THE SMELL OF HISTORY

An international team of researchers is working to recreate the smell of old Europe. The group, who call themselves “Odeuropa,” wants to show that “critically engaging our sense of smell and our scent heritage is an important and viable means for connecting and promoting Europe’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage.” (* If you say so.) They received a $2.8 million euro grant for their work. Odeuropa plans to curate and publish an online encyclopedia that details historical European smells from the 16th to the early 20th centuries. For example: Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. Imagine a defeated Napoleon fleeing on that history-making day in 1815, the scent of rain-soaked soil and grass mingling with the fetid odor of rotting corpses and earth burned by explosions, as described in soldiers’ diaries. Mix in leather and horses, gunpowder and even the smell of the cologne worn by Napoleon himself.
* Not to mention the smell of water, and the loo.
* This is another of those, “Hey, guys – the deadline for grant money runs out tomorrow at noon. Anybody got any ideas?”
* They’re going to “curate and publish an online encyclopedia”. Yeah, anytime you hear the word “curate” you know there’s going to be some serious pretentiousness and B.S. involved.
* I’d like to smell what it was like on the day they invented sliced bread.
* What you want is to go back to smell the day AFTER they invented hygiene.
* What did it smell like when Renee’ Descartes came up with, “I stink, therefore I am”?
* I’d imagine most of history smelled like nervous sweat and bad cologne. Like a modern-day Republican strategy meeting.