Kraken Trivia
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49 free Kraken trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Kraken trivia for anyone who has shouted 'Release the Kraken', flinched at the tentacles in Pirates of the Caribbean, or wondered whether there really is something that big down there. The quiz starts with the legend itself: the Norwegian fishermen who told Bishop Erik Pontoppidan about a beast the size of an island, the 1646 glossary that first used the name, the medieval hafgufa of the King's Mirror, Olaus Magnus's monster-filled 1539 map, and the French naturalist who blamed giant octopuses for sinking ten British warships and ruined his career. Then it moves to the animals behind the myth - the giant squid first photographed alive in 2004 and the colossal squid with the largest eyes of any creature that has ever lived - and to the kraken's long second life in culture: Tennyson's 1830 sonnet, Melville and Verne, Laurence Olivier and Liam Neeson in the two Clash of the Titans films, Davy Jones's pet in Dead Man's Chest, and the name's spread to an NHL team, a black spiced rum, a crypto exchange, a roller coaster and a methane sea on Titan. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. Looking for the hockey team? Try our Seattle Kraken quiz.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Game of Thrones, a golden kraken is the sigil of which noble house of the Iron Islands?
House Greyjoy
House Greyjoy. Its ironborn are sea raiders who take what they want rather than farm for it, which is why the words beneath the kraken read 'We Do Not Sow'.
Q 02Per lore recorded by Hans Egede, how could a fisherman escape a kraken tangled on his hooks?
Speak its name aloud
Speak its name aloud: on hearing it, Egede wrote, the beast sank back as softly as it had risen. Left alone, a hooked kraken rose slowly to the surface and seized the whole crew.
Q 03The kraken's name apparently comes from a Norwegian word for which many-armed shape?
A crooked tree
A crooked tree. The '-n' on the end is simply Norwegian for 'the', so anyone who says 'the kraken' is really saying 'the the krake'.
Q 04An 18th-century account said the kraken's arms could drag even what down to the sea bed?
The largest warship
The largest warship. The account added that the danger was just as great when the beast sank again, because the whirlpool it left drew everything down with it.
Q 05Who is usually credited with the first detailed description of the kraken, published in 1753?
Bishop Erik Pontoppidan
Bishop Erik Pontoppidan was more cautious than his reputation: he guessed the monster was some giant polyp or starfish and invited better-informed readers to correct him.
Q 06In 18th-century Norwegian lore, the back of a surfacing kraken looked at first like what?
Small islands
Small islands. Fishermen were glad to find the beast, since fish swarmed above it, but they rowed away fast the moment the water under their boats began to grow shallower.
Q 07The whirlpool left by a sinking kraken was likened to which tidal maelstrom off Norway's Lofoten Islands?
The Moskstraumen
The Moskstraumen is the original Maelstrom. Edgar Allan Poe sent a fisherman down it in an 1841 tale, in which the man survives by clinging to a barrel.
Q 08In DreamWorks' 2023 film Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, which sea creatures are the krakens' power-hungry enemies?
Mermaids
Mermaids. The film flips the usual fairy tale: its krakens are sworn protectors of the oceans, and the popular new girl at Ruby's school just happens to be a mermaid.
Q 09Hans Egede, who wrote down Norwegian kraken lore, was a missionary famous for his work in which land?
Greenland
Greenland. The 'Apostle of Greenland' sailed there in 1721 hoping to find the lost Norse settlers; he found only Inuit, stayed 15 years and founded the future capital, Nuuk.
Q 10Which Swedish writer's 1539 Carta marina shows a tentacled sea monster sometimes read as the kraken?
Olaus Magnus
Olaus Magnus was a Catholic churchman exiled from newly Lutheran Sweden, which is why his map of the North, twelve years in the making, was printed in Venice.
Q 11In both Clash of the Titans films, which Greek hero defeats the Kraken?
Perseus
Perseus turns it to stone with Medusa's severed head. In the Greek myth the monster he saves Andromeda from is called Cetus; the 1981 film borrowed the Norse kraken's name instead.
Q 12Which actor played Zeus and growled 'Release the Kraken!' in the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans?
Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson. His delivery in the trailers turned the line into an internet meme, and Time magazine listed it among the year's top buzzwords.
Q 13The giant squid, the kraken's likely inspiration, has copper-based blood that turns which colour when it carries oxygen?
Blue
Blue. Squid and octopuses carry oxygen with copper-rich haemocyanin rather than iron-rich haemoglobin, and three hearts keep it moving: two feed the gills and one the rest of the body.
