Record #90
Kraken
A colossal sea creature mistaken for an island rising from the abyss.
Original Text
The Kraken is a Scandinavian version of the zaratan and of the sea dragon, or sea snake of the Arabs.
In I7;2-;4, the Dane Erik Pontoppidan, Bihsop of Bergen, published a Natural History ofNorway, a work famous for its hospitality or gullibility. In its pages we read that the Kraken’s back is a mile and a half wide and that its tentacles are capable of encompassing the largest of ships. The huge back protrudes from the sea like an island. The Bishop formulatesthis rule: ‘Floating islands are invariably Krakens.’ He also writes that the Kraken is in the habit of turning the sea murky with a discharge of liquid. This statement has in- spired the hypothesis that the Kraken is an enlargement of the octopus.
Among Tennyson’s juvenilia we find this poem to the curious creature:
The Kraken
Below the thunders of the upper deep, Far, far beneath the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height; And far away into the sickly light, From many a wondrous grot and secret cell Unnumber’d and enormous polypi Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green. There hath he lain for ages, and will lie Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
In I7;2-;4, the Dane Erik Pontoppidan, Bihsop of Bergen, published a Natural History ofNorway, a work famous for its hospitality or gullibility. In its pages we read that the Kraken’s back is a mile and a half wide and that its tentacles are capable of encompassing the largest of ships. The huge back protrudes from the sea like an island. The Bishop formulatesthis rule: ‘Floating islands are invariably Krakens.’ He also writes that the Kraken is in the habit of turning the sea murky with a discharge of liquid. This statement has in- spired the hypothesis that the Kraken is an enlargement of the octopus.
Among Tennyson’s juvenilia we find this poem to the curious creature:
The Kraken
Below the thunders of the upper deep, Far, far beneath the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height; And far away into the sickly light, From many a wondrous grot and secret cell Unnumber’d and enormous polypi Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green. There hath he lain for ages, and will lie Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.