Send a letter from Sweden to Europe

Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands all put the postcode before the town name. The United Kingdom, Ireland and Latvia put it after, and in the UK it belongs on its own line below the town.

The position of the house number varies too. Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy and the Nordic countries write the street name first and the number after it. France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom write the number first.

Flat and floor details are the rule rather than the exception in southern and eastern Europe: 3º izq in Spain, 2º Esq in Portugal, 15/3 in Poland, ap. 12 in Romania. Without them a postal worker rarely finds the right door in an apartment block.

Write national characters in full. Polish ł, Czech ř, Danish ø and Icelandic þ are letters in their own right, not variants of l, r, o and p, and replacing them can misdirect the letter.

Whatever the country, the last line is the country name in Swedish, in capitals. That line is read in Sweden, not at the destination.

Normal delivery is 2–8 working days counted from our hand-in to PostNord. Order before 11:45 on a weekday and the letter is handed in the same day.

The Nordic countries are fastest, normally 2–5 working days. Note that PostNord's zone 1 covers Denmark, Norway and Finland but explicitly not Svalbard and not Åland, which have their own terms.

Western and central Europe run at 3–6 working days, southern Europe and the Balkans at 4–9. Mail to Ukraine is heavily delayed by the war.

Each country has its own page with a correctly formatted example address, the normal delivery time and the mistakes that are most common on letters going there.

88 SEK for a standard letter and 128 SEK for express, whichever country you write to. Printing, paper, envelope, postage and hand-in are included.

PostNord divides the world into seven zones when you buy stamps yourself. With us the zone is irrelevant — you never need to know which one the destination belongs to.

Every letter you send through us is posted inside Sweden. Swedish sorting reads the last line of the address to decide which country the letter leaves for, and it reads Swedish country names.

So write GERMANY nowhere and TYSKLAND on the last line. Everything above it should be written as a postal worker in the destination country would expect to read it.

Banknotes and coins may not be sent in an international letter. Dangerous goods are prohibited, and goods sent to countries outside the EU need a customs declaration that an ordinary letter does not carry.

We send documents and personal letters only.