Mythic Monday: Release the Kraken!
July 10, 2017
“Release the kraken!” is one of the most famous lines from Clash of the Titans, a film (and remake) featuring many of the heroes of Greek mythology. However, the massive monster known as the kraken did not dwell among the Greeks, nor is it a part of Greek mythology. Perseus, the hero of Clash of the Titans, would have had to trek all the way to the Greenland Sea, off the coast of Norway, to defeat the kraken. In Norse mythology, Scandinavian legends, and Icelandic sagas (long poetic stories), the kraken was an enormous sea creature believed to feed on whales and ships. Described as crablike or resembling a gigantic octopus or squid, the giant kraken was sometimes mistaken for an island on which foolish sailors tried to land—a mistake no sailor made twice.
A kraken, depicted here as a giant octopus, attacks an unlucky ship on the high seas. Credit: © Vuk Kostic, Shutterstock
Because the kraken was supposed to live among other giant sea creatures—some real, some not—in dark ocean depths, people were not really sure if it existed. In the 1700′s, many scientists still took the kraken myth seriously. In 1735, Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus classified the kraken as a kind of cephalopod, the group of animals that includes octopus and squid. In 1752, Erik Pontoppidan, the bishop of Bergen, Norway, examined what he believed to be a young kraken. He reasoned that an adult kraken would be gargantuan, possibly measuring 1 ½ miles (2.5 kilometers) long. It could easily wrap its tentacles around even the largest ship and drag the vessel beneath the waves. Swedish author Jacob Wallenberg wrote about the kraken in 1781. He added detail to the common belief that fish swarmed over submerged kraken. Wallenberg believed the fish fed on the beast’s wastes. With so many fish congregated around its waste, the kraken could easily scoop up loads of fish for an easy meal.
The kraken was not real, of course, but despite its mythological monster status, it did not possess supernatural abilities. The kraken’s most fearsome mythical qualities were its colossal size and appetite. The legend of the kraken gained popularity through the years, and the beast was mentioned in poems and novels. Today, the kraken is “released” to wreak havoc in films, television shows, and video games. Most scientists today attribute myths of the kraken to the giant squid, a very real creature which measures up to 60 feet (18 meters) long—a far cry from the kraken’s mythic size, but still pretty big. Giant squids are rarely seen alive, however, and there are no records of them dragging a ship to the bottom of the sea—but then, who would record it but the giant squid itself?
