Bjørn Berge - Selected Title Author
We are happy to present our selected title author Bjørn Berge. He has written Smell – The Tale of a Fading Sense (original title: Lukt. Fortellingen om en falmet sans), which is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the autumn 2024. The book is illustrated with monoprints by visual artist Anette Rosenberg.
What is your book about?
We live in the era of ocularcentrism. It is more important for something to look good than for it to function, whether it’s a house, food or a person. Our sense of smell is now considered the least important sense of all, and many people would rather go without it than go without both their PC and mobile.
But historically, our sense of smell has been regarded far more highly, and in this book I want to remind people of the potential our sense of smell has. It helps us understand both each other and our surroundings. We can smell how our fellow humans are feeling, their diet and illnesses, and the smell of a place is absolutely crucial for our sense of orientation. Smell also has a greater ability to evoke memories than the other senses.
To be more concrete, I introduce the reader in detail to 20 smells that still permeate our lives, from the smell of freshly baked buns and the sea to the smell of blood, sweat, vinyl and old houses. And we head into the forest, where even a tiny gap in the soil offers experiences of camphor, peaches and wet fur, and we continue into the libraries, where old books hide the most fragrant wonders.
What inspired you to write the book?
I have been an architect for over 40 years, and in that time have noticed that our houses, where we now spend more than 90% of our lives, are becoming less and less smelly. Today they seem aromatically barren. This weakens the sensory interaction that is crucial for our decision making and our ability to navigate the world, especially in an age that is increasingly characterised by manipulation and artificial intelligence. Our sense of smell, which still cannot be digitised, appears to be especially reliable, which makes it more important than ever to protect it.
Smell is a stand-alone publication, but it also concludes a trilogy about the nature of power, which started with Nowherelands, about how the world was divided into spheres of power, and continued with A Pacifist’s Guide to Bombers, about the role of technology in the execution of power. The smell book examines the cultural aspect, how smell is used to maintain hierarchies in authoritarian societies. The further you are from the centre of power, the worse you smell – whether you are a woman, an immigrant, a worker or a farmer.
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
Read more about the author here
More about the illustrator “here”:
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the autumn 2024 here
