Another Hello from Norway

Hi "nl1947",

Very interesting question, but I do not have the answer why the "Bypost" are absent from the major catalogs.

Also, I do not know enough about the Norwegian local issues to give you the answer for whether some of these locals were philatelistic made or not. Anyway, it is a fact that the need for the local post service indeed existed and that for many towns the usage was a very much used extension to the public state service. For example in Arendal, where one of the denominations was so quickly sold out that surcharges of another value were necessary until new issues were available.


From the Norwegian Post Office was established in 1647, letter brokerage was a state monopoly. However, the exclusive right did not include local postal services in the cities. Furthermore, the state delivery service normally ended at the post offices in the towns, meaning that customers needed to pick up their post there. With gradually increasing mail volumes, this opened for private city mail in many cities. The Postal Act of 1888 extended the postal service's exclusive rights to postal services throughout the country, ie also locally in the cities. In addition, at about the same time the state service also started postal deliveries within the towns, leading to the end for most of the local post companies and local stamps. However, some of the city posts continued, the town of Trondheim being the last to close their services in 1913 when the company owner died.


Remember that Norway was a relatively sparsely populated country compared to its size and long distances, add all the mountains, fjords etc and it is easy to imagine that the roads and communication at the time were very poor. (the roads will many of you probably still today think of as very poor) In addition, Norway was actually among the poorest countries in Europe at the time. That might explain why the state postal service focused on bringing the mail from town to town and to those living outside the towns. And why it maybe was considered those living in the towns lucky enough to just go to the local post office to check if they had received mail as long as until the late 1880´ies.

Which might explain the rise of many Local Post Services in Norway - the "Bypost"-companies:) - which at the time had a lot of happy costumers:)

Maybe the "Bypost" along with many other locals from WW has been excluded from the main catalogues to save space and paper....environment friendly so to say?

Jens

Barbu

many thanks for the link !

René

You are pardoned, my friend and hope I am too !! Cheers

René

OK, well, I guess that the joke is on me!  Sorry for being so late to post a reply.

There's an old saying that goes:  "...if you're a hammer, you see every problem as a nail."  I suppose I fell right into the very trap on that one.  I am so confronted with French every day now, that when I see a word which seems clearly French, I don't even bother to consider another possibility....  I never would have imagined "Barbu" as a proper name in Norwegian!

Well, if at least I gave Jon (blaamand) a good hard laugh, then it was worth it!  Welcome again to Jens (barbu)--it's a safe bet that I will never forget your site name!!

Welcome to the forum.  

Hi David and all off you,

I really feel very welcome here in this forum, thanks to everybody for make a liking to my beard and my homeplace Barbu at the same time! I really appreciate it. LOL
Luckily now the chill of the  autumn is getting closer leaving more time for the real thing. 
Have an excellent day out there were ever you are folks!!

Jens