Smell: The Tale of a Fading Sense

A celebration of our olfactory sense.

The sense of smell is often linked to the dark, the antisocial, the primitive—the very opposite of modernity and progress. Today, we live in an almost odorless world, where everything is reduced to images. Yet smell plays a vital role in how we relate to others and our surroundings, forming our experiences and our memories. Tracing a history of smell from the first ancient cities through medieval plagues and the Industrial Revolution to the present day, this book is a tribute to the sense of smell in all its beauty and disgust. Along the way, Bjørn Berge introduces us to twenty iconic scents—from blood and soil to the ocean—and invites readers to reflect on and reawaken their senses.