What exactly did Viking droppings smell like? This is how researchers reconstruct the smells of the past

What did a 9th century Viking village smell like? Certainly not particularly good for a 21st century nose. At least, that’s what the repulsive moans of visitors to the Jorvik Viking Center in modern-day York, England, suggest when exposed to the painstakingly reconstructed scent of what is arguably the museum’s most intriguing exhibit: the Lloyds Bank coprolite. , a piece of Viking dung.

At a sensational 20 centimeters in length and five centimeters thick, the chunk is the largest surviving piece of excrement in history – it is named after where it was found, the building site for the foundation of a Lloyds Bank branch, and the Greek words for “excrement” (κόπρος) and «stone» (λιθος). The fragrance brand has been sniffed in the museum’s Viking walk-in toilet for several years now.

The reconstruction of scents from the past has received increasing scientific attention in recent years. For example, the international project Odeuropa has been investigating the smell and stench of bygone times and spaces since last year. What did the European metropolis of Antwerp and Amsterdam smell like in the “Golden Age”, the 17th century?

The computer scientists, cultural scientists, historians and chemists of the Odeuropa project do not necessarily find the smells in the human remains, but rather in texts and images. They train computers to search large collections of images and vast corpora of text for keywords and objects. An olfactory diagram of the relevant time or situation is then made on the basis of many text passages and image fragments.

Ultimately, perfumers use the results to recreate the scent of the past. As part of the project, an olfactory tour through the economic history of Amsterdam or a guided olfactory trip to the artworks in the Ulm Museum was made. “Our senses are a gateway to our past,” says the project’s website. “And more than any other sense, our sense of smell is directly linked to our feelings and memories.”

However, in the past, intense scents were also used to cover up the stench of feces and death. Cleopatra, the last ruler of Egypt, is said to have even perfumed the sails of her ship when she bewitched the Roman Mark Antony. The Egyptologist Dora Goldsmith of the Free University of Berlin and the historian Sean Coughlin of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague set out in search of this fragrance mixture.

They relied on the discovery of a 2,300-year-old perfumery that archaeologists had discovered in Mendes, in Lower Egypt. The contents of the crucibles and jars, the writings of the Byzantine physician Paul of Aigina and a long series of self-experiments eventually led to the restoration of the old recipe: take oil from desert dates and moringa and mix it with resin and ground myrrh and cinnamon.

The result, the research team emphasizes, smells pleasant, elegant and sweet. It also prevents skin irritation and is even suitable for treating wounds. It can also be used in a pinch – mixed with goose fat and spread in linen bandages, which are then wrapped around the head – to relieve a hangover after excessive alcohol consumption.

However, just as smells can be reconstructed from human legacies, vice versa can also help to reconstruct human legacies. For example, staff at the Egyptian Museum in Turin had noticed a strange fruity odor in the display cases containing barrels from the tomb of the architect Kha and his wife Merit in the necropolis of Deir el-Medina.

The jars have remained unopened since the two died about 3,400 years ago. The team led by University of Pisa chemist Ilaria Degano didn’t look inside either — they simply sealed the jars airtight in plastic bags for a few days to trap the odor molecules they released. In the subsequent measurement with a mass spectrometer, they were able to detect aldehydes that caused the fruity aroma.

They also found other aldehydes and long-chain hydrocarbons typical of beeswax, as well as trithylamines, which indicate dried fish — thankfully at levels not normally detectable by the human nose. The smell in the display cases eventually made us know what foods Kha and Merit were taking as provisions on their final journey to the afterlife.

If you want to experiment with the smell of the past for yourself, you can travel back in time with relatively simple means to June 18, 1815, to the battlefield of Waterloo, where the French fought against the British and Prussia. Caro Verbeek of the Free University in Amsterdam reconstructed what it smelled like there on the basis of historical texts and contemporary paintings.

In the background lay the usual battlefield mist of gunpowder, horses, leather, wet earth and human sweat. But again and again a different smell came into the noses of the soldiers: the fresh scent of rosemary, bergamot and bitter orange. It was the perfume of Napoleon Bonaparte who rubbed a whole bottle of the miracle water called acqua mirabilis on his body every day.

So if you want to experience the smell of the Battle of Waterloo, all you need to do on a rainy day is go to the stables and have two utensils with you. First, the remains of a New Year’s fireworks. And on the other side a bottle of acqua mirabilis – available in any drugstore. Its commercial name today: Eau de Cologne.