The kraken (; from , ) is a legendary cryptid of enormous size, per its etymology something akin to a cephalopod, said to appear in the Norwegian Sea off the coast of Norway. It is believed that the legend of the Kraken may have originated from sightings of giant squid, which may grow to in length.
The kraken, as a subject of sailors' superstitions and mythos, was first described in a Norwegian glossary by Christen Jensøn in 1646. Later this creature appears in a travelogue by Francesco Negri in 1700, followed in 1734 by an account from Dano-Norwegian missionary and explorer Hans Egede, who described the kraken in detail and equated it with the hafgufa of medieval lore. However, the first description of the creature is usually credited to the Danish bishop Pontoppidan (1753). He described the kraken as an octopus (polypus) of tremendous size, and wrote that it had a reputation for pulling down ships. The French malacologist Denys-Montfort, of the 19th century, is also known for his pioneering inquiries into the existence of gigantic octopuses.
The great man-hunting octopus entered French fiction when Victor Hugo introduced the octopus of Guernsey lore in his 1866 novel Toilers of the Sea, which he identified with the kraken of legend. This led to Jules Verne's depiction of the kraken in his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, although Verne did not distinguish between octopuses and squids.
Carl Linnaeus may have indirectly written about the kraken. Linnaeus wrote about the Microcosmus genus (an animal with various other organisms or growths attached to it, comprising a colony). Subsequent authors have referred to Linnaeus's writing, and the writings of Thomas Bartholin's cetus called hafgufa, and Christian Franz Paullini's monstrum marinum as "krakens". That said, the claim that Linnaeus used the word "kraken" in the margin of a later edition of Systema Naturae has not been confirmed.
Etymology The word "kraken" in English (in the sense of the sea monster) derives from or of the same sense, which are the definite forms of krake (kraken = "the krake").
According to a Norwegian dictionary, the root meaning of krake is "malformed or overgrown, crooked tree". It originates from Old Norse , which is etymologically related to Old Norse , , cognate with "crook". This is backed up by the Swedish dictionary SAOB, published by the Swedish Academy, which gives essentially the exact same description for the word in Swedish and confirming the lead krak as a diminutive form of krok, Norwegian and Swedish for 'hook/crook'; krake thus roughly translate to "crookie". With time, "krake" has come to mean any severed tree stem or trunk with crooked outgrowths, in turn giving name to objects and tools based on such, notably for the subject matter, primitive anchors and drags (grapnel anchors) made from severed spruce tops or branchy bush trunks outfitted with a stone sinker, known as krake, but also krabbe in Norwegian or krabba in Swedish (). Old Norse mostly corresponds to these uses in modern Icelandic, meaning, among other things, "twig" and "drag", but also "pile barrage-pole" and "boat hook". Swedish SAOB gives the translations of Icelandic as "thin rod with hook on it", "wooden drag with stone sinker" and "dry spruce trunk with the crooked, stripped branches still attached".
Kraken is assumed to have been named figuratively after the meaning "crooked tree" or its derivate meaning "drag", as trunks with crooked branches or outgrowths, and especially drags, wooden or not, readily conjure up the image of a cephalopod or similar. This idea seems to first have been notably remarked by Icelandic philologist Finnur Jónsson in 1920. A synonym for kraken has also been krabbe (see below), which further indicates a name-theme referencing drags.
Synonyms Besides kraken, the monster went under a variety of names early on, the most common after kraken being horven ("the horv"). Icelandic philologist Finnur Jónsson explained this name in 1920 as an alternative form of () and conjectured that this name was suggested by the inkfish's action of seeming to plough the sea.
Some of the synonyms of krake given by Michael Ocampo were, in Danish:
(horven) – harrow (søe-horven) – sea-harrow (søe-kraken) – sea-kraken (kraxen) – alternate spelling of "krakse" (krabben) – named after the drag (grapnel anchor) "crab" (see above) – anchor-troll
Related words Since the 19th century, the word krake has, beyond the monster, given name to the cephalopod order Octopoda in Swedish (krakar) and German (Kraken), resulting in many species of octopuses partly named such, such as the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris), which is named jättekrake ("giant kraken") in Swedish and Gewöhnlicher Krake ("common kraken") in German. The family Octopodidae is also known as Echte Kraken ("true krakens") in German. In Icelandic, octopoda is instead named kolkrabbar ("coal crabs") after the crab nickname, the common octopus simply named kolkrabbi.
The Swedish diminutive form kräkel, a word for a branchy/spiny piece of wood, have given name to a variety of sea dwelling plants in Swedish, most notably furcellaria lumbricalis, a species of red algae. There is also the morphological derivation kräkla (dialectal ), meaning crooked piece of wood, which has given name to primitive forms of whisks and beaters (cooking), made from the tops of trees by keeping a row of twigs as the beating element, resembling the appearance of a cephalopod, but also crosiers and shepherd's crooks.
Shetlandic krekin for "whale", a taboo word, is listed as etymologically related.
