Nosenography, toposmia and sensory geography are new directions that consider smells, an often-ignored sensory feature, in constructing spaces. The dominance of visual perspective on the perception of the world results in sensory asymmetry, which is still in place today. However, despite the difference in their subjects of study, both “sensory” and “spatial” turns, addressed the sensorial disbalance and allowed scholars to combine geographical study with sensory dimensions of the physical world. That interconnection examines how individuals engage with their surroundings through multiple senses and how these sensory experiences are situated within specific spatial contexts. As a result, the role of senses, smell, in particular, has been revised. Tracing and describing variations of smell in places will reveal previously overlooked qualities of spaces, such as their affective characteristics, emotional powers, olfactory artefacts and “spirit of a place” (Norberg-Schulz 1980). However, there has been relatively little effort to explore connections between smells and particular qualities of spaces that are more than an analysis of the pleasantness of smells in certain places or parts of cities.
Recently, literature in geography, cultural history, sociology, architecture, urban studies, and literary criticism has defined spaces as complex, rhythmic assemblages of multiple histories and constituents which travel over physical and visual barriers. The evidence that geographical knowledge is no longer limited only to the visual realm of cartographic and topographic reflections of soil types and streamlines is the advancement of nosenography, toposmia and sensory geography. Firstly, these fields study places as emitters of sensory data and holders of smell artefacts. Secondly, the concept of “smellscape” serves as a unifying framework across these disciplines, emphasising the interconnections between smells and their sources, human perceptions, physical environments, and the context of places. Porteous (1985) introduced the concept of “smellscape” to describe the fragmented, discontinued, space-time interrelated human perception of spaces through smells. The significance of smell in shaping human experiences of places has led to the expansion of essential components of smellscapes. Henshaw (2013) and Classen (2002) suggested that smellscape should involve smell sources, physical environmental settings, built forms, materials, time, weather, memory associations, thought processes, social and cultural contexts, to name but a few. Therefore, smellscape has become a multi-layered notion encompassing perceptions of smell, specific places and environments.
Multimodality is not the only connection between spaces and smells. The emotionality of smells is another decisive factor in triggering reminiscences about specific places. First, smell was designed to immediately send an emotional signal even when any emotional context is lacking. It happens due to the link between olfactory receptors and the limbic system which plays a major role in controlling mood, memory, behaviour and emotion. Therefore, every breath with smelly molecules activates limbic areas associated with emotions and memory retrieval. Second, smells lack proper vocabulary and names. It is difficult to talk about smells without mentioning situations of smell experience or without tracing parallels to other smells or objects. As a result, smells are described through emotional associations to the context that speakers link to that specific smell.
Given all that has been mentioned, smellscapes have increasingly attracted attention across disciplines. This paper extends analyses of spaces from the past times to dimensions of sensuous geographies and toposmia through travel narratives. These fields of research help to recreate spatial smells from the late Middle Ages to the late Eighteenth century. Smell is a sense that travellers are frequently exposed to firsthand, consciously and unconsciously. As a result, travel narratives represent an abundant source of smellscapes as smell provides an entry point into newness and difference. Smellscapes provoked affective responses that bridged emotionality and spaciality together and contributed to the authentic smell-saturated place descriptions, including information on flora and fauna, climatic conditions, level of industrialisation, and forms of habitations.
Drawing on travel narratives, I will comment on how sensuous geographies help to study the smelly places of the past. I am going to discuss how smell features in spatial assemblages of travellers, locations and experiences. Then, I will raise such questions as whether temples and markets were the smelliest places back in the day and why smells of certain places were mentioned more often than others. The travellers’ descriptions of smells and how new smells impacted the geographical experience of travellers will also be taken into consideration.