The kraken is well known modern man according to sea legends preserved from ancient times. Belief in sea monsters can be traced in the epic of most countries of the world that had access to the sea. The giant squid is found in many sources, under many different names. It was he who was once blamed for most maritime disasters.

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Kraken - the appearance and habits of a sea monster

There are two main versions of the description of the appearance of this monster. The first is a giant squid, the second is an octopus. At the beginning of the 19th century, near Iceland, sailors saw a giant glowing jellyfish, which was also called the kraken. If you believe the entries in the ship's log, its diameter was about 70 m. However, often any large sea monster with tentacles is called a kraken. In rare cases, the kraken resembles a crab, as well as a fish, which brings to mind the legends about - giant fish with a suction cup that stopped ships.

It was only in the 19th century that the French zoologist Pierre-Denis de Montfort proposed to distinguish two varieties of kraken. The first is a giant squid that lives in northern waters. The scientist believed that it was precisely such a kraken that Pliny described. The second variety is a giant octopus that lives in the waters of the southern hemisphere of the planet.

In all legends, without exception, large sizes are attributed to the kraken. According to the legends appearance miraculously described the sailors who survived after his attacks. So, the northern epic claims that the back of the kraken protrudes from the water and can reach up to a kilometer in size. Its tentacles are so large that they can cover absolutely any ship with them. Even the largest warships could not stand during the attack of the kraken.

The size of the giant squid or octopus is so large that sailors of past centuries sometimes mistook it for an island. There are sailors' stories that describe encounters with a creature of this size. Their plots are similar - the team landed on the island, which suddenly plunged into sea ​​waters. At the same time, a whirlpool often formed, dragging the ship with it. The Kraken has often been blamed for shipwrecks and maritime disasters.

The kraken doesn't break ships for fun. According to the legends, he needs fresh human flesh for food. He ate people who ended up at sea after the destruction of the ship. Surviving after a kraken attack is quite difficult. Legends describe that, like the octopus, it secretes a dark liquid. But the "ink" of the kraken, unlike that secreted by the octopus, is poisonous.

The legendary monster spends most of its time hibernating at the bottom of the sea. As a rule, at this time, part of his torso protrudes above the water, forcing sailors to mistake him for an island. Fishermen believed that a lot of fish always swim around the kraken. If you throw nets near it, you can get a solid catch. The Bishop of Bergen explained this by the fact that the kraken emits great amount nutritious excrement that attracts fish.

Kraken in various sources

The most common references to the kraken are found in northern mythology. It is believed that Icelandic sailors were the first people to see this monster. with my own eyes. However, it is impossible to call it part of only the northern epic, since giant sea monsters were part of the mythology of many countries - along with other creatures. There are many synonyms for the word "kraken" - kraks, krabben, pulp, polypus.

Medieval Europe was no exception. Sailors and travelers have repeatedly described their encounters with this sea monster that destroys ships with its tentacles. Pirate legends claimed that the kraken kept the treasures of sunken ships. He acts as an analogue of living on land.

The first handwritten medieval source describing this monster was the records of Bishop Eric Pontoppidan of Bergen dating from the middle of the 18th century. The author wrote down oral legends that were widespread among seafarers. He described the appearance of the monster differently than other authors. According to Pontoppidan, the kraken is a mixture of crab and fish of enormous size, comparable to the size of a small island. When moving, he formed whirlpools that pulled ships to the bottom.

In addition, the Bishop of Bergen wrote that the harmfulness of the kraken also lies in introducing confusion into the compilation of maps. Cartographers often mistook a huge clam for an island and put it on maps. It was not possible to find such islands for the second time.

The giant squid was also known in ancient Rome under the name polypus. Pliny the Elder wrote that he attacks not only on the high seas. Polypus also appeared on the sea coasts, where fish was salted. She was one of the favorite treats of thunderstorm sailors around the world.

