On this page we will walk through all Icelandic Bridge cancels and try to understand the difference between them.
First small overview of cancelation in Iceland.
Danish cancels were used in Iceland from 1870. When the Icelandic skilding stamps were issued in 1873, the use of Antiqua cancels began, as well as the use of Lapidar/Grotesk cancels. Before the turn of the century, Crown cancels appeared and soon after, numeral cancels. In 1894 the first bridge cancel was introduced, and by around 1930 its general use had spread to all post offices and mail collection offices. Here below is shown the difference between Antique and Lapidars cancels. Antiqua cancels are with bold letters but lapidar are thinner. But there is the third type; Bastarður or Bastard, that means that some cancels if they broke it was possible to take letters and move between cancels, so they where combination of both Antiqua and Lapidar cancels. (Based on Sigurður H Þorsteinsson, Lesbók Morgunblaðsins 05/2/1967, Þór Þorsteinsson, Íslenskir stimplar, 2003.)
From the book Íslenskir stimplar, Þór Þorsteins, 2003:
Mail collection office: It is difficult to find an exact definition of what a mail‑collection office was, but by consulting the internet, the answer suggests that it was a simple postal service unit where a mail collector — perhaps a farmer on a remote farm — received mail from the rural postman who travelled on horseback, applied the station’s postmark, and then passed the mail on to the next rural postman. Many stories exist about these rural postmen, and perhaps some of them will appear here. Closer to our own time, farmers took on the task of transporting the mail between locations and forwarding it, and later the automobile entered the picture, to skip quickly through history. These were not offices; rather, mail was received and dispatched onward, perhaps from the kitchen table of the farmer whose home was designated as a mail‑collection office.
Timeline of bridge cancel types
B1a, B1b, B1c, B1d og B1e explained:
B1a: Numeral letters in all cancel, but only two letters for the year.
B1b. Numeral letters in all cancel, but four letters for the year.
B1c: Mix of roman and numeral letters. Roman letters are where there month is and two numeral number for the year.
B1d: The same as in B1c, but we have hourly timestamp in the end, two letters.
B1e: Same as in B1c except there are four numeral letters for the year.
B1a, B1b, B1c, B1d og B1e on letters, except one!
When reading Frimerkjablaðið, nr. 9. from the year 2004 (postsaga.is.) I found article about how prices of bridge cancels are decided. I have linked the article here below.
It would be interesting to know how prices in Facit and other pricelists are decided. If you have that information please send me an email.