Letters from US Take Several Weeks to Arrive

“All the regular routes are in disarray, and there are major delays in traditional mail service wherever you look,” Birgir Jónsson, director and CEO of Iceland Post, tells Morgunblaðið.

The faster the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the world, the slower is transportation, including postal service. One of Morgunblaðið’s readers reports having waited five weeks already for a letter from the US. The reason is that mail is no longer transported by air from the US to Europe, but by ship. And from mainland Europe, the mail then has to be transported to Iceland.

“Surface mail takes us 50 years back in time,” Birgir states. “This service has lost its support. For a long time, we have received mail by air from New York, but right now, there may be two flights a week to Boston. We keep trying to contact postal authorities in other countries, but these are usually large operations and slow ones. It is tough for them to change course, and it doesn’t happen quickly.”

The same thing is true for shipments from Europe, Birgir states.

“This international postal cooperation is not flexible enough to adjust to such sudden changes,” he explains. “We know, for example, that dozens of tons are waiting in the system to get from China to Iceland. These are shipments from online stores, and they will at some point arrive. Every morning, we wait to see what will arrive. Some shipments have started arriving with [the ferry] Norræna, and some arrive by air. People have ordered an incredible amount.”

Eventually, the situation will improve, but not until traditional transportation is back to normal.

According to Birgir, despite the lack of shipments from abroad, Iceland Post’s employees keep busy. “Instead, local online shopping has flourished, and that has kept us very busy,” he reports.