The smell of history

As an early proponent of using historic smells to enhance the visitor experience, the Jorvik Viking Centre set an example for other museums to follow. But using smell to improve the visitor experience isn’t as new an idea as you might think. Symbolist and surrealist artists were the first people to diffuse smells in galleries and museums. From the 1950s onwards, curators shunned the idea of adding odours to museums and galleries. There was a prevailing notion at that time that these spaces should be sterile and silent in order not to distract from the visual impact of the art or museum objects. In recent years, museums and galleries have begun to re-recognise the benefits of multisensory experiences. Sound effects are now commonplace, and chances to taste historic recipes, feel heritage objects and smell the smells of the past are also on the increase.

A particular challenge with developing scent recreations is that we don’t know that much about how the past actually smelled. Odorant molecules are volatile by nature, meaning most of them are long gone by the time historians or archaeologists go looking for them. Curators are increasingly working with multidisciplinary teams, including historians, archaeologists, perfumers and chemists, to develop historically accurate recreations.