The Kraken

It’s been around for hundreds of years, features in myths, legends, and stories, has allegedly sunk hundreds of ships, killed thousands of sailors and has become something of a movie star. So what exactly is the Kraken?

The world first heard of the monster in Norway during the twelfth century.  King Sverre wrote an account of the monster, just one of many that were thought to inhabit the seas. The word Kraken derives from the Norwegian word Krake meaning twisted, pole or stake.  Nordic folklore had the monster-hunting ships from Norway to Greenland.  Sailors, already fearful of the seas that threatened to take their lives, added to the story of the beast. Early descriptions were of a large, tentacled monster that would devour humans.  Over the decades the word Kraken has become synonymous with an enormous, sea-dwelling creature often unlike the original descriptions.  An example of this is the enormous monster featured in the 2010 movie Clash of the Titans.

As the years rolled on, the monster found its way into scientific and naval literature where it was described as a real sea monster to be feared. Ships, it was suggested, were at risk of being pulled under by the beast’s enormous arms, and if that didn’t work the creature was said to have a technique of swimming in circles around a ship in order to create a whirlpool that would suck it under. Illustrations of the creatures often portray them as having many arms, or tentacles, so long that they can reach the top of a ship’s masts and pull it down into the sea. The beast was given much publicity in 1830 when Alfred Lord Tennyson composed and published a sonnet named after the beast.

As with many myths, the story of the monster has its basis in reality. It is the giant squid, for long an almost mythical creature itself, that is believed to have formed the basis of the myth. The tentacles of the giant squid can grow to up to 50 feet in length. Long searched for but rarely seen, the giant squid usually lives at great depths, but has been rumoured to occasionally surface and even attack ships. Much of the animal’s biology is unknown as specimens are not common, but it belongs to the genus Architeuthis. Despite the word kraken being used to describe a variety of monsters from the sea, in all probability, it was originally attributed to the giant squid. Although extremely rare, the larger squid was known to classical Greek scholar Aristotle and the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder described the giant squid in one of his works.

The Kraken
Lord Alfred Tennyson, 1809 – 1892

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

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