Please choose your country or region so we can show you the most relevant content.

It looks like you are in United States? Accept

 

The scents of nature always smell good, right? Well, that's a truth with exaggeration. There are such amounts of different smells, and they are experienced in different ways due to experiences, memories and circumstances that you do not always know. The sense of smell is more or less developed and this makes it difficult to know what others feel about scents. How much the sensory cells are exposed to a certain smell also determines how you feel about it. The olfactory cells can be tired by an intense scent and if another comes close, it feels much stronger. Now there is research that shows that you can feel well about different smells and researchers have managed to find out how some everyday scents develop.

 

Researchers have recently been able to tell more about the smell of laundry that has hung out in the sun and dried.[1] It is a fragrance that many people think is wonderful. It is reminiscent of summer, often of childhood and makes one happy. By hanging cotton towels that have been washed in only water in different places, it has been possible to find which scents come out and how it works. Part of the laundry was hung in the sun, part of it under plastic and part of it in the shade. When the laundry was dry, they put it in plastic bags and left it for 24 hours. Then they sucked the air out of the bags. In the air that came from washing dried in the sun, one could find special compositions of molecules that give a good scent, such as people associate with fond memories. There is a chemical reaction between molecules in the fabric and the air when the sunlight warms them. The researchers are wondering if it is the same thing that happens when nature dries in the sun after a rain. When it feels like nature is freshly washed and both smells and gives off more colour than before the rain fell.

Scents and smells associated with memories can be frightening or healing depending on what they are reminiscent of. In a healing process, scents can help calm stress and form new memories. [2] It has been used in herbal medicine for many years. Maybe today we need to take back some knowledge about natural remedies human forgot. In any case, everyone can find the scents that soothe and provide well-being. They are often found in nature - flowers that smell good, a pile of wood that smells like grandfather, a log stack that smells of sun, wood and freedom or the smell of a horse, grilled sausage, the smell of a fire and freshly baked bread. Fragrances produced in an artificial way mimic natural scents as best they can.

Feel well. Go out into the woods and soak up the smells of soil, conifers, forest and wilderness. Just breathing deeply to get as many fragrances as possible into the nose makes the body relax. There is a lot to enjoy in nature both with the nose and in other ways. Sniff out the smells that make you feel well and breathe deeply with pleasure.

Resources

[1] https://www.publish.csiro.au/en/EN19206

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/science/laundry-smell-line.html

[2] 

https://www.ameritasinsight.com/wellness/4-ways-smells-affect-your-health-and-well-being

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5198031/

 
 
 

Related blog posts

It was the first day of the trip, adventurer Mike Fuchs and his friend Eric Folz had just a couple of hours before been dropped off as far north as they could possibly come in Svalbard when they saw them. Two polar bears, one mother and its cub. A situation that could become deadly if the bears decided to have a closer look on their new visitors.

“I know how protective the mothers can be of their cubs. We had to set up our camp in a place that provided a good overview of the location so we could spend the night bear watching. It was both a scary feeling seeing them so early into our trip, but it was also very fascinating”, says Mike Fuchs.

Wouldn't it be exciting to spend the night right in the middle of a zoo? – That is exactly what you can do at Skånes Djurpark, a wildlife park in southern Sweden. At their campsite, Camp Oak, you stay in the park after it closes and will make yourself at home in a Nordic tipi from Tentipi. When the night comes you might just fall asleep to the wolves’ howls.

Skånes Djurpark is a Wildlife Park with a long history, it dates back to 1952. It focuses on animals from the Nordic area and has always lived by the ruling with “no animals in cages”. The animals live in large paddocks that recreates the animals’ natural environments.

Lennart Pittja is a Sámi entrepreneur with a mission: with his world-renowned eco-tourism company he wants to spread the knowledge about his people – the Sami, indigenous of northern Scandinavia and Russia. With over 20 years of experience as a wildlife guide and nature photographer in the arctic region he started Sápmi Nature Camp. Where his guests stay in Nordic tipis from Tentipi on his reindeer herding land outside of Gällivare, in northern Sweden.

At Sapmi Nature camp you can experience real winter, see the northern lights, eat traditional Sami food, and have a cultural exchange in a genuine atmosphere. The scenic location has gained attraction from around the world. In 2017 it was listed by National Geographic as one of the top 21 places in the world to visit if you care about the planet.

Prepare before setting out for winter camping. Here are nine tips and tricks from Tentipi about what you need to think of before you go: the right tent for winter camping, how to pack the snow, comfort in snow, which tent pegs to use, where to pitch the tent, about snow weight, what heat sources can be combined with the tent, how to make a fire safely and other equipment.

Choose tents according to occasion, different tent types work differently at winter camping. When it’s icy, the tent needs to be more robust than a tent which is exclusively used in summer. The tent frame needs to withstand a certain amount of snow and functional ventilation is important. If you want to use a heat source, for example a fireplace or a stove, the tent needs to have ventilation openings both at ground level and at the top.  Without a heat source, a smaller tent is preferable, as it heats up faster when the air volume is smaller.

A tent from Tentipi is a Nordic tipi and the tent has eight or nine sides, if it is not the smallest that has six sides. In the smallest tent you can stand straight if you are less than 160 centimetres long and in the largest you can get together several thousand people. The tent is versatile in more ways. Continue to read to see why these tents are so flexible and adaptable. This blog post is about the smaller tents in Tentipi's range, tents used by adventurers, families, hikers and others who want to live close to nature for a shorter or longer period of time.

1 3 4 5
 
 

Subscribe to newsletter