Send a letter to Iceland from Sweden

The postcode consists of three digits and comes before the place name: 101 Reykjavík. Each digit indicates a specific district, so a single wrong digit can send your letter several kilometres off course.

Icelandic surnames are patronymics: Jónsdóttir means Jón's daughter. Icelanders are alphabetised and addressed by first name, but write the recipient's full name exactly as they've given it to you.

The Icelandic letters ð and þ must be written out in full. If you can't type them, replace ð with d and þ with th — never write þ as p, even though they look similar in print.

The last line of the address must read ISLAND in uppercase. This is the Swedish name for Iceland and is required because your letter is sorted in Sweden before it leaves the country — counter-intuitive when writing in English, but essential.

The last line is always the country name in Swedish: ISLAND. This surprises people who write the rest of the address in English, but the letter is sorted in Sweden before it leaves the country, and Swedish sorting reads Swedish. Everything above that line should look exactly as it would if the letter had been posted inside Iceland, because a postal worker there is the one who has to read it.

Almost every letter that fails to arrive has an address problem, not a transport problem. These are the mistakes that keep coming back on mail posted from Sweden to Iceland:

Always add a sender address. A letter with a correct sender comes back to you if the address is wrong, and you can then send it again. Without one, the letter is simply gone.

Normal delivery is 4–8 vardagar, counted from the moment we hand the letter to PostNord — not from the moment you order. Order before 11:45 on a weekday and the letter is handed in the same day.

Most of the variation comes from distribution inside Iceland rather than from the flight. A letter to a major city arrives faster than one to a rural address in the same country.

A standard letter to Iceland costs 88 SEK and an express letter 128 SEK. Printing, paper, envelope, postage and hand-in to PostNord are all included. The price is the same to every country, so you never need to know which postal zone Iceland belongs to.

PostNord divides the world into seven zones if you buy stamps and post the letter yourself, which is why other services charge different amounts for different countries. The table below shows both options.

Pósturinn, the Icelandic postal service, has streamlined delivery by reducing service days and consolidating service points outside the capital region. Post to rural areas is often routed through a central collection point rather than delivered door-to-door.

Air transport is the deciding factor for delivery times to Iceland. If your letter misses the week's airfreight departure, it will wait until the next scheduled flight. This means delivery times can vary more than with mainland European destinations, and the 4–8 working day window depends on flight availability.

Registered international mail (Rek utrikes) may contain documents only, weighs no more than 2 kg and carries liability up to 2,000 SEK. It can be tracked to most countries, and only one recipient may be named.

It is the right service for notices of termination, powers of attorney and legal documents where you need proof that the letter was sent. The country name still has to be written in Swedish on a registered letter — ISLAND on the last line.

Banknotes and coins may not be sent in an international letter, in any currency and for any amount. Dangerous goods are prohibited. Goods sent in a letter to a country outside the EU require a customs declaration and a barcode that an ordinary letter does not carry.

We therefore send documents and personal letters only. That is also what keeps the service simple: no customs forms, no weighing and no questions about the contents.

You need no printer, no envelope and no international stamps. Everything happens in your browser, and the letter is handed to PostNord in Sweden by us.