World Stamps

Smell of gingerbread on new Iceland stamps

Dec 11, 2018, 10 AM

Iceland’s two Christmas stamps for 2018 not only show decorated gingerbread cookies, but they smell like them as well.

By Denise McCarty

Iceland Post features cookies on its scented Christmas stamps issued Nov. 1. Iceland Post describes the two stamps as smelling like “newly baked gingerbread.”

In its bulletin for collectors, Stamp News, Iceland Post said: “Gingerbread baking is an indispensable pastime in many Icelandic homes before Christmas. The artfully decorated gingerbread can be made into all sorts of shapes and colours.”

The stamps are nondenominated, paying special Christmas rates for mail weighing 50 grams. Each stamp is inscribed with the word “Jol,” meaning “Christmas.”

The stamp for domestic mail depicts a cookie shaped like a Christmas tree and decorated with red and green frosting. The cookie on the stamp for mail to Europe resembles a snowflake.

Elsa Nielsen designed the stamps. Cartor Security Printing printed them in panes of 10.

Connect with Linn’s Stamp News:

  Sign up for our newsletter
  Like us on Facebook
  Follow us on Twitter