Meet the Kraken

📖 WHAT IS A KRAKEN?

Ancient sea monster · Norse mythology · The terror of sailors

For more than a thousand years, the deepest fear of every Scandinavian sailor wasn't the storm. It wasn't the cold. It was the island that wasn't an island — a vast slumbering shape rising from the dark below the keel.

The kraken haunted the fjords and the open North Atlantic. Norse sagas spoke of hafgufa and lyngbakr — colossal sea-creatures so big that fishermen mistook their backs for new land, only to be dragged under when the "island" sank back into the abyss.

First mentioned in the 13th-century Icelandic saga Örvar-Oddr
The Norse called the largest sea-beasts hafgufa — "sea-mist"
Sailors believed the kraken would surface as a "false island" to lure ships in
Its arms were said to reach a mile long, able to drag the largest warship to the bottom
The first scientific account was written by Bishop Erik Pontoppidan in 1755, in his Natural History of Norway
The name "kraken" comes from the Norwegian word krake, meaning twisted or crooked

"It is round, flat, and full of arms or branches… the largest sea-monster in the world." — Bishop Erik Pontoppidan, Natural History of Norway · 1755

"And there sometimes hath been seen a beast as it were like an island, with great horns standing out of his head, which a man might sail under." — Olaus Magnus, Carta Marina · 1539

🦑 IS IT REAL?

Where myth meets marine biology

For centuries the kraken was dismissed as fishermen's tall tales — until sailors started hauling pieces of one onto the deck. Tentacles longer than rowboats. Eyes the size of dinner plates. Bodies that wouldn't fit in a fishing boat.

Today scientists know almost certainly what was inspiring those terrified sailors: the very real, very enormous deep-sea squids that share the same dark waters as the legend.

The Giant Squid (Architeuthis dux) grows up to 13 metres long
The Colossal Squid reaches 14 metres and 750 kg
Both live in the cold deep ocean — exactly where the legend was born
Beached squid bodies began washing ashore in the 1850s, finally giving naturalists evidence
The first photo of a live giant squid in the wild was taken in 2004
The first video footage of a live giant squid wasn't captured until 2012

"I have ever since the year 1853 been fully convinced that some kind of giant cuttlefish exists in our seas, and I am not now to be convinced that the old stories of the kraken are without foundation." — Japetus Steenstrup, Danish zoologist · 1857

VERDICT: The kraken legend was almost certainly inspired by terrified encounters with real giant squid surfacing near boats and grabbing at sailors. The mythical version is bigger, smarter, and meaner — but the real animals beneath the waves are honestly close enough.

🌊 THE KRAKEN IN CULTURE

From sailors' nightmare to silver-screen superstar

The kraken crawled out of the ocean and into our imagination. Today it appears in poems, novels, blockbuster movies, video games, and even sports team logos — and every retelling makes it bigger and more terrifying than the last.

🎬 ON SCREEN

Clash of the Titans (1981 / 2010) — the legendary "Release the Kraken!" moment
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) — Davy Jones's loyal pet
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) — attacks the Nautilus
The Meg 2: The Trench (2023) — modern monster cameo

📚 IN BOOKS

Alfred Lord Tennyson — "The Kraken" (1830 poem)
Jules Verne — Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)
Herman Melville — Moby-Dick features a "kraken-like" giant squid
China Miéville — Kraken (2010 novel)
John Wyndham — The Kraken Wakes (1953)

🎮 IN GAMES

God of War II — battles a kraken on the back of a Titan
Sea of Thieves — surfaces unpredictably to ruin your voyage
Subnautica — the Reaper Leviathans channel pure kraken energy
Final Fantasy series — recurring monster across many games

"Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth…" — Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Kraken · 1830

😱 HOW BIG COULD IT BE?

Could it really sink a ship?

The mythical kraken was said to be a mile and a half wide. Modern giant squid top out at about 13 metres. So the question every sailor has asked since 1755 is the same one we ask today: how big could it really get?

🧍 Human

2 m

🐋 Orca

8 m

🦑 Giant Squid

13 m

🦑 Colossal Squid

14 m

⛵ Galleon Ship

50 m

🐳 Blue Whale

30 m

🐙 KRAKEN

1.5 km!?

The Bishop's 1755 estimate of 1.5 kilometres across was almost certainly a wild exaggeration based on garbled sailor accounts. But scaled up from a real giant squid, even a creature three or four times larger — say 50 metres — would be more than enough to wrap its arms around a sailing ship and drag her down.

A real giant squid can already grab small boats — kayakers in Japan have been pulled at by curious squid
Giant squid have been observed in epic battles with sperm whales, leaving circular sucker scars
A 50 m kraken would weigh tens of tonnes — enough mass to roll a galleon by itself
The strongest known squid suckers can grip with hundreds of newtons each — and they have thousands of them

COULD IT SINK A SHIP? A real giant squid? Probably not a galleon — but it could absolutely capsize a small fishing boat. A truly mythical kraken at the legendary scale? Without a doubt. And we've still seen less than 20% of the deep ocean in any detail. Whatever's down there… we don't know yet.

🌊 THE MYSTERY CONTINUES…

Most of the deep ocean remains unmapped. Sunlight cannot reach more than 1% of it. The pressure is crushing. The dark is absolute.

Could something larger than the giant squid still be down there, sleeping in the trenches, waiting to surface?

The legend may be old. The truth may be older.