Scandinavian Folklore â The Kraken
Probably no legendary sea monster was as horrifying as the Kraken. According to stories this huge, many armed, creature could reach as high as the top of a sailing shipâs main mast. A kraken would attack a ship by wrapping their arms around the hull and capsizing it. The crew would drown or be eaten by the monster.
What makes this myth so special, however, is that this one may very well be true.
The Kraken was introduced to into the mainstream with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but the stories of the Kraken have been told by sailors for centuries. The Kraken is said to dwell in the Northern Sea between the coasts of Norway and Greenland.
The Kraken is first mentioned in the old Icelandic Saga  Ărvar-Oddr, where the protagonists journey through the Greenland sea and there they spot two massive sea-monsters.
ââ Now I will tell you that there are two sea-monsters. One is called the hafgufa (sea-mist), another lyngbakr (heather-back). It (the lyngbakr) is the largest whale in the world, but the hafgufa is the hugest monster in the sea. It is the nature of this creature to swallow men and ships, and even whales and everything else within reach.ââ
These tales often refer to a creature so big that it is mistaken for an island or series of islands. It is now widely believed that the creature that the old Vikings called the Kraken is based on sightings of the Giant Squid that are estimated to grow to be 12-14Â m (39-46 ft).
Though giant squids are large, they are not large enough to be mistaken for a land mass, but some are thought to be large enough to wrestle with a whale. Old sperm whales often carry scars from fighting these creatures. Â Now, the giant squid is quite an aggressive creature and has, in fact, attacked ships in modern times(although in those cases the giants squids met their end at the hands of the shipâs propellers) so it is not a far stretch to assume that giant squids of the past may have mistaken the Viking ships for whales and pulled it down into the depths of the ocean.
The Kraken was said to attract quite a lot of fish around it, and the braver fishermen often took the risk of fishing around and above the creature, since the catch was so plentiful.
The word Kraken is the definite form of krake, in Swedish and Norwegian, which is a word describing an unhealthy animal or something twisted and wrong.