{"id":3136,"date":"2025-06-27T12:21:04","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T12:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/?p=3136"},"modified":"2025-06-27T12:21:04","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T12:21:04","slug":"researchers-revive-europes-historical-scents-including-the-smell-of-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/3136\/researchers-revive-europes-historical-scents-including-the-smell-of-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers revive Europe\u2019s historical scents, including \u2018the smell of hell\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

EU-funded researchers are merging multidisciplinary expertise with AI tools to document, reconstruct and preserve Europe\u2019s historical scents.<\/p>\n

By<\/em> Kaja \u0160eruga<\/p>\n

What do you think hell smells like? British researcher Dr William Tullett has faithfully recreated its foul odour \u2013 or at least how our forefathers imagined it.<\/p>\n

Thanks to an EU-funded research initiative called ODEUROPA, which ran from 2021 to 2023, Tullett did not need to spend years scouring archives across Europe. Instead, the information was accessible in the ODEUROPA Smell Explorer,<\/a> a unique, easily searchable database of historical smells, including more than 2.4 million individual instances or mentions of different smells.<\/p>\n

\u201cHell and its symbolism play a major role in European and Christian culture,\u201d said Dr Tullett, an expert on the history of smell and senior lecturer at the University of York in the UK.<\/p>\n

To reconstruct this particular smell, he collected relevant references from 16th<\/sup>– and 17th<\/sup>-century sermons. These ranged from the expected sulphur and brimstone to more evocative descriptions like \u201ca million dead dogs\u201d.<\/p>\n

This infernal scent was just one of a dozen historical scents presented at the 2025 World Expo\u2019s European pavilion in Japan. Also featured were frankincense, myrrh and the scent of Amsterdam\u2019s canals \u2013 each with their own emotional, cultural and historic connotations.<\/p>\n

All were recreated by the ODEUROPA team\u2019s researchers.<\/p>\n

Professor Inger Leemans, cultural historian at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands who coordinated the research team, said the World Expo was a vivid demonstration of how subjective and dependent smells are on historical context.<\/p>\n

While some Europeans found the scent of hell strangely attractive because the smokiness reminded them of grilled meat, Japanese visitors in Osaka found it \u201ccompletely revolting\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n

Preserving scents with AI\u2019s help<\/strong><\/p>\n

Olfactory heritage \u2013 smells that hold cultural or community value \u2013 remains underexplored and difficult to document. While research into scent as a cultural phenomenon has been growing for some time, the work was previously scattered across various disciplines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis project was able to bring together expertise about scents from different domains like history, art history, chemistry and heritage science,\u201d Leemans said of the work done by researchers based in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and the UK.<\/p>\n

And it went well beyond recreating the brimstone of hell. The ODEUROPA team developed an Olfactory Heritage Toolkit<\/a> containing a list of olfactory practices, smells and \u201cfragrant places\u201d.<\/p>\n

The aim is to help heritage researchers and policymakers acknowledge and safeguard significant scents and smellscapes \u2013 scents or odours that characterise a particular place, environment, or moment in time.<\/p>\n

On a practical note, Tullet said, smell can be a powerful tool to help people connect with history. Museums and heritage sites can use scent to make exhibits more immersive and memorable.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmell allows people to have a tangible, authentic and real engagement with the past,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Museums and heritage sites are already taking notice, and curators are increasingly turning to smell as a way to engage visitors.<\/p>\n

For example, the ODEUROPA team helped create a scent-based tour at the Museum Ulm, a museum of art, archaeology, and urban and cultural history in Ulm, Germany.<\/p>\n

They also produced a self-guided tour of Amsterdam<\/a> with scratch-and-sniff maps, and an Olfactory Storytelling Toolkit<\/a> \u2013 a how-to guide for working with smells in museums and heritage sites.<\/p>\n

To unearth historical knowledge and \u201cnose-witness accounts\u201d from some 43\u00a0000 images and 167\u00a0000 historical texts in 6\u00a0languages, researchers trained AI models to find smell and scent references in texts and images from the 16th<\/sup> to the early 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

On the basis of that, they produced knowledge graphs \u2013 a structured network of interconnected information which interlinks the data and puts it in context.<\/p>\n

This cutting-edge use of AI supports the EU\u2019s wider ambition to make cultural heritage more impactful and accessible, including through Europeana<\/a>, Europe\u2019s platform for digitalised cultural content.<\/p>\n

Inspired by Japan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even before the World Expo, the ODEUROPA researchers had been exchanging ideas with counterparts in Japan and were inspired by Japan\u2019s pioneering efforts in scent preservation.<\/p>\n

\u201cJapan has been an inspiring example of thinking about smell in terms of heritage,\u201d said Leemans.<\/p>\n

In 2001, Japan\u2019s Ministry of Environment created a list of the country\u2019s 100 notable smellscapes \u2013 from the sea fog that envelops the Kushiro region in cool summers to the white peaches of the Kibi Hills and the scent of Korean cuisine in Osaka\u2019s Tsuruhashi neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

This inspired the ODEUROPA team to think more broadly about how smellscapes can reflect identity, place and memory.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmellscapes are important spaces that should be safeguarded and have a specific value,\u201d said Leemans.<\/p>\n

Smell used to be a much bigger part of Japanese culture, according to Maki Ueda, a pioneering Japanese olfactory artist whose work also inspired the European team.<\/p>\n

During the Heian period, over a thousand years ago, scent was not only used for fragrance, but also as a form of social signalling and information, she explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have that nowadays, that delicacy and sensitivity to scents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ueda stressed that engaging with olfactory art is a meaningful and educational experience. \u201cPeople realise that they had forgotten how powerful the sense of smell can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Engaging the forgotten sense<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leemans agreed that smell has been undeservedly overlooked, but argues it may now be making a comeback.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people have a lot of nose knowledge that they don\u2019t normally tap into,\u201d she said. \u201cThey might have trouble finding the words, but if we help them, they can actually bring that knowledge together.\u201d<\/p>\n

To keep the conversation going, Leemans left behind an AI avatar of herself in Osaka. The digital version of her will continue to present ODEUROPA\u2019s research and answer visitors\u2019 questions for the remainder of the World Expo.<\/p>\n

Her team has also been discussing potential future collaborations with Japanese partners, who are doing interesting work in collecting, documenting and presenting scents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many different ways in which we can move forward together and learn from each other,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Research in this article was funded by the EU\u2019s Horizon Programme. The views of the interviewees don\u2019t necessarily reflect those of the European Commission. <\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally published\u202fin\u00a0Horizon<\/a>\u00a0the EU Research and Innovation Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n

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