SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED.
THE KRAKEN.
In the legends and traditions of northern nations, stories of the existence of a marine animal of such enormous size that it more resembled an island than an organised being frequently found a place. It is thus described in an ancient manuscript (about A.D. 1180), attributed to the Norwegian King Sverre; and the belief in it has been alluded to by other Scandinavian writers from an early period to the present day. It was an obscure and mysterious sea-monster, known as the Kraken, whose form and nature were imperfectly understood, and it was peculiarly the object of popular wonder and superstitious dread.
Eric Pontoppidan, the younger, Bishop of Bergen, and member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Copenhagen, is generally, but unjustly, regarded as the inventor of the semi-fabulous Kraken, and is constantly misquoted by authors who have never read his work,[ [1] ] and who, one after another, have copied from their predecessors erroneous statements concerning him. More than half a century before him, Christian Francis Paullinus,[ [2] ] a physician and naturalist of Eisenach, who evinced in his writings an admiration of the marvellous rather than of the useful, had described as resembling Gesner's 'Heracleoticon,' a monstrous animal which occasionally rose from the sea on the coasts of Lapland and Finmark, and which was of such enormous dimensions, that a regiment of soldiers could conveniently manœuvre on its back. About the same date, but a little earlier, Bartholinus, a learned Dane, told how, on a certain occasion, the Bishop of Midaros found the Kraken quietly reposing on the shore, and mistaking the enormous creature for a huge rock, erected an altar upon it and performed mass. The Kraken respectfully waited till the ceremony was concluded, and the reverend prelate safe on shore, and then sank beneath the waves.
And a hundred and fifty years before Bartholinus and Paullinus wrote, Olaus Magnus,[ [3] ] Archbishop of Upsala, in Sweden, had related many wondrous narratives of sea-monsters,—tales which had gathered and accumulated marvels as they had been passed on from generation to generation in oral history, and which he took care to bequeath to his successors undeprived of any of their fascination. According to him, the Kraken was not so polite to the laity as to the Bishop, for when some fishermen lighted a fire on its back, it sank beneath their feet, and overwhelmed them in the waters.
Pontoppidan was not a fabricator of falsehoods; but, in collecting evidence relating to the "great beasts" living in "the great and wide sea," was influenced, as he tells us, by "a desire to extend the popular knowledge of the glorious works of a beneficent Creator." He gave too much credence to contemporary narratives and old traditions of floating islands and sea monsters, and to the superstitious beliefs and exaggerated statements of ignorant fishermen: but if those who ridicule him had lived in his day and amongst his people, they would probably have done the same; for even Linnæus was led to believe in the Kraken, and catalogued it in the first edition of his 'Systema Naturæ,' as 'Sepia Microcosmos.' He seems to have afterwards had cause to discredit his information respecting it, for he omitted it in the next edition. The Norwegian bishop was a conscientious and painstaking investigator, and the tone of his writings is neither that of an intentional deceiver nor of an incautious dupe. He diligently endeavoured to separate the truth from the cloud of error and fiction by which it was obscured; and in this he was to a great extent successful, for he correctly identifies, from the vague and perplexing descriptions submitted to him, the animal whose habits and structure had given rise to so many terror-laden narratives and extravagant traditions.
The following are some of his remarks on the subject of this gigantic and ill-defined animal. Although I have greatly abbreviated them, I have thought it right to quote them at considerable length, that the modest and candid spirit in which they were written may be understood:[ [4] ]