Legendary Beasts – The Kraken

The Kraken, or as it is sometimes known, the Norwegian sea-dragon is one of those legendary beasts that many people have professed to have witnessed, but there is no real proof that it does exist.

There are no photographs of any sort that show the image of this really legendary creature, but still it has captured the imagination of so many people over the last few centuries.

The Legend

A boat full of fishermen was surprised to find that their nets were being stretched almost to breaking point. Something was making the water all around them churn with many shoals of fish.

The fishermen were now sorely afraid and worked feverishly, knowing that the unseen creature terrifying the fish could at any moment rise up from the waters and swallow their complete ship.

Or, maybe it would choose to pick them off their ship one at a time. They just knew it was the Kraken, the biggest of the giant sea monsters.

The Stories

You can find many such stories in the library books in Norway, because this legend has been told by many hundreds of fishermen over the past few centuries, they report sightings and being terrified by the sudden unexpected appearance and disappearance of the Kraken.

According to the stories the back of a fully grown Kraken was about one and a half miles long. It is reported to have a big bumpy spine and long thin tentacles that floated out from its body, like strands of seaweed and because of this; it was often mistaken to be a small island.

A Norwegian bishop wrote in his journal, that the floating islands which appeared and disappeared so suddenly, in the North Sea, were in his opinion most certainly the Kraken.

He went on to write that he was walking along the beach one day in the spring and managed to find a Kraken on the shoreline. He thought that it was a large rock, so he set up his altar on the back of the creature with the intention of celebrating a mass.

The bishop concentrated on his work and gave praise to God and then sat down quietly to have his own personal prayer. The creature showed great respect and waited until the bishop had finished and then it just silently moved into the sea and completely vanished.

The Sceptics

Many of the people of our modern time are sceptical and generally are tending to dismiss the existence of the Kraken.

They say that witnesses had probably been very confused and that the sightings they witnessed were possibly of giant squid. But in the vast depths of the oceans, who knows what sleeps beneath the sea?