According to Pliny, the polypus caused a lot of problems by eating all salted fish. They tried to hunt him with dogs, but he ate them too. In the end, the giant squid was captured and sent to Lucullus, a proconsul who was known for his love of sumptuous feasts and gourmet dishes. The length of the tentacles of the polypus ancient rome was about 9 meters, and the thickness of the body was comparable to a human.

Encounters with the kraken - sea legends

In the 18th century, the St. Petersburg Bulletin wrote about a huge squid washed ashore in Norway. It was discovered by Norwegian sailors. They claimed that this is the real kraken, described in many legends.

In 1774, an English newspaper described the story of Captain Robert Jameson who saw the kraken. Team members confirmed his words. The captain's testimony about this case was given in court under oath. Robert Jameson spoke of a huge creature he encountered while sailing. Its length was about 3 kilometers, and its height was about 10 meters. The alleged kraken appeared from the water column, then disappeared again. In the end, he dived into the depths, causing a great wave of the waters. At the place where the sea monster swam, the sailors got a good catch, filling almost the entire ship with fish.

In 1811, an English corvette met with a kraken, making a voyage from Chile to the American shores. According to the stories of the team, he suddenly appeared above the water almost in front of the bow of the ship - just ten meters from it. Its size was impressive - sailors compared the creature to an island. At full speed, the ship crashed into the kraken, feeling almost no resistance. The sea monster did not survive the collision with the corvette. His remains went to the bottom.

Kraken and science

As early as the 18th century, there were suggestions that a particularly large squid or octopus could be a kraken. But until the end of the 19th century, science considered the existence of giant clams to be an invention of superstitious sailors. Skeptics explained the legends about them by volcanic activity, rapid and sudden change of currents, as well as the appearance and disappearance of small islands - all this is typical of the coasts of Iceland.

However, at the end of the 19th century, the discovery of Canadian sailors proved that the kraken is not only a character scary stories, but also existing animal. They spotted a giant squid sitting firmly on the shallows and helped bring it to the science center. Until the beginning of the 20th century, several more individuals were found washed up on the shore and surfaced on the surface of the ocean. It is believed that some disease killed them.

Science does not deny the existence of squids 10-12 meters long. In addition, it is known that octopuses living at great depths reach a larger size. This is proved by the traces of their suckers, found by fishermen on the skin of whales and sperm whales. It was large and giant squids that served as prototypes for creating the image of a sea monster that killed sailors.


Not a single living individual resembling the legendary kraken has been caught to date. Museums display those that were found dead. Finds in the form of separate body parts of huge squids are also not uncommon. The largest individual caught alive reached 10 m in length. In addition, there is a giant squid that is found in the waters of Antarctica. It was first described in the 20th century from tentacles found in the stomach of a sperm whale. In the 21st century, videotapes filmed by scientists appeared giant squid, which reached 3-4 m. The existence of giant octopuses is still not proven.

There are constantly stories about the Kraken that are full of fiction. For example, it is assumed that there is such a being as Great Kraken living in the territory bermuda triangle. Then the fact that ships disappear there becomes understandable.


Who is this Kraken? Someone considers him an underwater monster, someone - a demon, and someone higher intelligence, or superintelligence. However, scientists still received truthful information at the beginning of the last century, when real krakens were in their hands. Until that moment, it was easier for scientists to deny their existence, because until the 20th century, they had only eyewitness stories to think about.

Does the kraken really exist? Yes it's real existing organism. This was first confirmed at the end of the 19th century. Fishermen fishing near the shore noticed something very bulky, firmly sitting aground. They made sure that the carcass did not move, and approached it. The dead kraken was taken to the science center. Over the next decade, several more such bodies were caught.

Verril, an American zoologist, was the first to investigate them, and the animals owe their name to him. Today they are called octopuses. These are terrible and huge monsters, belong to the class of mollusks, that is, in fact, relatives of the most harmless snails. They usually live at a depth of 200 to 1000 meters. Somewhat deeper in the ocean live octopuses 30-40 meters long. This is not an assumption, but a fact, since the actual size of the kraken was calculated from the size of the suckers on the skin of the whales.

