Will the Kraken Wake?

Probably the first recorded mention of the Kraken is in the Odyssey, when the hero, Odysseus, had to navigate his boat past Scylla's lair. But we cannot mention Scylla without her sister, Charybdis!

Scylla and Charybdis were two immortal and irresistible monsters who beset the narrow waters of the Straits of Messina destroying ships as they attempted to navigate through.

The sea has always inspired the deepest respect from those who spend time upon it, for the dangers of shipwreck and drowning are manifold. In earlier times there was the added threat of monsters lurking in the depths to cast fear into the hearts of mariners.

Scylla was dreadful with six heads, twelve feet and a voice like the howl of a maddened dog. She dwelt in a sea-cave looking to the west, far up the face of a huge cliff. Out of her cave she stuck her heads, fishing for marine creatures and snatching the sailors out of passing ships.

Within a bowshot of this cliff was another lower cliff with a great figtree growing on it. Under this second rock dwelt Charybdis, who thrice a day sucked in and thrice spouted out the sea water.

Odysseus had to sail through straits that are bracketed by these two monsters, and he had to choose a course which leads closer to one or the other. One choice, Scylla, would lead to certain doom for six crewman, the other, Charybdis, posed a risk to the entire ship and crew.

Between these rocks Odysseus sailed, and Scylla snatched six men out of his ship. As Odysseus said Next came Chaybdis who swallows the sea in a whirlpool, then spits it up again. Avoiding this we skirted the cliff where Scylla exacts her toll. Each of her six slavering maws grabbed a sailor and wolfed him down.

These dreadful monsters have become proverbial as a choice between equally dreadful alternatives but, once upon a time, they were a just a whirlpool, and a squid.

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in 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 seaworms 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.

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Norwegians knew the Sykraken, a frightening creature who lurked beneath the waves. This Sea-Kraken, they said, was an enormous monster quite capable of pulling a ship and its crew under the sea in a single jerk.

In 'The Natural History of Norway', the 12th century Bishop of Bergen described the Kraken as a floating island measuring one and a half miles across.

It seems these are the creature's arms, and, it is said, if they were to lay hold of the largest man-of-war, they would pull it down to the bottom.

The Kraken of legend is most likely a giant squid. These cephalods are very aggressive and sometimes rise to the surface where they are seen by modern sailors. Although giant squids are considerably less then a mile and a half across, they're quite large enough to tackle a sperm whale and, on at least three occasions in the 1930's, attacked ships crossing the Atlantic.

While the squids got the worst of these encounters with ships fitted with propellers, the fact that they attacked at all shows that it's possible for these creatures to mistake a vessel for a whale. It's no wonder early navigators had nightmares about these grisly giants. Imagine if a large squid, perhaps a hundred feet long and weighing two or three tons, attacked a small sailing ship.

I looked in my turn, and could not repress a gesture of disgust. Before my eyes was a horrible monster worthy to figure in the legends of the marvellous. It was an immense cuttlefish, being eight yards long. Its eight arms, or rather feet, fixed to its head were twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the furies' hair.

The monster's mouth, a horned beak like a parrot's, opened and shut vertically. Its tongue, a horned substance, furnished with several rows of pointed teeth, came out quivering from this veritable pair of shears. What a freak of nature, a bird's beak on a mollusc!

So the Kraken is not a legend. To this day he sleeps in ancient grots below the thunders of the upper deep.

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