Q 21A giant squid named 'Archie', caught off the Falklands in 2004, is displayed at a natural history museum in which city?
London
London. A trawler hauled the 8.62-metre squid up from 220 metres down, a rare near-complete catch for the Natural History Museum: most giant squid reach scientists only as damaged remains.
Q 22Which poet published 'The Kraken', a 15-line sonnet about the sleeping monster, in 1830?
Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson. His kraken sleeps on the sea bed until the fires of the Last Day, when it will rise roaring to the surface, be seen once by men and angels, and die.
Q 23Which H. P. Lovecraft story has a scholar traced to an 1830 sonnet about a sleeping kraken?
The Call of Cthulhu
Q 14Denys de Montfort blamed giant octopuses for sinking British warships; what really did?
A hurricane
A hurricane. The ships, among them prizes just taken from the French, were lost when a storm off Newfoundland scattered their convoy in September 1782, as survivors told the Admiralty.
Q 15Denys de Montfort's famous engraving shows a colossal octopus doing what?
Attacking a three-masted ship
Attacking a three-masted ship. He said it showed a real attack on a Saint-Malo vessel off Angola, and reportedly joked that if the picture was believed, his octopus would overthrow a whole fleet next.
Q 16Who composed 'The Kraken', the sea monster's theme on the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest soundtrack?
Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer. This was the first Pirates score released under his own name: the original film's music had been credited to his younger colleague Klaus Badelt, with Zimmer listed as producer.
Q 17In 1873, fisherman Theophilus Piccot fought off a giant squid in Conception Bay and proved it by doing what?
Hacking off two tentacles
Hacking off two tentacles. Part of one reached the naturalist Moses Harvey, and once scientists had measured it, doubts that giant squid really existed began to fade.
Q 18A team from which country took the first photographs of a living giant squid in its natural habitat in 2004?
Japan
Japan. Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori hooked it on a baited line 900 metres down off the Ogasawara Islands; after four hours it tore free, leaving a tentacle behind.
Q 19Tentacles included, a big giant squid stretches about as long as which of these?
A city bus
A city bus. For all that size, nobody photographed one alive in its deep-sea home until 2004; almost everything known before then came from dead or dying animals.
Q 20Which cephalopod of Antarctic waters has eyes the size of dinner plates, among the largest in the animal kingdom?
The colossal squid
The colossal squid. One study argues that eyes this big, nearly three times as wide as those of any animal outside its close kin, evolved to spot a very large predator coming through the dark in time to flee.
The Call of Cthulhu. Lovecraft scholar Robert M. Price called the poem a major inspiration: both monsters lie sleeping under the sea for ages, fated to rise in an apocalyptic last age.
Q 24In Moby-Dick, which of the Pequod's crew says few whale-ships see the great live squid and return to port?
Starbuck
Starbuck. A lookout cries out for Moby Dick and the boats lower, only to find a giant squid; the first mate says he would almost rather have fought the whale than seen it.
Q 25Which 1866 Victor Hugo novel introduced the man-hunting giant octopus into French fiction?
Toilers of the Sea
Its hero Gilliatt kills the beast with a knife; the book directly inspired Jules Verne's version four years later.
Q 26In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, a school of giant squid attacks which vessel?
The Nautilus
The Nautilus. Captain Nemo has to bring the submarine to the surface so his crew can fight the creatures off by hand, and one sailor is carried away.
Q 27Which star plays Ned Land, who harpoons the giant squid in Disney's 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas. The squid fight was shot twice: Walt Disney disliked the first version, filmed on a calm sea at dusk, so it was restaged at night in a storm that also hid the model's cables.
Q 28In the 1981 film Clash of the Titans, who speaks the famous line 'Release the Kraken' as Zeus?
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier. His Zeus first has Poseidon loose the monster on Argos, to punish its king for casting his own daughter and her baby into the sea.
Q 29In the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans, which god, rather than sea-ruler Poseidon, created the Kraken?
Hades
Hades. The film has him create the monster to help the gods overthrow the Titans, then threaten to loose it on Argos unless Princess Andromeda is sacrificed.
Q 30In Dead Man's Chest, the Kraken hunts sailors who bear what mark of a debt to Davy Jones?
The Black Spot
The Black Spot. The film borrowed it from Treasure Island, where pirates press a blackened scrap of paper into the hand of a shipmate they have judged and condemned.