Mythical Creatures
Kraken
Sea Monsters
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Origin Enters written record in 18th-century Norwegian natural history
The kraken is a comparatively late and comparatively documentary monster. It enters print through eighteenth-century Norwegian description, above all Erik Pontoppidan's natural history of Norway, which presents it as a real animal of enormous extent whose back is mistaken for an island and whose descent draws down a whirlpool; earlier Norse references to a sea-monster called the hafgufa exist but the name and the familiar profile are Pontoppidan's. It has an unusual afterlife in that a plausible original was later found: the giant squid, long dismissed, was confirmed as a real deep-water animal in the nineteenth century, which turned a folk-tale into a near miss.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodEnters written record in 18th-century Norwegian natural history 2Tradition: Early modern Scandinavian natural history Origin PeriodNot in the medieval Norse corpus; the Eddas do not have it 2Tradition: Early modern Scandinavian natural history Origin of the NameKraken entered wide literary and scientific circulation through Erik Pontoppidan's eighteenth century natural history of Norway, and the word is generally traced to Scandinavian terms for a twisted or gnarled creature, the same root that gives Norwegian krake, an unhealthy animal or a stunted tree. 2 Attestation
HistoricityLegendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record 2 Legendary Meaning in the Attesting SourceDescribed as an animal so vast its back is mistaken for an island 2 Function
Domain / FunctionThe kraken is described in eighteenth century natural history as an enormous sea creature off the Norwegian coast, capable of resembling a floating island when at the surface and of drawing ships into a whirlpool as it submerges. 1 Cult
Attributes and IconographyPontoppidan's natural history presents him as an animal of such enormous extent that his back is mistaken for an island and his descent draws down a whirlpool. 1 Learn More
A Natural History That Turned into a Legend
The kraken is a comparatively late and comparatively documentary monster. It enters print through eighteenth-century Norwegian description, above all the Natural History of Norway (1752-53) of Bishop Erik Pontoppidan, which presents it as a real animal of enormous extent, an island-sized creature whose back sailors mistake for land and whose descent drags down ships in a whirlpool. Older Norse references to a hafgufa ("sea-mist") lie behind it.
In the nineteenth century Alfred, Lord Tennyson gave it its literary form in the sonnet "The Kraken" (1830), and Jules Verne and later writers fixed the image of a ship-crushing tentacled beast. The modern reinterpretation is zoological: the discovery, and eventual filming, of the giant squid (Architeuthis) and the larger colossal squid gave the legend a plausible natural kernel, and the kraken is now routinely explained as an exaggerated report of real deep-sea cephalopods, an explanation that fits the tentacled version but postdates, and partly reshaped, the island-sized animal that Pontoppidan actually described.
From Bishop's Report to Giant Squid
The kraken enters print as natural history rather than as folklore. Erik Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, described it in his natural history of Norway published in the early 1750s, reporting the accounts of fishermen: a creature so broad that sailors mistook its back for an island, whose descent pulled a whirlpool, and whose feeding grounds fishermen sought out because the fishing above it was good. Pontoppidan was collecting testimony and presenting it as fact, which is what a naturalist of that period did.
The nineteenth century supplied an animal. Large squid carcasses came ashore in Newfoundland and elsewhere in the 1870s, specimens reached museums, and the genus Architeuthis was described. A giant squid does not sink ships and is not the size of an island, but it is large, it has arms, and it was unknown, which was enough for the identification to stick.
That identification is a modern reading and should be labelled as one. It explains some of the reports and it does not explain the island, the whirlpool or the fishing ground. What the sequence does show is a monster moving in the opposite direction from the usual one: not a real animal exaggerated into a legend, but a legend that a real animal was later recruited to explain.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Attested in Region
The kraken enters print through eighteenth-century Norwegian description, above all Pontoppidan's natural history of Norway, which presents it as a real animal of enormous extent whose back is mistaken for an island and whose descent draws down a whirlpool.
Contrasts With
Both are Scandinavian sea monsters, but the kraken is not Norse mythology. Jormungandr belongs to the medieval Eddic material; the kraken is post-medieval natural history, and earlier Norse references to a sea beast called the hafgufa carry neither the name nor the familiar profile.
Related To
This atlas's own Sea Monsters heading-mate, the Kraken: both are sea hazards that threaten passing ships from a fixed location, though Scylla and Charybdis are a paired, twin threat rather than a single creature.
Sources
1. The Natural History of Norway (Det forste Forsog paa Norges naturlige Historie)
Erik Pontoppidan, 1752on the kraken, its appearance at the surface and the danger of its submerging
2. Dictionary of Northern Mythology
Rudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall, D. S. Brewer, 1993entry on kraken, etymology and Pontoppidan's accountView the Source 2. Dictionary of Northern Mythology
Rudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall, D. S. Brewer, 1993art. krakenView the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005the article on the kraken and Scandinavian sea-monstersView the Source Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs
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