Question Re Scandinavian Local Posts

This represents an envelope labelled "Bypost" and containing this group of stamps. I am assuming, because some are identifiable as Swedish that they may all be but I do not know.

I do have a few questions for some knowledgeable person.

First, do these represent a number of private carriers operating in various cities and what market were they servicing that the Post Office did not handle?

Second, what time period do these issues represent?

Third, are they all from various Swedish cities or do some originate elsewhere, as Denmark or Norway?

The local post stamps are from Denmark and Norway. Aalesund from Norway, and Aalborg and Odense from Denmark.

The Swedish one at the bottom seems to be cinderellas, and the middle one is for military mail free of postage.

If I remember correctly, local post in Norway ended about 1900, but are not certain. I will take a look in Norgeskatalogen, it might be mentioned there.

Found something at the Norwegian wikipedia about Norwegian local post. Local post was done by private businesses in competition with the postal authorities, or before a proper postal authority was in place.

The postal authorities had monopoly, but not for post within town limits. With more post, private businesses started up in this market, until 1888 when the monopoly was extended for local post as well. Some were allowed to continued though, in Trondheim until 1913 when the owner died.

There is also a list over the towns which had local post, and in what time periode on the page.

http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypost

Great informations yobo

Further reading perhaps:
https://goscf.com/t/7226

Both those references were a tremendous help. Thank you for the links and now I can at least start to put those where they belong along with a little background information.

The free franking label (Sweden) for military use has me a bit puzzled though. Why wouldn't it be listed in Scott's as a Military Stamp or an Official?

It is always dicey trying to divine the intentions of the Scott editors...I would guess that they consider it postal stationery.

Is it then a cut square rather than an imperf label/stamp?

Yes, it's a cut-out from the front of a military envelope. These envelopes included an imprinted gummed return frank stamp on the back under the flap that could be cut out and used to frank a letter back to the soldier. Neat idea!