General description The kraken was described as a many-headed and clawed creature by Hans Egede (1741), who stated it was equivalent to the Icelanders' hafgufa, but the latter is commonly treated as a fabulous whale (the name meaning "sea reeker", compare a whale blowing water). Erik Pontoppidan (1753), who popularized the kraken to the world, noted that it was multiple-armed according to lore, and conjectured it to be a giant sea-crab, starfish or a polypus (octopus). (Danish); (English); vid. infra. Still, Pontoppidan is considered to have been instrumental in sparking interest for the kraken in the English-speaking world, as well as becoming regarded as the authority on sea-serpents and krakens.
Denys-Montfort (1801) published on two giants, the "colossal octopus" with the enduring image of it attacking a ship, and the "kraken octopod", deemed to be the largest organism in zoology. Denys-Montfort matched his "colossal" with Pliny's tale of the giant polypus that attacked ships-wrecked people, while making correspondence between his kraken and Pliny's monster called the arbor marina. Finnur Jónsson (1920) also favored identifying the kraken as an inkfish (squid/octopus) on etymological grounds.
Nordisk familjebok (1884)
The Swedish encyclopedia Nordisk familjebok gave the following summation of the Kraken myth in 1884:
Historical descriptions Olaus Magnus (1539–1555)
One of the earliest possible descriptions of the kraken, based on its iconography, is found on Swedish writer Olaus Magnus' famous map of Scandinavia from 1539, the , featuring various illustrated sea-monsters. Magnus did not use the term kraken, but did feature a sea monster, in the Norwegian Sea between Norway and Iceland, in the shape of a fish with tentacles growing out of its head, next to another sea monster in the shape of a fish with tusks.
The describes the two monsters as follows:
What measurement Magnus referenced is unknown. It could be period Swedish feet: , Norwegian (Danish) feet: , or something else. At the time of the map's creation, Magnus had been living in exile in Danzig, Poland, since 1527, moving to Venice in 1539 before the map's publication. Applying a generic foot-value of , the eye-diameter given would be something akin to .
Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner (1516–1565) named the tusked creature "swine whale" (), and the horned creature "bearded whale" ().
Later on, in 1555, Magnus released a work expanding on the map, titled (English title: A Description of the Northern Peoples), a massive work describing Scandinavian customs, folklore and nature. In book 21, chapter 5, titled (The Horrible Monsters off the Coasts of Norway), he describes the creature in detail, saying its part of a group of nameless monster fishes outside the Norwegian coast, which by extension are grouped with whales. The following description appears to intermix traits from both whales and squids; for one, he says it is black in color, with a square head the length of 10–12 cubits (roughly , if assumed to be Swedish ells: ), with a body length of 14–15 cubits (roughly ), giving a total length of , which is consistent with sperm whales; but also, spiny and sharp, which could stem from whale barnacles; however, around the head, it is equipped with long rootlike horns akin to the base of an uprooted tree, and its eyes are big, with a circumference of 8–10 cubits (roughly in diameter, the same as on ), the pupils being one cubit (≈ ) in width and flaming red, which is more consistent with squids than any whale. In the dark, fishermen can see the flaming eyes from far away, indicating that these descriptions stem from the evening hours. The "flaming eyes" could stem from bioluminescent photophores, which are found on various squids, such as the Taningia danae, which has two very large photophores on the end of two of its arms, the largest known in the natural world, but also the colossal squid, which actually has light organs in the eyes. Lastly, it has a beard, the hairs thick as goose feathers. Such could be stalked whale barnacles, like Xenobalanus globicipitis, which usually hangs from fins or the lower jaw of whales.
Considering that sperm whales regularly hunt giant squids, and that these testimonies appear to be derived from evening hours, it seems reasonable to think they derive from sperm whales hunting giant squids to the surface. In turn, if these eye dimensions are compared to a modern day giant squid, where a roughly long squid has an eye up to in diameter, giving a rough "length to eye-diameter"-ratio of 1:48, then the theoretical squid Magnus described, given the same ratio, would be roughly long.
Christen Jensøn (1646) The first description of the kraken by name is found in the Norwegian glossary of Christen Jensøn (or Jenssøn) from Askvoll, published in 1646, where he describes the Kraken as a sea monster with many arms that grabs boats down into the abyss.
Francesco Negri (1700) A creature called "sciu-crak" ( , , "sea-kraken") is known from the Italian writer Francesco Negri in his Viaggio settentrionale (Padua, 1700), a travelogue about Scandinavia. The book describes the sciu-crak as a massive "fish" which was many-horned or many-armed. The author also distinguished this from a sea serpent.
Although it has been stated that the kraken () was "described for the first time by that name" in the writings of Erik Pontoppidan, bishop of Bergen, in his Det første Forsøg paa Norges naturlige Historie, "The First Attempt at [a] Natural History of Norway" (1752–53), a German source qualified Pontoppidan to be the first source on kraken available to be read in the German language., p. 594: "Der norwegische Bischoff Pontoppidan ist der erster, welcher uns einer umständliche und deutsche Nachricht von diesem Seethier gegeben hat". A description of the kraken had been anticipated by Hans Egede.
Hans Egede (1729) Hans Egede was possibly the first to have described the kraken using direct period folklore informants, in his Det gamle Grønlands nye perlustration (1729; Ger. t. 1730; tr. Description of Greenland, 1745), drawing from the fables of his native region, the of Norway, then under Danish rule.; (English); (German)