Kraken
A sea monster of Norwegian lore so large it was taken for an island, described by Bishop Erich Pontoppidan in the 1750s as round, flat and full of arms.
Meaning
Pontoppidan's Natural History of Norway (English translation, 1755) calls the kraken the largest and most surprising creature in the ocean, and gives its other names: Krabben, Horven, Soe-horven and Anker-trold. The naturalist Henry Lee, writing in 1883, found stories of a sea animal so huge that it looked more like an island than a living thing in the older legends and traditions of northern nations, and argued that the giant squid were the kraken's living representatives.
Origin and history
Lee wrote that Pontoppidan is "generally, but unjustly, regarded as the inventor" of the kraken, and that authors who had never read the bishop's book kept misquoting him: the stories were older than his account.
Lee's evidence for the squid was new. He listed great calamaries of 30 to 52 feet taken off Newfoundland since 1870, among them one found floating near the Grand Banks in October 1871 by the Gloucester schooner B. D. Hoskins.
Was the kraken a giant squid?
Henry Lee thought so. Watching common squid in the tanks of the Brighton Aquarium, he saw them swim half-submerged with their arms trailing, and recognised in that habit the "sea-serpent" of many a well-authenticated story. He believed the same animals lay behind many reports of the Sea serpent.
The giant squid since Lee
The Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal traces the first known record of the giant squid, Architeuthis, to Denmark in the 1500s, where animals found afloat were described as Sea Monks, with a head like a man’s. Only in the mid-1800s did Japetus Steenstrup, the leading cephalopod specialist of the day, conclude that they were very large squid. A giant squid was first recorded alive in 2006, when researchers pulled a 7-metre (24-foot) one to the surface off the Ogasawara Islands, and in 2012 scientists from Japan’s National Science Museum filmed one in its natural habitat for the first time.
Read next
- Next in Cryptids and folklore creaturesSea serpentA giant serpent reported at sea; its best-known appearance was in the harbour of Gloucester, Massachusetts, in August 1817.
- The same shape in Halloween symbolsBlack catThe witch’s cat of Halloween. In English witch lore the devil gave witches familiars, often cats; in English sailors’ lore and in Japan a black cat is a sign of good fortune.
See also
Loch Ness Monster, Champ (Lake Champlain monster), Bigfoot (Sasquatch), Yeti (Abominable Snowman), Mongolian death worm, Chupacabra.
Sources
- The Natural History of Norway, Part II (Erich Pontoppidan, English translation, 1755), Erich Pontoppidan, The Natural History of Norway, Part II (London, 1755), Internet Archive, Part II, section XI (the Kraken); Part II, section XI (continued)
- Sea Monsters Unmasked (Henry Lee, 1883), Henry Lee, Sea Monsters Unmasked (London, 1883), Internet Archive, The Kraken; Preface; The Kraken; Preface
- How Big is the Giant Squid? (Smithsonian Ocean), Clyde Roper and the Ocean Portal Team, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History (Ocean Portal)
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
Added . Last updated .