Kraken (Mythology)

The Kraken is perhaps the largest monster ever imagined by mankind. In Nordic folklore, it was said to haunt the seas from Norway through Iceland and all the way to Greenland. The Kraken had a knack for harassing ships and many said it would attack vessels with its strong arms. If this strategy failed, the beast would start swimming in circles around the ship, creating a fierce maelstrom to drag the vessel down. Of course, to be worth its salt, a monster needs to have a taste for human flesh. Legends say that the Kraken could devour a ship’s entire crew at once. But despite its fearsome reputation, the monster could also bring benefits: it swam accompanied by huge schools of fish that cascaded down its back when it emerged from the water. Brave fishermen could thus risk going near the beast to secure a bounteous catch. The strength of the myth became so strong that the Kraken could still be found in Europe’s first modern scientific surveys of the natural world in the 18th century. Not even Carl Linnaeus – father of modern biological classification – could avoid it and he included the Kraken among the cephalopod mollusks in the first edition of his groundbreaking Systema Naturae (1735). The sheer size and fearsome appearance attributed to the Kraken have made it a common ocean-dwelling monster in various fictional works. The 13th century old Icelandic saga Örvar-Odds saga tells of two massive sea-monsters called Hafgufa ("sea mist") and Lyngbakr ("heather-back"). The Hafgufa is believed to be a reference to the Kraken. Whales are the biggest of everything in the world, but the Hafgufa is the greatest monster occurring in the water. It is its nature that it swallows both men and ships and whales and everything that it can reach. It is submerged both by day and night together, and when it strikes up its head and nose above the surface, then it stays at least until the turn of the tide. It could be possible the kraken could have been early sightings of a colossal squid. "Kraken dung" has been found on the shores by Vikings but it has been proven to be amber. The legend may actually have originated from sightings of real giant squid that are variously estimated to grow to 13–30+ m (43–100+ ft) in length, including the tentacles. These creatures normally live at great depths, but have been sighted at the surface and have reportedly attacked ships.