The Twisted Guide To The Unexplained, The Kraken Edition
The Kraken
Sarcastic Addendum, Because Sailors Needed Something Bigger Than Bad Weather and Scurvy to Blame When Their Ship Disappeared With Everyone On Board Still Holding Their Rum
The Kraken. The ocean’s original “hold my beer” monster. A squid so comically oversized it could use a galleon as a toothpick, wrap an entire fleet in its tentacles like a very clingy octopus hug, and still have enough arms left over to high five its own reflection.
This isn’t your polite, reef dwelling little cuttlefish. This is the deep sea equivalent of a bad ex who shows up unannounced, drags everything you love under the waves, and leaves nothing behind except a few broken spars and a lingering smell of ink and regret.
Sailors’ yarns about the Kraken go back at least to the 12th century, mostly around Norway and Iceland.
Old Norse sagas whispered of “hafgufa” and “lyngbakr,” sea beasts so huge they were mistaken for islands until some unlucky fisherman dropped anchor on what he thought was solid ground, only for the “island” to wake up, flip, and pull the boat straight to the bottom.
By the 1700s European whalers and cod fishermen were swapping stories of a creature with arms as thick as ship masts, eyes the size of carriage wheels, and a beak that could snap a man in half like a stale biscuit.
The name “Kraken,” from Norwegian “krake” meaning twisted or crooked, stuck because apparently “giant angry calamari” didn’t roll off the tongue quite as well.
The classic attack goes like this. A calm day, sails full, crew singing shanties. Then the water starts bubbling. A dark shape rises, first a hump, then more humps, then tentacles the length of football pitches erupt like the sea itself decided to throw a very violent party.
The arms latch on, snapping masts, crushing hulls, dragging the ship down while the crew scream, pray, or just keep drinking because why not go out with style.
Survivors, if any, limp into port weeks later, wild eyed, babbling about “the thing from the deep” and swearing off fish for life.
The 18th and 19th centuries turned the Kraken into tabloid gold. Newspapers printed lurid accounts of ships found drifting with crews missing, hulls crushed like tin cans, and giant sucker marks left behind like very aggressive love bites.
One particularly dramatic 1870s report claimed a whaling ship harpooned what they thought was a giant squid, only for it to turn, wrap its arms around the vessel, and pull it under in front of witnesses.
Spoiler. Giant squid do exist. They can reach 40 plus feet with tentacles, and they are very real. The Kraken just adds about 200 feet and a bad attitude to the recipe.
Modern sightings are thinner but still deliciously unprovable. Fishermen off Newfoundland and Norway occasionally report massive shapes on sonar, too big for whales, too fast for logs, gone before anyone can lower a camera.
Deep sea submersibles catch glimpses of enormous squid arms vanishing into the abyss.
In 2004 Japanese researchers filmed a live giant squid for the first time, 26 feet long, red, alien looking, and definitely capable of ruining someone’s day. Suddenly the old stories didn’t sound quite so silly.
Still no 200 foot specimens. Still no wrecked ships with sucker marks spelling “KRAKEN WAS HERE.” Just enough real giant squid evidence to make the legend feel plausible.
Sceptics, the “it’s just a big squid and sailor exaggeration” brigade, point out the obvious. Giant squid, Architeuthis, are real. They live at extreme depths. They can grow huge. Dead ones occasionally wash up looking like nightmares.
The ship crushing is blamed on storms, icebergs, or bad navigation. The tentacles on exaggerated tales of squid arms wrapped around flotsam. The island sized body on floating mats of seaweed or volcanic pumice mistaken for land.
No fossils of 200 foot squid. No photos that survive scrutiny. Just centuries of very convincing “you weren’t there, mate” stories from men who spent months at sea with only rum and boredom for company.
Yet the Kraken refuses to sink because it’s the ultimate sea nightmare. Silent until it isn’t, patient until it strikes, and big enough to make the ocean feel small and personal.
It doesn’t want your soul. It just wants lunch.
And when the sea is that deep and that dark, the idea of something down there that can reach up and take what it wants feels less like myth and more like common sense.
Don’t Anchor on Floating Islands
(Though if the water suddenly boils and tentacles the size of trees start wrapping your boat like cling film, perhaps cut the line and swim for it. The Kraken doesn’t do refunds, and it definitely doesn’t do apologies.)
Kraken Survival Tips
Kraken survival tips for sailors, fishermen, and anyone who hates surprises bigger than their boat.
Never trust a calm sea that suddenly smells like ink and bad decisions. That’s not low tide, that’s the Kraken clearing its throat.
If something massive bumps the hull from below, don’t lean over to look. Curiosity killed the cat. The Kraken just kills the curious.
Carry a very sharp knife. Not to fight it, to cut your own anchor line before it decides your ship looks like a nice chew toy.
Wear your Kraken tee with maximum maritime swagger. It’s not tentacle proof, but at least you’ll look stylishly doomed when explaining to the coastguard why you’re swimming from what turns out to be a very large, but normal, giant squid having a stretch.
Read The Full Strange & Twisted Investigation Into The Kraken Legend Here
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