The Kraken was the legendary colossal sea-monster of Norse and Scandinavian lore — a vast, many-armed beast of the deep ocean off Norway and Iceland, so enormous that it was mistaken for an island, capable of dragging entire ships down into the depths and churning the sea into a deadly whirlpool when it dived. The most famous sea-monster in the world, it has become the very archetype of the terror of the deep.
The Monster of the Norwegian Sea
The Kraken (from the Norwegian krake) was a gigantic sea-creature said to dwell in the deep, cold waters off the coasts of Norway, Iceland and Greenland. Described as the largest of all sea-monsters, it was imagined as a vast beast — often depicted with enormous tentacles or arms like a colossal octopus or squid, though early accounts described it as crab-like or simply as an immense rounded creature. So huge was the Kraken that when it rose to the surface, its back was mistaken for a chain of islands or a stretch of land, and sailors who landed upon it found, too late, that the “island” was a living monster.
The Sinker of Ships
The Kraken was a terror to sailors in two ways. When it surfaced near a ship, its sheer size and its great arms could seize and crush the vessel, dragging it and its crew down into the depths. And when the monster dived back into the deep, it pulled down such a vast volume of water that it created a tremendous whirlpool or maelstrom on the surface, sucking down any ship caught nearby. Thus even a ship that survived the monster's rising might be doomed by its descent, swallowed by the swirling vortex left in its wake. The disappearance of ships in the northern seas was laid at the Kraken's door.
The Lure of the Fish
There was, however, a strange benefit to the Kraken in the lore. Fishermen observed (in the legends) that great shoals of fish gathered above and around the submerged monster, feeding on its droppings or drawn to it — so that a sudden abundance of fish in a particular spot was a sign that the Kraken lay below. Bold or desperate fishermen might fish directly over the monster for the rich catch, knowing that they did so at terrible risk, for the Kraken might rise at any moment and drag them down. To fish above the Kraken was to gamble a great catch against one's life.
The Archetype of the Deep's Terror
The Kraken endures as the most famous sea-monster in all the world — the colossal many-armed beast of the Norse deep, the island that is a monster, the sinker of ships and maker of whirlpools. From Scandinavian legend it passed into the wider imagination, becoming the model for countless tales of giant squid and tentacled horrors of the deep, and the very byword for the terror that lurks in the unknown depths of the sea. It embodies the ancient and universal dread of the ocean's darkness and the vast, unknowable things that may dwell below — the monster so great it could be mistaken for the land itself, waiting beneath the waves.
So vast it was mistaken for an island, it dragged whole ships into the deep and churned the sea to a whirlpool when it dived — the great Kraken, terror of the northern deep.