A silly corner of the spec, considering that this is a spec that specifies exactly how to handle e.g. misnested elements and admits plenty of other things that read intuitively as standardized sloppiness.
> I am certain had it been shipped the other way the post office in Norway would have rejected it immediately for not being 100% by-the-book.
The postal office in Norway tries hard to deliver to the correct destination. I've heard of similar stories where they only had a name and a city to go on, and it was delivered at the correct location. During Christmas, they even have a team of dedicated "detectives" who tries their hardest to figure out who the packages should be sent to.
Maybe, but Norway do make it harder for themselves by having just a 4 number postcode that could include many thousands of addresses. A UK postcode is often down to just one street or similar size.
Once, someone I knew in Norway (ok, my sister again...) somehow managed to combine her old and new address when ordering something online. And that parcel back and forth between 2 cities for a long time... :)
> A UK postcode is often down to just one street or similar size.
It's even better than that. Unless you are incredibly rural or the street is tiny, most streets have at least two postcodes - one for the odd side and one for the even side. In most cases, there's only about 15-30 houses in a postcode, any more on a road and it's split up into smaller chunks.
I grew up in the country side of Norway in the 80s, and the small road to my house didn't have any name. I guess there was no need since that road serviced less than 10 houses. It wasn't until later (late 80s perhaps) when my road was given a name and my house was assigned a number.
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