In legends, they spoke of him like this: a block erupted from the water, enveloped the ship with tentacles and carried it to the bottom. It was there that the kraken from legend fed on drowned sailors.


The kraken is an ellipsoid, jelly-like substance that is shiny and grayish in color. It can reach a diameter of 100 meters, while it practically does not react to any irritants. She doesn't feel pain either. It is, in fact, a huge jellyfish that looks like an octopus. She has a head a large number of very long tentacles with suckers in two rows. Even one tentacle of a kraken can destroy a ship.

There are three hearts in the body, one main, two gills, because they drive the blood, which blue color, through the gills. They also have kidneys, liver, stomach. Creatures do not have bones, but they do have brains. The eyes are huge, complexly arranged, approximately like a person's. The sense organs are well developed.

Blind, dense, ancient sleep is embraced,

Under the formidable firmament, in the abysses of the sea,

The kraken lurks - to the depths of such

Neither a hot beam nor a thunderous peal

Not reaching...

So, buried in a gigantic abyss,

Feeding on shellfish, he will sleep,

As long as the flame, raising the water column,

Will not announce the end of time.

Then, roaring, the monster will emerge,

And death will end the ancient dream.

This poem by Tennyson is inspired by ancient legends about giant octopuses - the ancient Hellenes called these monsters polyps, and the Scandinavians called krakens.

Pliny also wrote about a giant cephalopod killed by fishermen:

“His head was shown to Lucullus: it was the size of a barrel and had a capacity of 15 amphoras (about 300 liters). He was also shown limbs (i.e. arms and tentacles); their thickness was such that a person could hardly grasp them, they were knotted like clubs, and 30 feet (about 10 meters) long.

A medieval Norwegian scribe described the kraken as follows:

“In the Norwegian Sea there are very strange and terrible-looking fish, whose name is unknown. At first glance, they seem cruel creatures and inspire fear. Their head is covered on all sides with sharp thorns and long horns, resembling the roots of a tree just pulled out of the ground. Huge eyes (5-6 meters in circumference) with large (about 60 centimeters) bright red pupils are visible to fishermen and dark night. One such sea monster can drag a huge loaded ship to the bottom, no matter how experienced and strong its sailors are.”

Engravings from the time of Columbus and Francis Drake, among other sea monsters, often depicted giant octopuses attacking fishing boats. The kraken that attacked the ship is depicted in a painting hanging in the chapel of St. Thomas in the French city of Saint-Malo. According to legend, this painting was donated to the church by the surviving passengers of a sea sailing ship that fell victim to a kraken.

BLOODTHIRSY BEASTS FROM THE Abyss of the Sea

However, scientists were skeptical about such stories, including the kraken in the same company of mythical creatures along with mermaids and sea snakes. But everything changed in 1873, when the corpse of a giant cephalopod was found on the coast of Newfoundland. marine biologists identified the find as an unknown species of squid, called the giant squid (Architeuthis). The first discovery of a dead giant was followed by another series of finds in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Zoologists even suggested that some kind of pestilence attacked the krakens in the ocean depths at that time. The size of the mollusks was truly gigantic, for example, a squid 19 meters long was found off the coast of New Zealand. The giant's tentacles were of such a size that lying on the ground, the squid could reach them almost to the 6th floor, and the eyes were 40 centimeters in diameter!

Having received material evidence of the existence of giant octopuses, scientists began to treat stories of kraken attacks on people with less skepticism, especially since medieval legends about bloodthirsty sea monsters have found modern confirmation.

So, in March 1941, in the Atlantic, a German raider sank the English transport Britannia, from whose crew only twelve people escaped. The surviving sailors were drifting on a life raft waiting for help, when at night a giant squid, emerging from the ocean depths, grabbed one of the raft's passengers with its tentacles. The unfortunate man did not have time to do anything - the kraken easily tore the sailor from the raft and carried him into the depths. The people on the raft waited with horror for the new appearance of the monster. The next victim was Lieutenant Cox.

