The kraken is a legendary sea monster of abnormal size, generally represented as a gigantic cephalopod resembling an octopus or squid, with tentacles large and long enough to wrap around an entire ship. The kraken (or krabben) is a sea monster that has given rise to numerous sea legends: many will remember it in Jules Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. According to tradition, it is an enormous animal, flat and round in shape, with many arms, sighted several times along the coasts of Norway. The Kraken, derives from the Norwegian “Krake” which means (aberration) or (unhealthy animal). This term is also found in the German dictionary, with the meaning of “octopus” and which derives from a Proto-Indian-European root.
Part 1
The kraken (or krabben) is a sea monster that has given rise to numerous sea legends: many will remember it in Jules Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. According to tradition, it is an enormous animal, flat and round in shape, with many arms, sighted several times along the coasts of Norway. Legend has it that centuries ago a ship off the coast of the Caribbean, carrying the largest quantity of Rum ever seen, mysteriously disappeared into the depths without leaving a trace, probably a victim of the Kraken, the legendary sea monster. The kraken is a legendary sea monster of abnormal size, generally depicted as a gigantic cephalopod resembling an octopus or squid, with tentacles large and long enough to wrap around an entire ship. Certainly not a sea serpent or the Kraken, those creatures in fact do not exist, otherwise over the centuries we would have encountered them, and their enormous remains would have been found on some beach. Legend has it that a Kraken attacked a vessel traveling to the Caribbean, demanding the sacrifice of countless barrels of rum. And in honor of this sloppy, gourmand monster, they decided to dedicate a rum with a retro charm to him. The Kraken comes from the Norwegian “Krake” which means (aberration) or (unhealthy animal). This term is also found in the German dictionary, with the meaning of “octopus” and which derives from a Proto-Indian-European root. The Kraken, the giant squid lurking in the depths The fabulous sea monster of Scandinavian mythology could be a type of squid 14 meters long. The Nordic sagas and chronicles of the Middle Ages speak of a terrifying sea creature as big as an island, which moved in the seas between Norway and Iceland. The saga of Oddr the Archer, a 13th-century Icelandic legend, tells of a “huge sea monster” capable of swallowing “men, ships, and even whales.”Similar claims are found in later texts, such as the 16th-century chronicle of the Swede Olaus Magnus, which describes colossal creatures capable of sinking a ship by themselves. By the 18th century, such stories were still around, and it was around this time that the monster began to be called the “kraken,” a name derived from a Norwegian term that originally meant a twisted tree. In 1752, the bishop of Bergen, Erik Ludvigsen Pontoppidan, cited the kraken in his Natural History of Norway: “A beast a mile and a half long, which if it were to seize the largest warship in the world, would be able to drag it under water.” He added: “It lives lurking on the seabed, and only comes to the surface when heated by hellfire.” These hyperbolic descriptions were not entirely imaginative. Pontoppidan, for example, claimed to have noticed that the animal’s expulsions “muddy the waters.” The animal he observed could therefore be a squid, or more precisely a giant squid. The origin of the myth The legend of the kraken arose from the tales of sailors returning from voyages in unknown waters. While in the past Scandinavian navigators had limited their explorations to the North Atlantic, in modern times the field of observation expanded to the entire Pacific. Among seafarers, the story of the “red devil” was widespread, a squid that grabbed shipwrecked people with its tentacles and devoured them; others reported insatiable marine creatures that could reach 12 or 13 meters in length. There was no shortage of testimonies from naval officers who swore they had seen similar animals, causing dismay among scientists. The famous Swedish naturalist Carl Nilsson Linnaeus (known in Italy as Linneo), the father of modern taxonomy, included the kraken in his Systema Naturae (1735), but most researchers were reluctant to accept the existence of the terrible monster from the northern seas.
According to Captain Bouyer, “a sudden movement of the animal broke the harpoon; the part of the tail to which the rope was attached broke, and we managed to bring on board only a fragment of 20 kilos.”
Part 2
An example of this preclusion is the unjust fate of the French naturalist Pierre Denys de Montfort. In 1801, in his Natural History, General and Particular of Molluscs, Monfort mentioned both the “colossal octopus” and the kraken, “the largest animal on our globe.” The French scholar based his reconstruction on Nordic myths and the tales of contemporary sailors, linking them to the descriptions of a gigantic marine creature made by Pliny the Elder. Monfort included in his work a drawing of a gigantic octopus attacking a vessel, an event believed to have occurred off the coast of Angola. That image, destined to become the emblem of the kraken, provoked the unanimous rejection of the scientific community and earned the author lifelong discredit. Nevertheless, the testimonies relating to the existence of the legendary animal did not stop. Captain and whaler Frank Bullen claimed to have seen “a gigantic octopus fighting with a sperm whale.” According to his description, the animal had eyes located at the base of its tentacles, which supports the hypothesis that it could have been a large cephalopod. But the episode that marked a turning point in the history of the kraken occurred in 1861. The French steamship Alecton encountered a six-meter-long squid northeast of the island of Tenerife, in Atlantic waters. Frigate Captain Frédéric Bouyer, in command of the vessel, reconstructed the encounter in a report for the French Academy of Sciences: the animal “seemed to try to avoid the ship,” but the captain gave chase with harpoons and rifles. He also ordered a rope to be tied around its body and hoisted aboard, but in the end the creature managed to wriggle free and dive back into the depths. In any case, Bouyer found himself with a fragment of the animal in his hands, which he sent to the prestigious biologist Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens.
Operators transport a giant squid specimen found in Luarca (Asturias), in September 2003. The waters of the area are one of the Atlantic habitats of the species
Part 3
The giant squid thus entered the world of literature, thanks to works such as The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo, or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. Always attentive to the novelties coming from the scientific world, Verne described in his work the discovery of the Alecton, cited the various mythological and historical references to the animal, and narrated the attack of a giant octopus on the submarine Nautilus. For their part, scientists analyzed the testimonies of sailors and the remains of squid found in the sea or on the beaches and came to the conclusion that they corresponded to a particular species of cephalopod, classified as Architeuthis dux. This creature is still a mystery today. Virtually nothing is known about its life cycle and habits, nor whether it is a single type of squid or whether, instead, different species may be hidden behind the sightings. The cephalopod has only been filmed twice, in 2004 by a Japanese scientific team and in 2012 by a North American channel. Its size is around 10 meters for males and 14 for females. The eye, the largest in the animal kingdom, can reach 30 centimeters in diameter, the size of a car hub. Cantabrian home The habitat of the giant squid is located at extreme depths, especially in the Pacific Ocean, but specimens have also been identified in the Atlantic. A famous case is that of the Avilés Trench, at a depth of five thousand meters off the coast of Asturias. Local fishermen have always been used to seeing these creatures in the high seas and have never given much importance to the debate about their existence. It is such a familiar presence in the area that since 1997 the giant squid has even had a museum in its honor, in Luarca, a small town in Asturias. The kraken is therefore a real animal, although not as ferocious as the creature that emerged from the Nordic imagination or from Renaissance bestiaries. To fully understand it from a scientific point of view, there is still a long way to go.
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