[ and if this equivalence were allowed, the kraken-hafgufa's range would extend, at least legendarily, to waters approaching Helluland (]Baffin Island
Baffin Island (formerly Baffin Land), in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, is the largest island in Canada and the fifth-largest island in the world. Its area is , slightly larger than Spain; its population was 13,039 as of the 2021 Canadia ...
, Canada), as described in '' Örvar-Odds saga''.
;Contrary opinion
The description of the ''hafgufa'' in the ''King's Mirror'' suggests a garbled eyewitness account of what was actually a whale, at least to some opinion. also reads the work as describing the ''hafgufa'' as a type of whale.
Finnur Jónsson
Finnur Jónsson (May 29, 1858 – March 30, 1934) was an Icelandic-Danish philologist and Professor of Nordic Philology at the University of Copenhagen. He made extensive contributions to the study of Old Norse literature.
Finnur Jónsson was b ...
(1920) having arrived at the opinion that the kraken probably represented an inkfish (squid/octopus), as discussed earlier, expressed his skepticism towards the standing notion that the kraken originated from the ''hafgufa''.
Pontoppidan
Erik Pontoppidan's ''Det første Forsøg paa Norges naturlige Historie'' (1752, actually volume 2, 1753) made several claims regarding kraken, including the notion that the creature was sometimes mistaken for a group of small islands with fish swimming in-between, Norwegian fishermen often took the risk of trying to fish over kraken, since the catch was so plentiful (hence the saying "You must have fished on Kraken").
However, there was also the danger to seamen of being engulfed by the whirlpool
A whirlpool is a body of rotating water produced by opposing currents or a current running into an obstacle. Small whirlpools form when a bath or a sink is draining. More powerful ones formed in seas or oceans may be called maelstroms ( ). ''Vo ...
when it submerged, and this whirlpool was compared to Norway's famed Moskstraumen
The Moskstraumen or Moskenstraumen is a system of tidal eddies and whirlpools, one of the strongest in the world, that forms at the Lofoten archipelago in Nordland county, Norway between the Norwegian Sea and the Vestfjorden. It is located bet ...
often known as "the Maelstrom".
Pontoppidan also described the destructive potential of the giant beast: "it is said that if he creature's armswere to lay hold of the largest man-of-war
The man-of-war (also man-o'-war, or simply man) was a Royal Navy expression for a powerful warship or frigate from the 16th to the 19th century. Although the term never acquired a specific meaning, it was usually reserved for a ship armed wi ...
, they would pull it down to the bottom".[Sjögren, Bengt (1980). ''Berömda vidunder''. Settern. ]
Kraken purportedly exclusively fed for several months, then spent the following few months emptying its excrement, and the thickened clouded water attracted fish. Later Henry Lee commented that the supposed excreta may have been the discharge of ink
Ink is a gel, sol, or solution that contains at least one colorant, such as a dye or pigment, and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing or writing with a pen, brush, reed pen, or quill. Thicker ...
by a cephalopod.
Taxonomic identifications
Pontoppidan wrote of a possible specimen of the krake, "perhaps a young and careless one", which washed ashore and died at Alstahaug in 1680. He observed that it had long "arms", and guessed that it must have been crawl
Crawl, The Crawl, or crawling may refer to:
Biology
* Crawling (human), any of several types of human quadrupedal gait
* Limbless locomotion, the movement of limbless animals over the ground
* Undulatory locomotion, a type of motion characteriz ...
ing like a snail/slug with the use of these "arms", but got lodged in the landscape during the process. 20th century malacologist Paul Bartsch
Paul Bartsch (14 August 1871 Tuntschendorf, Silesia – 24 April 1960 McLean, Virginia) was an American malacologist and carcinologist. He was named the last of those belonging to the "Descriptive Age of Malacology".
Early life
Bartsch emigrat ...
conjectured this to have been a giant squid
The giant squid (''Architeuthis dux'') is a species of deep-ocean dwelling squid in the family Architeuthidae. It can grow to a tremendous size, offering an example of abyssal gigantism: recent estimates put the maximum size at around Trace ...
, as did literary scholar Finnur Jónsson.
However, what Pontoppidan actually stated regarding what creatures he regarded as candidates for the kraken is quite complicated.
Pontoppidan did tentatively identify the kraken to be a sort of giant crab, stating that the alias ''krabben'' best describes its characteristics.) described by Swedish magnate in ''Min son på galejan'' ("My son on the galley", 1781):
However, further down in his writing, compares the creature to some creature(s) from Pliny, Book IX, Ch. 4: the sea-monster called ''arbor'', with tree-branch like multiple arms, complicated by the fact that Pontoppidan adds another of Pliny's creature called ''rota'' with eight arms, and conflates them into one organism. Pontoppidan is suggesting this is an ancient example of ''kraken'', as a modern commentator analyzes.
Pontoppidan then declared the kraken to be a type of ''polypus'' (octopus) or "starfish", particularly the kind Gesner called ''Stella Arborescens'', later identifiable as one of the northerly ophiurids or possibly more specifically as one of the Gorgonocephalids or even the genus '' Gorgonocephalus'' ().
This ancient ''arbor'' (admixed ''rota'' and thus made eight-armed) seems an octopus at first blush but with additional data, the ophiurid starfish now appears bishop's preferential choice.
The ophiurid starfish seems further fortified when he notes that "starfish" called "Medusa's heads" (''caput medusæ''; pl. ''capita medusæ'') are considered to be "the young of the great sea-krake" by local lore. Pontoppidan ventured the 'young krakens' may rather be the eggs (''ova'') of the starfish. Pontopiddan was satisfied that "Medusa's heads" was the same as the foregoing starfish (''Stella arborensis'' of old), but "Medusa's heads" were something found ashore aplenty across Norway according to von Bergen von Bergen is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*Diego von Bergen (1872–1944), German ambassador
*Drew Von Bergen (1940–2017), American journalist
*John von Bergen (born 1971), American artist
*Karl August von Bergen (1704– ...
, who thought it absurd these could be young "Kraken" since that would mean the seas would be full of (the adults). The "Medusa's heads" appear to be a Gorgonocephalid, with '' Gorgonocephalus spp. being tentatively suggested.
In the end though, Pontoppidan again appears ambivalent, stating "Polype, or Star-fish elongs tothe whole genus of Kors-Trold cross troll' .. some that are much larger, .. even the very largest.. of the ocean", and concluding that "this Krake must be of the Polypus kind". By "this Krake" here, he apparently meant in particular the giant ''polypus'' octopus of Carteia
Carteia ( grc, Καρτηίᾳ) was a Phoenician and Roman town at the head of the Bay of Gibraltar in Spain. It was established at the most northerly point of the bay, next to the town of San Roque, about halfway between the modern cities of Alg ...
from Pliny, Book IX, Ch. 30 (though he only used the general nickname " ozaena" 'stinkard' for the octopus kind).
Denys-Montfort
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Plate XXX (The Kraken)
"The Kraken supposed a sepia or cuttle fish (from Denys Montfort)", p. 326a via Biodiversity.
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digital copy
National Library Norway
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External links
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Monster
A monster is a type of fictional creature found in horror, fantasy, science fiction, folklore, mythology and religion. Monsters are very often depicted as dangerous and aggressive with a strange, grotesque appearance that causes terror and fe ...
Mythological cephalopods
Scandinavian legendary creatures
Sea monsters