have lieux dits, (named places) that are the name of a house or a conglomerate of houses.
However this isn't compatible with the online ordering/delivery economy, the postmen might know all lieux dits, and their inhabitants , but a delivery driver might not know. Therefore street names and house numbers are being assigned.
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
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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
Union staff have the time and energy to go the extra kilometre.
My uncle in rural Italy received a postcard with “house with trees in front yard - Town postcode”. I now live in a region that is sparsely populated and a lot of addresses in the countryside are just the name of the farm. Sometimes even buildings in the city have their own name. (I have no idea how people managed before the internet…)
If postal workers can deliver mail, usually they will try. Overall, people tend to care about their jobs (if its not shit)
People managed just fine, the human mind is more impressive than most people realise. When knowledge isn't stored outside of your mind, your brain is a lot less lazy in retaining it.
That I can imagine, but how do you find a new farm with nothing to go on but the name?
new farm - village name
Probably ask a local, learn the area. Pretty feasible even if you get rotated around multiple areas.
It’d be along your route, and even if you didn’t know the people you’d still probably see them there occasionally enough to piece it together
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.
They need the power of openstreetmap
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
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.
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