Here is how Cox himself wrote about it:

“The tentacles quickly swept over my legs, and I felt terrible pain. But the octopus immediately released me, leaving me writhing in the throes of hell ... The next day I noticed that large ulcers were bleeding where the squid grabbed me. To this day I still have traces of these ulcers on my skin.”

Lieutenant Cox was picked up by a Spanish ship, and because of this, his wounds were examined by scientists. By the size of the scars from the suckers, it was possible to establish that the squid that attacked the sailors was very small in size (7-8 meters in length). Most likely, it was only a cub of architeuthis.

However, larger krakens can also attack ships. For example, in 1946, the Brunswick tanker, a 150-meter long ocean-going vessel, was attacked by a giant octopus. A monster more than 20 meters long emerged from the depths and quickly overtook the ship, moving at a speed of about 40 km per hour.

Having overtaken the “prey”, the kraken rushed to the attack and, clinging to the side, tried to break through the skin. According to zoologists, the hungry kraken mistook the ship for a large whale. In this case, the tanker was not damaged, but not all ships were so lucky.

MONSTERS OF TERRIBLE SIZES

What are the largest krakens? The largest architeuthis washed ashore had a length of 18-19 meters, while the diameter of the suction cups on their tentacles was 2-4 centimeters. However, the British zoologist Matthews, who examined 80 sperm whales caught by whalers in 1938, wrote: “Almost all male sperm whales bear traces of suckers ... squids on their bodies. Moreover, traces with a diameter of 10 centimeters are a fairly common thing. It turns out that 40-meter krakens live in the depths?!

However, this is far from the limit. Naturalist Ivan Sanderson, in Chasing the Whales, stated: "The largest footprints on the body of large sperm whales were about 4 inches (10 cm) in diameter, but scars over 18 inches (45 cm) in diameter were also found." Such tracks could only belong to a kraken with a length of at least 100 meters!

Such monsters may well hunt whales and sink small ships. More recently, New Zealand fishermen caught a giant cephalopod called the "colossal squid" (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni).

This giant can reach, according to scientists, even larger sizes than architeuthis. However, you can be sure that other types of giant octopuses lurk in the depths of the sea. In this regard, it is worth remembering that, judging by the surviving descriptions, the kraken was not a squid, but an octopus of monstrous size.

Modern science does not know octopuses larger than a few meters. However, in 1897, a huge dead octopus was found on the coast of Newfoundland, which was mistaken for a giant squid. According to the measurements of Yale University professor A. Verrill, the octopus had a body about 7.5 meters long and twenty-meter tentacles.

Of this monster, only the part preserved in formalin has survived. As shown modern research, the monster washed ashore was not a squid at all, but a gigantic octopus! Probably, this was a true kraken, young and small in size. And his relatives, larger than the largest whale, are still hiding from science in the depths of the ocean ...

Marine life is very diverse and sometimes frightening. The most bizarre forms of life can lurk in the abyss of the seas, because humanity has not yet been able to fully explore all the expanses of water. And sailors have long had legends about a powerful creature that can sink an entire fleet or convoy with its mere appearance. About a creature whose appearance inspires horror, and whose size makes you freeze in amazement. About a creature the likes of which are not in the stories. And if the sky above the world belongs to and, the earth under their feet belongs to the Tarascans, then the expanses of the seas belong to only one creature - the kraken.

What does a kraken look like?

To say the kraken is huge would be an understatement. For centuries, a kraken resting in the abyss of water can reach simply unimaginable sizes of several tens of kilometers. It is truly huge and scary. Outwardly, it is somewhat similar to a squid - the same elongated body, the same tentacles with suction cups, all the same eyes and special body for movement under water using air draft. That's just the size of the kraken and the usual squid are not even close comparable. The ships that disturbed the peace of the kraken during the renaissance sank from just one hit with a tentacle on the water.

The Kraken is mentioned as one of the most feared sea monsters. But there is someone to whom even he must obey. IN different nations it is called by different names. But all the legends say the same thing - this is the God of the seas and the lord of all sea creatures. And it doesn't matter how you call this super creature - one of his orders is enough for the kraken to throw off the shackles of a hundred-year sleep and do what he was instructed to do.

