“But they were fibs,” insisted the lad, with all the uncompromising attitude of boyhood. “How would you put that ‘scientifically,’ Uncle George?”
“They were—inaccuracies of description consequent upon insufficient opportunity for the development of correct observational methods,” was the reply. “That’s saying the same thing in another way, Perry.”
The lad laughed.
“Tell me some more of the ‘inaccuracies,’ Uncle,” he said.
“Most of them were Norse,” the professor continued. “Just in the same way that all English-speaking people believed in the dragon, and all the Greeks believed in nymphs and fauns, and all the Irish believed in fairies, so the Norse world pinned its faith to the Kraken, or the Warrum or Sea-Worm of Iceland.”
“I don’t remember the Kraken,” put in the boy. “Just what was that supposed to be?”
“It was described as being a creature of the deepest parts of the sea. It was supposed to be a mile and a half in circumference, and its horns were as high and as large as the masts of small vessels.”
“Did any one ever claim to have seen such a beast?”
“Several people,” the scientist replied. “In 1680, a Lutheran minister, the Rev. Anson Friis, reported the discovery of a small Kraken, stranded in a fjord near Alstahoug. He described the creature as almost round, with a head something like that of a parrot and a long tail divided into four round swimming paddles. He went on to say that it took him nine minutes of sharp walking to walk round the carcass. Baron Grippenhjelme, the local magnate, was more moderate in his estimate, but even he declared it to be sixty fathoms (300 feet) across. With a better perception than the minister who had first discovered the carcass, he hazarded the guess that the strange creature was a polyp.”
“What do you suppose it really was?” queried the boy.