Various -worts, violets, meadowsweets, verbena (lemony), and berries. Herbs will be dills, sages, anise (alpine)/licorice (marsh)/fennel (marsh, cultivated), chamomile (which has a light hay smell), linden (mildly spiced floral), and ginger (more temperate zones). Musk glands will be present, too, and a valuable trade commodity. Add pine, turpentine, and aging leather for more masculine scents.

Vanilla is New World. Strawberries as a food is New World too, but as a teensy-weensy Arctic Zone berry for fragrance makes sense. However there are plentiful other arctic & temperate berries, many not translated outside Scandinavia, for fragrances.

Due to Slavic trade routes to the Black Sea you get a penchant for cardamom, peppercorns, cinnamon, clove, and more ginger, leaving a notable presence upon their desserts.

Back to PbP work, just got the epic soundtrack down last night! 

Do check out Lindybeige's excellent interview with John Rosetti, one of the contestants participants in what is sometimes called "the first Reality Television Show ever" Iron Age Man on the BBC.

He makes one comment that really sticks out to me.  When asked about hygene, he explains that they did set up a system whereby everyone got a bath once a week. 

When asked if BO was a problem, he simply answered that pretty much everyone smelled like woodsmoke.  So most likely people in the ancient and medieval world smelled like woodsmoke and herbal soap. I do think that our ideas of people in the past being filthy are wildly exaggerated by the victorians as mentioned previously.

Quote from: SHARK on November 02, 2020, 08:29:33 AM
Greetings!

I have several women players that have asked me, "What do Norse women smell like, Mr. Historian?" and shrieking at me, "We don't have to smell like goat, do we?"

If they are worried about smelling like goat then I am glad that you did not get on to the feminine hygiene product discussion.

Quote from: GameDaddy on November 02, 2020, 03:11:12 PM
Well, when it comes to Nordic women, they are really big on Sauna's, and doing a Sauna get a hot hot bath with soap and steamy water, combined with a dip into a frigid ice covered lake for a few minutes, and then, when all that is done, you get into the steamroom or Sauna and then bake the artic freeze right out of your bones, usually for more than an hour. The result is one comes out super clean, and free from most smells or odors, at least until one dresses and then toils for a day or two, and then it is back to the Sauna, especially during the winter.

I suppose some smell and taste like Reindeer as well, But I personally haven't travelled in those social circles.

It takes *far* less than a day around an open fire and animals before you and your clothes smell like smoke and animals. Everyone here is agreed that the vikings bathed and were generally clean and well-groomed. The issue is that they're living in a big longhouse with open fires and animals.

This wasn't like other eras where the nobles lived in a manor that was separate from the working farms. In the classical viking era, everyone - nobles, huscarls, servants, and many animals - all lived together in a huge longhouse heated mainly by a central hearth. There were strong status divisions, but essentially everyone was a farmer working on the farm in some way.

When I was running viking-era adventures, that was something I emphasized. It's a very different style of living from modern urban life. A misconception I sometimes see in TV/film portrayals is picturing a longhouse as a big, mostly-empty ceremonial hall. Really, though, it was a bustling center of activity, and particularly in the winter, it was really damn full.

That was my thought when I played Skyrim and entered the Jarl's hall for the first time. Magnificent place... where the fuck is everyone? Every NPC in the game world could fit in that place - someone counted them up, 200 or so.

Most open world games are depressingly empty of people.

When I bbq, I smell like bbq (thus achieving the epitome of delicious). 

Combine constant open fires and poor ventilation, and you're going to get deeply ingrained smoke smells in everything. However, its odd how our brains filter out "familiar" smells for anything that's not familiar.

Thus, anyone who adds an unusual fragrance will get noticed. 

...especially by monsters.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on November 02, 2020, 09:42:28 PM
Most open world games are depressingly empty of people.

Oh, yes. I remember Fallout 4 and Diamond City--the big settlement--had only a few score people in it (most unnamed). Your own settlements were usually capped in the mid-20s (without mods), and for some of the big ones, that seemed rather barren.

