Kraken
Categories: British poems | Legendary creatures | Scandinavian folklore
- For other uses, see Kraken (disambiguation).
Kraken (plural) are a supposed type of sea monster of gargantuan size, said to have been seen off the coast of Norway and Iceland. The earliest extensive description was made by Erik Pontopiddan, bishop of Bergen, in his natural history of Norway (Det første Forsøg paa Norges naturlige Historie, forestillende dette Kongeriges Luft, Grund, Fjelde, Vande, Væxter, Metaller, Mineralier, Steen-arter, Dyr, Fugle, Fiske og omsider Indbyggernes Naturel, samt Sædvaner og Levemaade, Copenhagen, 1752–3). Kraken is the definite article form of krake a word designating an unhealthy animal, or something 'twisted' (cognate with the english crook and crank).
Early accounts, including Pontopiddan's, describe Kraken as animals "the size of a floating island," and the real danger for sailors was not the creature itself, but the whirlpool it created after quickly descending back into the ocean. Kraken were always distinct from sea serpents, also common in Scandinavian lore (Jörmungandr for instance). A representative early description is given by the Swede Jacob Wallenberg in his book Min son på galejen ("My son on the galley") from 1781:
- ... Kraken, also called the Crab-fish, which [according to the pilots of Norway] is not that huge, for heads and tails counted, he is no larger than our Öland is wide [i.e. less than 16 km] ... He stays at the sea floor, constantly surrounded by innumerable small fishes, who serve as his food and is fed by him in return: for his meal, if I remember correctly what E. Pontoppidan writes, last no longer than three months, and another three are then needed to digest it. His excrements nurture in the following an army of lesser fish, and for this reason, fishermen plumb after his resting place ... Gradually, Kraken ascends to the surface, and when he is at ten to twelve fathoms, the boats had better move out of his vicinity, as he will shortly thereafter burst up, like a floating island, spurting water from his dreadful nostrils and making ring waves around him, which can reach many miles. Could one doubt that this is the Leviathan of Job?
The name Kraken never appears in the Norse sagas. However, there are corresponding sea monsters, such as two creatures called hafgufa and lyngbakr described in Örvar-Odds saga (the former is also mentioned in Konungs Skuggsjá).
Since the late 18th century, Kraken have been depicted in a number of ways, primarily as a large octopus-like creature, and it has often been alleged that Pontoppidan's Kraken might have been based on sailors' observations of the giant squid. The earliest descriptions of the creature were more crab- than octopus-like, however, and generally take on traits that associated with large whales rather than giant squids.
In 1802, however, the French malacologist Pierre Denys de Montfort in Historie Naturalle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques, an encyclopedic description of mollusks, recognized the existence of two kinds of giant octopus. One being the kraken octopus, which Denys de Montfort believed had been described not only by Norwegian sailors and American whalers, but also by ancient writers such as Pliny the Elder. The second one being the much larger colossal octopus (the one actually depicted by the image) which reportedly attacked a sailing vessel from Saint-Malo off the coast of Angola. In defense of Denys de Montfort, it should be noted that many of his sources for the "kraken octopus" probably described the very real giant squid, proved to exist in 1878.
| The Kraken by Tennyson |
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Below the thunders of the upper deep; |
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Kraken in Popular Culture
Literature
In 1830, possibly aware of Denys de Montfort's work, Alfred Tennyson published his popular poem "The Kraken" (essentially an irregular sonnet), which disseminated Kraken in English forever fixed with its superfluous the. Tennyson's description apparently influenced Jules Verne's imagined lair of the famous giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea from 1870. Verne also makes numerous references to Kraken, and Pontopiddan in the novel.
According to Philip A. Shreffer in The Lovecraft Companion, it is safe to suppose that Tennyson's portrayal of Kraken also influenced the 20th century horror writer H. P. Lovecraft in his description of the octopus-headed sea monster Cthulhu, which is currently trapped at the bottom of the ocean, until strange æons shall bring about its return to the surface; and which in his short story The Call of Cthulhu is encountered by a Norwegian sailor. [1]
A Tolkien Bestiary by David Day proposes that the Watcher in the Water in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring was based on Kraken, though a meticulous mythographer like Tolkien would hardly have placed Kraken in fresh water. This view have been further contested by those who note that the tentacles of Tolkien's monster is nowhere described as octopus-like, though "The Watcher" does suggest a single creature. In the 2001 film version by Peter Jackson, the Watcher is clearly more similar to our modern view of Kraken.
The book The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham details an almost apocalyptic scenario in which the massive sea creature is the main cause. Although it is made clear in the book that the 'Kraken' of the story is in actual fact a process of invasion by ocean-dwelling aliens, it is still clear that the Kraken is the basis for these aliens and Wyndham has been cited as having based the story on Tennyson's poem.
Cinema and TV
In the 1981 film Clash of the Titans, "Kraken" is given as the name of the creature that is sent to kill Andromeda. In fact this monster, slain by Perseus, was typically referred to as a "ketos" by the ancient Greeks, a word that is best translated by the English phrase "sea monster". The ketos has no historic connection with Kraken.
In the Nickelodeon cartoon "Catscratch", Gordon battles the Kraken in order to gain a full size tail.
Miscellaneous
Kraken, either alone or as a collective of "krakens" (the Norwegian plural, which is never used, would be kraker), has appeared in many games, such as the RPG Dungeons & Dragons, in Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, and in the computer game Age of Mythology.
In the Nintendo game Final Fantasy, there were four elemental "fiends." The octopus-like fiend of water was named Krakken. This monster appears again in Final Fantasy IX as a boss monster near the end of the game.
The PlayStation role-playing video game Suikoden II includes three cephalopod-looking creatures, referred to as Krakens, as recruitable characters. Abizboah is the father, Rulodia is the mother, and Chuchara is thier newborn offspring of unknown gender that lives inside an urn. Abizboah and Rulodia are found living in an underground water system deep within a cave. Unlike typical krakens from literature or other video games they are highly intelligent, non-aggressive, and possess the ability to speak like humans. They can even walk on land for prolonged periods of time. They serve in the player's navy, and can even be used in random encounter battles.
A Colombian heavy metal band is named Kraken.
The Collectible Card Game Magic: The Gathering associates Kraken with blue magic, and they have appeared on many cards. Most of them are cephalopods, though the artwork of the card "Tidal Kraken" depicts a bipedal sea beast with four arms that resembles the one from Clash of the Titans.
The Fable, Blaze and Blade and Earthbound video games all contain boss enemies called Kraken.
Kraken is the name of a rollercoaster in SeaWorld, Orlando, Florida
See also
External links
- The Kraken and the Colossal Octopus, a review from Fortean Times, October 2003.
- Min son på galejan, see p. 54 for the text quoted (PDF).da:Kraken (søuhyre)
de:Kraken (Mythologie) es:Kraken fr:Kraken it:Kraken nl:Kraak (reuzeninktvis) no:Kraken pl:Kraken sv:Kraken