It is Saturday night, October 24, and I am on a ship crossing the Atlantic. Naturally, I think we should talk about the Kraken.
Yes, I know its old stories belong to the waters near Norway. I also know that a ship at night is an excellent place to consider what might be beneath you. If you are reading this from dry land, pour yourself something and come aboard with me.
You probably have a picture in your head already: enormous tentacles rising out of the sea, wrapping around a ship, and dragging the whole thing down while everyone makes regrettable decisions.
I have that picture, too. It is a very good picture.
But when we pull out the older accounts, the Kraken looks rather different.
In his eighteenth-century Natural History of Norway, Erik Pontoppidan wrote about a creature so large that its back could be mistaken for an island. Fish gathered above it. When it sank, the water’s movement threatened boats nearby.
An island that moves. An abundance of fish. A dangerous pull beneath the water.
That is a marvelous sea story, and I would like to hear it from a sailor who was there. I would also like to know which parts he saw himself, which parts someone else told him, and how big the creature became after the third telling.
I say this as a person who has told travel stories. “It was huge” is not a measurement. It is a feeling.
Then there is the giant squid.
Unlike a moving island, the giant squid does not need us to take anyone’s word for its existence. We have specimens. The Smithsonian has two on display. A real animal lives in deep water with arms and tentacles that would startle the living goddessfire out of me if they appeared beside the ship tonight.
Sailors could have encountered one. They could have seen part of one, found remains, or heard about a sighting from someone who had. The Biodiversity Heritage Library traces the long connection between giant squid and kraken tales.
That connection makes sense to me. It does not make a giant squid responsible for every shipwreck in the story.
Imagine trying to describe an animal you have never seen before while the deck moves under your feet. You catch a glimpse of something long and pale in the water. Perhaps the sea is rough. Perhaps another person sees a different part. Someone back at the harbor asks what happened, and you do your best.
Then your cousin tells it.
Then a writer draws it.
Then several generations of artists give it enough muscle to seize a warship.
By the time we meet the Kraken on a movie poster, the giant squid has been assigned an entire criminal record without so much as a hearing.
The floating-island account raises another question. Was Pontoppidan’s Kraken one creature, or a story that gathered several frightening things about the sea? Fish schooling in an unusual place. A large animal at the surface. Dangerous currents. A patch of water no sailor wanted to cross. I cannot sort those into a single sighting from here, and I will not pretend that naming the squid settles the island.
What I can say is that the ocean did not have to invent its depth to frighten us. Sailors were trying to make sense of a place that could take their boats and refuse to explain why. They gave the danger a shape and a name.
I understand that, too.
Tonight, somewhere below this ship, animals are living lives I will never see. I would rather wonder about them than demand that one rise up and justify a legend. I would especially rather it not rise up and inspect our hull. This is a vacation.
The Grove Take
I believe the giant squid is more than enough animal for one story. It is real, strange, and magnificent without pulling ships to the bottom of the sea.
I also think the old Kraken deserves to remain an old Kraken on our research desk. Pontoppidan recorded a claim about an island-sized creature and dangerous water. Giant squid may have helped shape the lore. We do not have evidence that one animal explains every part of that account.
Like all fish stories, ours grew in the telling. We owe the giant squid an apology and a cuppa for everything we blamed on it.
Porch Policy
The giant squid has a spot in the porch lagoon if it wants one. The invitation stands, and the cuppa is on us.
I am not dredging. It will need to check the depth before accepting.
As for the island-sized, boat-swallowing Kraken, its application remains on the desk. It may submit more evidence. It may also remain a splendid story for people who enjoy telling one after dark.
Come sit a spell and tell me what you would have thought if something enormous surfaced beside your ship. Would you have found the right words? Would the creature have gained a few feet by the time you reached shore?
I would listen. And if we were still at sea, I would probably ask you to tell the rest of it inside.
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