Quote from: HappyDaze on November 02, 2020, 11:35:52 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on November 02, 2020, 09:42:28 PM
Most open world games are depressingly empty of people.

Oh, yes. I remember Fallout 4 and Diamond City--the big settlement--had only a few score people in it (most unnamed). Your own settlements were usually capped in the mid-20s (without mods), and for some of the big ones, that seemed rather barren.

That's probably a processing issue. All those objects and NPC take processing power to rend and run any scrips. That's the reason why FO4 settlements have a build limit. If you lay too many objects in close proximity in one area it begins to cause processing problems and the game may freeze or crash. I have a mod to exceed build limits and I ended up having to reduce graphic quality a bit, cuz it started causing problems in some settlements when I was in build mode--causing my screen to flicker and my game would sometimes freeze. I ended up looking up info on these issues one time and read somewhere that settlers caused it the worse, cuz they also have a bunch of scrips to run for animations, random dialog, and such, and people who run sim-settlements with lots of settlers tend to run into a lot of problems.

It may even bug your settlement as well. One of my settlements was bugged and every settler got un-assigned from their tasks and couldn't be assigned to anything. I had to leave for days in game time before I could reassign them again. And even then, the merchants in one of the buildings won't even talk to me anymore. I've basically given up on it, cuz apparently when they get this bugged only way to "fix" them is to dismantle everything you built and store everything in your workbench, leave for the settlement a while, then come back and build it up again (which ain't gonna happen).

jhkim makes a good point.

Back when I was in Scouts, it didn't take much to wind up smelling of woodsmoke -- just standing downwind of the fire for a few minutes would do. And those were open-air firepits, not inside a longhouse!

Having worked in a poultry processing plant three summers during my college days, I can attest that there are very few smells one cannot acclimate to given enough time.  The first couple of days, the smell never goes away.  Three months later, when you walk in you notice it as a minor thing for a couple of minutes then forget about it.  Agree with everyone else--different smells are what stand out. 

On the other hand, many people have a narrow range of particular smells that they never seem to acclimate to.  (For me, it is cigarette smoke.)  If you are person in a medieval or earlier Norse society, chances are that wet goat or burning peat or something else is something you can deal with because of long exposure, but it nags at you subconsciously.  Makes a fun quirk for a character that is irritable all the time. 

Imagine the smell...

This has been a compelling, interesting and exciting thread. I have decided for future games that viking or viking like females shall smell of smoke & kereosene, and shall endeavor to refrain from blasting the first half of "fat bottom girls" by queen anytime they make an in-game appearance.

Quote from: VisionStorm on November 03, 2020, 06:15:06 AM
That's probably a processing issue.

No doubt. It's an issue that should be addressed. Basically most of the innovation for a couple of decades has gone into graphics. Imagine if it'd gone into gameplay and worldbuilding? Questions like the OP's would be answered in-game.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on November 04, 2020, 12:36:23 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on November 03, 2020, 06:15:06 AM
That's probably a processing issue.

No doubt. It's an issue that should be addressed. Basically most of the innovation for a couple of decades has gone into graphics. Imagine if it'd gone into gameplay and worldbuilding? Questions like the OP's would be answered in-game.

If it makes you feel better, I think we're hitting peak levels on graphics and developers are slowly starting to turn their attention to other aspects.

I just... kinda wish they'd hurry the fuck up with it

Someone needs to do an RPG supplement with a Scratch-n-Sniff sheet!!!

"After the battle you come upon the beautiful Norse shield-bearer that saved you. She smiles confidently at you as she lifts her shield upon her sweat-drenched shoulder, from under her arms you smell G-12".

What do you do?

Then you watch watch everyone pull out their sheets and start scratching. Then watch their faces.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on November 04, 2020, 12:36:23 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on November 03, 2020, 06:15:06 AM
That's probably a processing issue.

No doubt. It's an issue that should be addressed. Basically most of the innovation for a couple of decades has gone into graphics. Imagine if it'd gone into gameplay and worldbuilding? Questions like the OP's would be answered in-game.

After 15 years of work, DwarfFortress has an in-game answer for the OP's question, I suspect.