Odeuropa: How smells re-unfold our European history!

Odeuropa: How smells re-unfold our European history!

In the fascinating world of history, a new project has recently emerged that not only revolutionizes the way we look at the past, but also appeals to our senses in unexpected ways. “Odeuropa” is the first comprehensive European research project dedicated to the importance of smells for cultural identity and collective memory. This exciting project is initiated by the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), which acts as coordinator and receives support from all over Europe. Franconian day reports that the central goal of the project is to anchor smells as part of cultural heritage to evoke emotions and provide a multisensory connection to the past.

What exactly makes this project so special? Researchers study a variety of smells, ranging from a typical café in 19th-century Montmartre to the fresh scents of everyday life in 17th-century Holland. They put their feelers in paintings, drawings, novels and newspaper reports in order to find clues to olfactory experiences from different historical eras. A particularly exciting development is the use of artificial intelligence, which has been trained to detect smell-related references in over 43,000 historical images and 167,000 books in six European languages. This innovative approach led to the creation of the “Odeuropa Smell Explorer”, an extensive database with 2.5 million entries on the history of scents in Europe!

Database for olfactory experiences

The Odeuropa Smell Explorer is not just another digital cultural tool, but a real treasure chest for anyone interested in the olfactory dimensions of history. Over 92,000 smell instances from almost 44,000 works of art and 167,000 text resources were collected. This allows scientists, perfumers, heritage professionals and anyone interested to discover the smells of the past and understand their influence on European history and culture. Odeuropa also offers interactive “nosebooks” that enable targeted analyzes – a real enrichment for anyone who wants to delve deeper into the subject.

What is particularly impressive is that the project not only collects historical data, but also uses modern techniques for object recognition and semantic processing to systematically capture smell-related information in texts and images. This opens up new perspectives: you can now browse how certain smells relate to emotions and experiences and even perform more complex queries when you register as a member.

An interdisciplinary undertaking

The project enjoys broad support in this country and has already promoted interdisciplinary collaboration between machine and expert knowledge. This website highlights that the development of sensory data mining technologies has made it possible to analyze and reconstruct European digital heritage collections from different centuries. Because smells are not just fleeting companions, they also tell stories!

An example of this olfactory history is a reconstruction of scents from 17th century Amsterdam or from the famous moments of the Battle of Waterloo. By analyzing smells from archaeological finds and historical texts, it becomes clear that these quickly acute sensory impressions can create a much deeper emotional resonance that increases engagement in museums and heritage sites.

So the EU-backed “Odeuropa” project has not only brought the world of smells into focus - it has also caused a stir in the media and was included in “The Future 100” list as one of the trends to watch out for in 2023. This will bring history to life in a completely new way, and perhaps we will soon be able to breathe in the scent of the past again!