50 Fun Facts About Kraken

The kraken legend comes from the folklore of sailors off the coast of which country?

The name is the Norwegian definite form of 'krake', so 'kraken' already means 'the krake'.

Per lore recorded by Hans Egede, how could a fisherman escape a kraken tangled on his hooks?

The same fishermen said you could stand on the beast as if it were a sandbank, since fish swarmed around it.

The root of the word 'krake' in Norwegian refers to what?

Old spruce tops with crooked branches were used as primitive anchors, and their tentacle-like look is thought to have inspired the monster's name.

Pontoppidan wrote that if the kraken's arms took hold of even what, they would drag it to the bottom?

He also thought the beast spent months feeding and then months excreting a thick cloud that lured fish - which a later writer suspected was cephalopod ink.

Who is usually credited with the first detailed description of the kraken, published in 1753?

He was bishop of Bergen, and his two-volume natural history came out in 1752-53.

Pontoppidan wrote that the kraken was often mistaken for what when it surfaced?

The catch above it was so rich that fishermen said of a lucky man, 'You must have fished on Kraken'.

The whirlpool a submerging kraken supposedly created was compared to which famous Norwegian current?

It is the same 'Maelstrom' that Edgar Allan Poe later used for a short story.

The earliest description of the kraken by name appears in a 1646 glossary by which Norwegian?

He described a many-armed sea monster that dragged boats down into the abyss.

Hans Egede, who described the kraken in 1729, was a missionary best known for work in which land?

He equated the kraken with the hafgufa of the Icelanders, and his informants said its body measured many miles.

Which Swedish writer's 1539 Carta marina shows a tentacled sea monster sometimes read as the kraken?

He drew it in the Norwegian Sea beside a tusked monster; the naturalist Conrad Gesner named that one the 'swine whale'.

The medieval Norwegian sea monster hafgufa, often equated with the kraken, has a name meaning what?

Modern research suggests the tales describe whales 'trap-feeding' with open mouths at the surface.

The King's Mirror, a Norwegian text of about 1250, concludes there must be only how many hafgufa in the sea?

The king reasoned they must be infertile, or the oceans would be full of them.

Which saga hero's ship sails through the jaws of the hafgufa, mistaking them for rocks?

The 14th-century version calls it the largest sea monster of all, feeding on whales, ships and men.

Under what genus name did Linnaeus describe a fabulous 'body covered with various other bits'?

The claim that he wrote 'kraken' in the margin of a later Systema Naturae has never been confirmed.

In which year did Pierre Denys de Montfort claim giant octopuses sank ten British warships?

The Royal Navy knew a hurricane had done it, and the disgrace wrecked his career; he died poor in Paris around 1820.

Denys de Montfort's famous engraving shows a colossal octopus doing what?

He based it on a votive painting that sailors who met the beast off Angola had left in a chapel at Saint-Malo.

A squid piece recovered by which French ship in 1861 was later identified as a giant squid?

Jules Verne name-checks the same encounter in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.

In 1873, fisherman Theophilus Piccot fought off a giant squid in Conception Bay and proved it by doing what?

Conception Bay is in Newfoundland, one of the world's giant-squid hotspots.

A team from which country took the first photographs of a living giant squid in its natural habitat in 2004?

Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori found the squid by tailing sperm whales to their hunting ground; the animal left a 5.5-metre tentacle on the lure.

Estimates put a giant squid's maximum body length, excluding feeding tentacles, at roughly what?

Claims of 20-metre monsters have never been scientifically documented; the two feeding tentacles add up to about 10 metres.

Which creature has the largest eyes of any animal known to have ever existed?

The largest collected specimen's eyes were estimated at up to 40 cm across, and its arms carry swivelling hooks no other glass squid has.

A giant squid named 'Archie', caught off the Falklands in 2004, is displayed at a natural history museum in which city?

At 8.62 metres it was a rare complete specimen; most are found rotting on beaches or inside sperm whales.

Which poet published 'The Kraken', a 15-line sonnet about the sleeping monster, in 1830?

Benjamin Britten later set it in his song-cycle Nocturne, and John Wyndham's novel The Kraken Wakes takes its title from the poem.

Which H. P. Lovecraft story is thought to have been inspired by Tennyson's sonnet about the kraken?

Both feature a vast sea creature sleeping for aeons and destined to rise in an apocalyptic age.

