Posten
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Posten is the name of the Swedish and Norwegian postal services. The word "posten" means "the post" or "the mail" in both Swedish and Norwegian. The Decorah Posten was a notable Swedish international newspaper, published in Iowa.
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Swedish Posten
The Swedish Posten was established in 1636 by Axel Oxenstierna, even though origins can be traced further back, and it was operated as a government agency into the 1990s when it was transformed into a government owned limited company. Among the biggest changes to the postal service, as seen by the public, was the decision in 2002 to abandon the service maintained at the public post offices.
The public today handles their postal business at so called Postal Service Points, which are maintained in grocery shops and gas stations. Postal Service Centers are maintained for business clients and Svensk Kassaservice, a chain of shops that handles simple financial transactions but offers no postal services.
Mail and package delivery is seen as very reliable in Sweden, has it undergone large scale organizational changes and rationalization in the last decade. Never the less it is under ever increasing competition from private companies on the Swedish deregulated postal market.
Norwegian Posten
The Norwegian Posten was founded in 1647 under the name "Postvesenet" by Henrik Morian. It was established as a private company, and the Danish-Norwegian king Kristian Kvart gave his blessing to the founding of the company. Postvesenet was privately ran until 1719, when the Danish-Norwegian state took over. From that point on, national postal service was a state monopoly. The local city postal services remained private, but in 1888 a new postal law was introduced, which expanded the monopoly to the entire country.
In 1933, Postvesenet was renamed to "Postverket". In 1996, Posten Norge BA was established as a state-owned company wherein the Norwegian state had limited responsibility. In 2002 Posten entered the stock market, but was still completely owned by the state.