Passing the Smell Test

Sissel Tolaas is a tall, Norwegian-Icelandic woman with bright blonde hair who is a legend in the colossal yet somewhat invisible world of modern olfaction. She roams the world collecting smells, some for artistic installations, some for commercial use. To keep her nose in shape she maintains an archive comprising 7,000 vacuum-sealed steel cans loaded with samples of cake, dirty socks, ice cubes, and much besides. She speaks nine languages and has invented a tenth, called Nasalo, with more than 2,500 words for smells: ino denotes the scent of cleaned asphalt and stones. 

From “On the Nose” by Chris Ip for Engadget

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