KRAKEN, in Norwegian folk-lore, a sea-monster, believed to haunt the coasts of Norway. It was described in 1752 by the Norwegian bishop Pontoppidan as having a back about a mile and a half round and a body which showed above the sea like an island, and its arms were long enough to enclose the largest ship. The further assertion that the kraken darkened the water around it by an excretion suggests that the myth was based on the appearance of some gigantic cuttle-fish.
See J. Gibson, Monsters of the Sea (1887); A. S. Packard, “Colossal Cuttle-fishes,” American Naturalist (Salem, 1873), vol. vii.; A. E. Verrill, “The Colossal Cephalopods of the Western Atlantic,” in American Naturalist (Salem, 1875), vol. ix.; and “Gigantic Squids,” in Trans. of Connecticut Academy (1879), vol. v.