Ireland possesses a rich scent landscape, although it is rarely discussed in those terms. The aroma of Guinness brewing greeting passengers outside Heuston Station, hawthorn blossom announcing May from a roadside hedge, the particular smell of a pub snug, built over decades from timber, polish and spilled stout, or silage carried across fields on a warm evening. These scents rarely appear in tourism campaigns or in heritage strategies, but they contribute to a sense of place as surely as architecture, language or landscape.<\/p>\n
What sets scents apart is their vulnerability. While a building can be restored and a document archived, smells are inherently fleeting, with climate change adding a new layer of uncertainty. Research has already suggested that Ireland\u2019s native plant communities will be affected by changing temperatures and weather patterns, with a growing number of species under threat. Discussions understandably tend to focus on biodiversity and conservation, but landscapes are experienced through more than sight. Different plants create different scent environments, and changes in vegetation alter the sensory character of a place as surely as they alter its appearance. Chowen believes climate change may also influence how smells are experienced, with Ireland\u2019s humid climate playing a key role in how scents move through the landscape. Changes in temperature and weather patterns are likely to alter that process too.<\/p>\n
Unlike the disappearance of a building or a business, these shifts can be difficult to identify in real time. There is no obvious moment when a scent leaves a landscape, no closing ceremony for the last evening when turf smoke drifts across a village in the way it once did, yet smell may be among the most powerful carriers of memory that we possess. UNESCO recognises this, and notes that olfactory heritage is connected to customs, habits, beliefs and traditions, but smell remains largely absent from conversations about heritage protection. The reasons are understandable. It is difficult to document, difficult to archive and almost impossible to preserve in any meaningful way.<\/p>\n
The scent of Ireland has never been fixed. New industries emerge, landscapes change and habits evolve. The smell of turf smoke replaced other smells before it, and new scents will emerge in its place. What matters is recognising that these smells tell stories about how people lived and how they understood the places around them. The smell of fish and diesel along the docks, the floor polish and boiling Burcos of a GAA hall, wet wool drying on the back of a chair, incense lingering in a church porch after a funeral. They are the small details, the ones that are easy to overlook, yet each carries traces of work, community, ritual and belonging. By the time we notice they are gone, they will already be part of our history.<\/p>\n
The Ireland of the future will not only look different from the Ireland that came before it. It will smell different too.<\/p>\n
Photography of Sadie Chowen of The Burren Perfumery by Ralph Doyle, from the Spring 2022 issue of IMAGE Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland possesses a rich scent landscape, although it is rarely discussed in those terms. The aroma of Guinness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-488209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}