In Moby-Dick, what does Starbuck call the 'vast pulpy mass' the Pequod's crew meet?

The encounter fills chapter 59, and Ishmael calls the creature the 'Anak of the tribe' of cuttlefish.

Which 1866 Victor Hugo novel introduced the man-hunting giant octopus into French fiction?

Its hero Gilliatt kills the beast with a knife; the book directly inspired Jules Verne's version four years later.

In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, a school of giant squid attacks which vessel?

Verne used the same French word for octopus and squid, so translators have argued about what actually attacked.

Which pioneer first shot the octopus-in-a-bathtub kraken footage in 1906, later reused in many silent films?

The film was Under the Seas, and the footage was recycled for years.

In the 1981 film Clash of the Titans, who speaks the famous line 'Release the Kraken' as Zeus?

The film's Kraken is a scaly four-armed humanoid with a fish tail, based on the Greek sea monster Cetus rather than anything Norse.

In the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans, which god created the Kraken?

The film has him build it to defeat the Titans, then unleash it on Argos to get back at Zeus; Liam Neeson's line reading became an internet meme.

In Dead Man's Chest, the Kraken hunts sailors who bear what mark of a debt to Davy Jones?

Bootstrap Bill marks Jack Sparrow with it, and by the finale the beast drags Jack and the Black Pearl down to Davy Jones's Locker.

Who plays Davy Jones, master of the Kraken, in Dead Man's Chest?

The film was directed by Gore Verbinski and set a year after The Curse of the Black Pearl.

In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, what has happened to the Kraken?

The order came from Lord Cutler Beckett, who by then controlled Davy Jones's heart.

In Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, the singing Kraken is voiced by which pop star?

Johnny snaps the brainwashed monster out of it by playing the Macarena.

What did Kerbal Space Program's developers call the fix for the ship-destroying bug players named 'the Kraken'?

The name stuck so well that later game-breaking glitches were also called Krakens.

In the pirate game Sea of Thieves, the Kraken functions as what?

It can spawn on any crew at sea, and also shows up in the 'A Pirate's Life' tall tales.

The Seattle Kraken joined the NHL as an expansion team and played their first season in which year?

They retired jersey number 32 before their first home game: they were the league's 32nd franchise and 32,000 fans put down deposits on day one.

Which defending Stanley Cup champion did the Seattle Kraken upset in their first playoff series in 2023?

No expansion team had ever beaten the reigning champion in its first playoff series before.

The Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2011, is based in which country?

Co-founder Jesse Powell had consulted for the ill-fated Japanese exchange Mt. Gox before building a more security-focused rival in San Francisco.

Kraken Mare, the largest known sea of liquid hydrocarbons, lies on which moon?

It is mostly liquid methane and slightly bigger than the Caspian Sea, making it the largest known lake in the Solar System.

Which space probe discovered Kraken Mare in 2006?

The sea's main body is at least 100 metres deep and probably deeper than 300, according to radar altimeter data.

The Kraken roller coaster, which opened in 2000, is at which theme park?

It was Florida's tallest and longest coaster until Expedition Everest overtook it in 2006, and features seven inversions.

The label on a bottle of Kraken black spiced rum features a giant squid captioned with what?

The two-hoop bottle copies a Victorian design meant to be hung up so it would not break at sea.

Kraken Rum was originally distilled from molasses in which Caribbean country?

It is aged one to two years and blended with 11 spices, including cinnamon, ginger and clove.

After the 2020 US election, which attorney vowed to 'release the Kraken', meaning supposed evidence of fraud?

The phrase, borrowed from Clash of the Titans, spawned a wave of memes.

The Kraken Regiment is a volunteer special-forces unit of which country's military intelligence?

It was formed largely from veterans of the Azov Regiment.

According to legend, what did the kraken spend several months doing after months of feeding, drawing fish to it?

Henry Lee later suggested the fabled clouding of the water was really a cephalopod discharging ink.

Which author wrote the 1953 novel The Kraken Wakes?

It sits alongside Marvel Comics' Kraken and the Seattle Kraken hockey team among modern uses of the name.

Which naturalist later identified the Alecton's 1861 squid fragment as a giant squid, Architeuthis?

Verrill was writing after Rev. Moses Harvey's Newfoundland specimen made the giant squid scientifically respectable.

One theory says kraken sightings were really which animal driving giant squid to the surface?

Most testimonies come from evening hours, when such hunts might be glimpsed in half-light.