In general, legends often mention a certain artifact that gave a person the ability to control the kraken. This creature is by no means lazy and absolutely harmless, unlike its owners. A kraken can sleep for centuries, or even millennia without an order, without disturbing anyone with its awakening. Or maybe in a few days to change the face of the whole coast, if his peace is disturbed or if he was given an order. Perhaps, among all creatures, the kraken has the greatest power, but also the most peaceful character.

One or many

You can often find references to the fact that many such creatures are in the service of the Sea God. But to imagine that this is true is very difficult. The huge size of the kraken and its strength make it possible to believe that this creature can be on different ends of the earth at the same time, but it is very difficult to imagine that there are two such creatures. How terrifying can be the battle of such creatures?

In some epics, there are mentions of battles between krakens, which suggests that to this day almost all krakens died in these terrible fights, and the sea god commands the last survivors. A creature that does not produce offspring, free in food and rest, has reached such huge dimensions that one can only wonder how hunger has not yet driven it to land and why it has not yet been met by researchers. Perhaps the structure of the kraken's skin and tissues makes it impossible to detect and the creature's century-long sleep hid it in the sands of the seabed? Or maybe there was a depression in the ocean, where researchers have not yet looked, but where this creature is resting. One can only hope that even if it is found, the researchers will be smart enough not to arouse the wrath of the thousand-year-old monster and not try to destroy it with the help of any weapon.

Who is a kraken? This is a mythical sea monster of enormous size, resembling a giant squid in its shape. According to the stories, the monster lives off the coast of Greenland and Norway. Its first description was made by Eric Pontoppidan, a bishop, historian, writer and antiquary. His active creative activity came in first half of XVIII century.

But it should be noted that this venerable and respected gentleman never left the dry land. The bishop compiled his description from the stories of sailors, and, as you know, they can at least tell something, sitting at a table in a cozy port tavern.

So, according to the description of Pontoppidan, the sea monster in size corresponds to a floating island. He has huge tentacles. He can wrap them around any ship and drag it to the bottom. When the monster plunges into the depths, a whirlpool arises, which is a great danger to ships. sea ​​monster takes a long time to digest food. At this time, he releases nutritious excrement, which attracts a huge number of fish. Fishermen swim right above the kraken and return home with the richest catch.

The sea monster was described in 1781 by the Swedish writer Jacob Wallinberg. According to him, when the monster floats to the surface, it releases water from the wide giant nostrils. From this, huge waves begin to diverge in all directions, fading only at a distance of many miles. Ships and boats can capsize from these waves.

In 1774, a hearing was held in England, at which Captain Robert Jameson and the sailors of his ship testified under oath. They claimed to have seen a large sea ​​creature, whose body length reached several hundred meters and towered 9 meters above the water. It sailed in a parallel course to the ship and then emerged from the water, then plunged into the depths of the sea. Diving once again, the monster disappeared, and the sailors did not see him again.

At the end of the 18th century, the kraken became extremely popular in scientific circles. They imagined him as a creature similar to giant octopus. The tentacles were equipped with suckers, which had spikes. However, already at that time there were many skeptics. They claimed that no sea monster exists in nature. Underwater volcanic activity is taken for it. It is characterized by bubbling water, whirlpools, currents and the appearance of new islands.

The existence of the giant squid was proven in 1857. After that, all experts began to associate the kraken with him. At the same time embarrassed too big sizes this inhabitant sea ​​depths. However, some cryptozoologists have suggested that giant squids can unite in flocks, by analogy with small species, which for the most part are schooling.

A large flock of giant squids on the surface of the ocean can be mistaken for a huge sea monster. Entertainment is added by long tentacles and waves diverging in different directions. Thus, we can conclude that no kraken has ever existed in nature. It was created by the rich imagination of sailors, and scientists spent too much time to separate fact from fiction.