The kraken, a legendary sea monster, was feared by all sailors for the havoc it caused on ships. 19th century engraving • GETTY IMAGES Norse chronicles and sagas of the Middle Ages describe a terrifying sea monster that was the size of an island and roamed the seas between Norway and Iceland. In the 13 th century, the Icelandic Örvar-Oddr saga speaks of the "biggest monster in the sea", capable of swallowing "men, ships and even whales". Chilling stories This intriguing appearance returns in later texts, such as the chronicle of the Swede Olaus Magnus, who describes in the 16 th century of colossal creatures, capable of sinking a ship. This type of story continued to circulate in the 18 th century, when this monster began to be known as a kraken , a Norwegian term designating a reality that is at the very least whimsical. In his Natural History of Norway (1752), Erik Ludvigsen Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, indeed described the kraken as "a beast a mile and a half long which, if it clings to the largest warship, sinks it to the bottom and states that it "lives in the depths of the sea, from which it does not come up until it has been warmed by the fires of hell". However, these descriptions did not come entirely from the imagination of their authors. Erik Ludvigsen Pontoppidan, for example, noted that "the animal's discharges clouded the water"; it could therefore be a giant squid. The history of the kraken is linked to the adventures experienced in unknown seas by sailors who related them on their return. If the Nordic sailors had limited themselves to the North Atlantic, the entry into modernity however extended the field of observation to the whole of the Pacific. Scientists divided Some sailors spoke of a "red devil", a squid that caught and devoured castaways; others spoke of insatiable sea animals, measuring 12 to 13 m in length. The succession of testimonies of naval officers recounting having been confronted with these creatures disconcerted the scientists. If the famous Swedish naturalist Carl von Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, includes the kraken in his Systema naturae (1735), most scientists were not ready to assume the existence of the terrible Nordic monster. The unjust fate suffered by the Frenchman Pierre Denys de Montfort illustrates this closed-mindedness. In his General and particular natural history of molluscs , the naturalist recorded in 1801 the existence of "[the greatest] animals in Nature as regards our planet":the "colossal octopus" and the "kraken octopus". He based himself on Nordic stories and testimonies of contemporary sailors, which he related to a similar animal cited by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder. He included in his work an illustration depicting the attack of a ship by a giant octopus off the coast of Angola, which became the emblematic image of the kraken, but caused the unanimous rejection of the scientific community and discredited it for life. However, the testimonies on the existence of this legendary animal continued to succeed. Whaler captain Frank Bullen said that he had undoubtedly seen a "huge sperm whale" fight a "gigantic squid". According to his description, the eyes of the animal were located at the base of its tentacles, corroborating the idea that it was rather a squid (octopus and octopus possessing arms, but no tentacles). A literary hero The episode that marked a turning point in the history of giant squids occurred in 1861, when the French ship Alecton came face to face with a 20-foot-long cephalopod northeast of Tenerife in the Atlantic. Its commander, frigate captain Frédéric Bouyer, recounted this encounter in a report he submitted to the Academy of Sciences:the animal "seemed to want to avoid the ship", but the captain prepared to chase it away by throwing harpoons and firing guns at him. He even ordered it to be "bound ... and brought along the edge", but the creature ended up sinking into the depths. Frédéric Bouyer thus kept a piece of the squid, which he sent to the prestigious biologist Pierre Flourens. The giant squid became a literary character in its own right through works such as The Workers of the Sea by Victor Hugo or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. Always eager for new scientific discoveries, Jules Verne described in his novel the episode of the Alecton and all mythical and historical references to the animal; it also includes the attack of a squid against the Nautilus himself. The scientists analyzed the testimonies of sailors and the remains of squid recovered at sea or stranded, and concluded that it was a particular species, which they baptized Architeuthis dux . In the depths of the ocean The mystery continues to hover around this animal. Almost nothing is known about its life cycle or its habits, or even if it is a single species of squid. Only a team of Japanese scientists and a North American channel were able to film it briefly in 2006 and 2012 respectively. Despite everything, we know that the males are about 10 m long and the females 14. His eye, the largest in the animal kingdom, can measure up to 30 cm in diameter. The habitat of this animal is located in extreme depths, especially in the Pacific Ocean, but also in the Atlantic. For example, it finds refuge in the canyon of Avilés, 5,000 m deep off the coast of Asturias. Accustomed to encountering it when they go to sea, local fishermen have given little importance to the controversy surrounding its existence. This animal is so familiar to them that they even gave it a name:the peludín ("little hairy"); a museum dedicated to him opened in 1997 in Luarca, on the coast of Asturias. Let it be called peludín or Architeuthis dux , we now know with certainty that this animal exists, even if it is not as wild as the creature that emerged from the Nordic imagination and Renaissance bestiaries. It is now so real that only our abandonment of underwater exploration and the lack of progress in science still hinder its study and the knowledge we have of it. Until then, the mystery surrounding it will continue to fuel legions of cryptozoologists bent on resurrecting not only the kraken, but also the most romantic creatures of our old sea legends. Find out more In search of mysterious animals. Misconceptions about cryptozoology, by Éric Buffetaut, The Blue Rider, 2016.
