Christian IV granted the postal concession for Norway to Henrik Morian on 17 January 1647 and Morian became the first Norwegian postmaster, followed by his wife Anna who was postmaster from 1648 to 1653. The first route was by sea from Christiania to Copenhagen. Other sea routes, including the ones to Kristiansand, Starvanger, Bergen, and Trondheim followed. Originally, all mail was consolidated in Christiania before being sent out. The sea routes utilized merchant shipping, but land routes were slower to develop, with the post being passed from farmstead to farmstead. Incentives for postal-route farmers included exemptions from county road work and military service, and in some cases reduction in taxes. The postal routes delivered the mail to the government offices, and there was no local mail delivery, so gradually private local posts grew up in the larger cities and towns. In 1719, the private concession was terminated and the Danish-Norwegian state took over the national postal service as a state monopoly; however, the local city posts remained private. The first postal marking was a cancellation introduced at Oslo in 1845. The first postage stamp was issued in 1855, and depicted the Coat of arms of Norway. At the same time, numeral cancellations were used to indicate the post office using them, the numbers eventually reaching 383.
Posthorn stamps
In 1871, Norway introduced its first stamp with a posthorn design; stamps of this type, with periodic redesigns, have been in use ever since.
Local posts
Local posts, both formal and informal, originally grew up to distribute the non-official mail brought by the Postvesenet, and soon included messenger services within towns. In 1888, there were fourteen private local posts in operation in Norway. Following commercial concerns about this patchwork system of mail delivery, the Norwegian government conducted a review of the effectiveness and trustworthiness of local post deliveries. The postmaster asked local governments, where such services operated, for comments, as well as conducting inspections. As a result, most were ordered shutdown immediately, a couple were permitted to remain until the Postvesenet established local deliveries. By the mid 1890s all of the local city posts were gone except for the one in Trondheim, the Trondhjems By-Post. It continued until 1913.
Spelling reform
In 1918, the government moved to reform Norwegian orthography, most notably giving a Norwegian spelling to foreign loan words. For example, "station" became stasjon, which along with changes in the names of some towns, required changing postmarks. At this time the postvæsen became the postvesen.
World War II
When Norway was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940, a British/French expeditionary force in northern Norway established field post offices that operated until the troops withdrew to England in June 1940. While the new collaborationist government in Norway issued its own stamps, the government-in-exile, based in London, issued stamps for the use of the Royal Norwegian Navy and the merchant marine. These stamps were also used in Jan Mayen island, and, from February 1945, in a Norwegian post office established in Stockholm. Mail volume increased significantly during the German occupation, as travel was restricted, but also because rural families would send food to their city relatives using parcel post. Postal workers suffered additional dangers during the occupation, as twenty-four postal ships were sunk along the Norwegian coast during the war, and forty-nine postal officials were killed in the course of their duties.
