For yet another year—making it now seven in a row—Tusass Greenland Filatelia, Greenland’s philatelic service, has dedicated its annual series of variable value stamps to one of the animal species inhabiting the island. Following on from polar bears, sled dogs, seals, walruses, white-tailed eagles, and arctic foxes, the 2025 series is dedicated to snowy owls.
The four beautiful photographs used for the series are by Oliver Gilg and Adrian Aebischer, taken during summer expeditions in northeastern Greenland, the largest national park on the planet.
The snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus) is a species of bird of prey that, unlike most owls or nocturnal birds of prey, is active during the day. It is one of the largest and heaviest owl species. It has golden eyes, a black beak, and, very distinctive thick white plumage, with heavily feathered toes, making it well-adapted to life in the Arctic Circle.
As with previous series, the rolls of thermal self-adhesive labels are manufactured by the Danish company Limo Labels A/S, using flexographic printing and with perforations around the illustrations only. The labels come affixed on a yellow release liner. To the right of the illustration there is a white strip with a security background with the name of the postal administration, tusass, which is available for the printing of the stamp’s data.
The issue date for the new series was November 7th 2025. On that date, it was available from the aCon printers and the Intelligent AR’s DKU desktop kiosk, both using the same label rolls but with very different imprints.
Stamps printed with the aCon printer (left strip below) only include the face value in Danish kroner and a unique code for each stamp. The first three digits identifying the particular printer; the philatelic department has three aCon printers, two installed at the Nordfrim A/S offices in Otterup, Denmark (codes starting with e4c and erG), and the third at the Sisimiut office in Greenland (code TFD).
The DKU kiosk with the GL01 code is also permanently installed at the Nordfrim A/S offices in Otterup, the Tusass Greenland Filatelia service center in Denmark (see receipt below). On the date of release, this machine was programmed to issue stamps with four face values only, 19.00, 25.00, 28.00 & 37.00 DKK, corresponding to the current basic tariffs for economy and priority domestic mail, and priority mail to European countries and the rest of the world, respectively (see table below). All the stamps printed by this machine in Otterup include the ‘Greenland Post‘ imprint under the face value.
The first block of the code at the bottom (DNDK25) also indicates that the stamps have been printed in Denmark, followed by the session (4369 on the left hand strip and receipt) and the stamp numbers.
As in previous years, Tusass Greenland Filatelia participated with a large booth at the Frimærke, Brev & Postkort Messe 2025, the philatelic fair held over the weekend of November 8th & 9th at the Frederiksberghallerne, a multipurpose hall located in Frederiksberg, west of Copenhagen.
Although arguably the major annual philatelic event in the Nordic countries, organised by a group of enthusiasts who strive to make it appealing to visitors with interesting collections of stamps and postcards on display together with some twenty commercial booths, the truth is that it attracts fewer collectors each year, with long stretches of the hall practically deserted.
Tusass Greenland Filatelia set up three units for the printing of variable value stamps on the stand. The image below shows, the GL01 DKU kiosk and the two aCon desktop printers (codes e4c and erG).
The stamps of the ‘Snowy Owls’ series issued during the two days at Frederiksberg from the DKU machine includes the ‘Copenhagen 2025‘ temporary imprint under the face value. The imprint on the header of the receipts shows the location of this special issue.
Unlike with “traditional” stamps, Tusass Greenland Filatelia does not produce special covers or illustrated/special first day postmarks for the variable value stamp series, although the standard datestamps and general exhibition postmarks may be used.
First day cover with the ‘Greenland Post‘ imprint and ‘Sisimiut’ datestamp
First day cover with the ‘Copenhagen 2025‘ temporary imprint and exhibition special postmark
In late January 2025, Tusass relocated its stamp distribution operations from Tasiilaq, in eastern Greenland, to Sisimiut, the second-most populous city, on the central-western coast. Since then, all first day postmarks and datestamps used by the philatelic service include the city’s postal code and name, ‘3911 Sisimiut‘.
(English edition rewritten by J. Gareze – April 2026)
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