The Attack!

Artist Unknown, (The Attack!)

The kraken is a enormous mythical cephalopod-like sea monster in Scandinavian folklore. According to Norse sagas, the kraken terrorized sailors off the coasts of Norway and Greenland. It has been a staple of superstitions and legends through the centuries, becoming a common ocean-dwelling monster in fictional works.

The word ‘kraken’ comes from the Swedish and Norwegian language, the definite form of the word “krake’ denoting an unhealthy animal or smoething twisted. ‘Krake’ (plural) and ‘kraken’ (singular) in modern German means ‘octopus’. ‘Kraken is also an old euphemism in Swedish for whales, a word once believed that would summon whales.

The Kraken

The Fear of All Seamen: The Kraken

Kraken were also extensively described by Erik Pontoppidan, bishop of Bergen, in his Det første Forsøg paa Norges naturlige Historie “The First Attempt at [a] Natural History of Norway” (Copenhagen, 1752). Pontoppidan made several claims regarding kraken, including the notion that the creature was sometimes mistaken for an island and that the real danger to sailors was not the creature itself but rather the whirlpool left in its wake. However, Pontoppidan also described the destructive potential of the giant beast: “it is said that if [the creature’s arms] were to lay hold of the largest man-of-war, they would pull it down to the bottom.”