Bot Menagerie
The Kraken
📍 The seas off Scandinavia
the colossal sea monster that drags ships under.
The Kraken is a gigantic tentacled sea monster from Scandinavian folklore, described as an island-sized creature that rises from the deep to seize ships and sailors. The legend almost certainly grew from real encounters with giant and colossal squid. It remains the definitive monster of the deep ocean.
the one cryptid whose real-life inspiration is arguably scarier than the myth.
The monster of the northern seas
The Kraken comes from centuries of Norse and Scandinavian seafaring folklore describing an enormous creature in the cold northern waters, so large that sailors mistook its back for an island and so powerful that its diving could pull whole ships down in the whirlpool it left behind. An 18th-century Scandinavian bishop famously wrote it up as though cataloguing a real animal, fixing the image of a colossal many-armed beast in the popular imagination.
The real animal behind the myth
Unlike most cryptids, the Kraken has a confirmed biological basis. Giant squid and the even heavier colossal squid are real, elusive deep-sea animals that can reach dozens of feet in length, with enormous eyes and long grasping tentacles. For most of history they were known only from carcasses washed ashore and beak fragments found in the stomachs of sperm whales, exactly the kind of fragmentary evidence that breeds legends.
Caught on camera at last
The giant squid stayed a creature of story until modern deep-sea expeditions finally photographed one alive in its natural habitat in the 2000s and captured video of it in the deep soon after. Seeing the real thing move, all eye and reaching arms in the dark, did nothing to diminish the Kraken; if anything, it confirmed that the ocean really does hide giants.
Is The Kraken real?
The island-sized ship-crusher of legend is not real, but it is the rare cryptid with a genuine animal at its core: giant and colossal squid are confirmed species that grow to enormous size in the deep sea. The myth exaggerates a real, and real strange, creature.
The short version: The Kraken is folklore, a favorite of cryptozoology (the search for hidden or unproven animals), not a scientifically recognized species. The illustrations on this page are our own original art, not photographs. If you go looking, respect private property and wildlife, and let the legends stay legends.
The Kraken: your questions
What is the Kraken?
The Kraken is a legendary giant sea monster from Scandinavian folklore, usually described as an enormous octopus- or squid-like creature that rises from the deep to attack ships.
Is the Kraken real?
The island-sized monster of legend is not real, but it was almost certainly inspired by real giant squid and colossal squid, which are genuine deep-sea animals that grow to enormous size.
What animal inspired the Kraken?
The giant squid and colossal squid. For centuries they were known only from beached carcasses and remains found in sperm whales, which fed tales of a vast tentacled monster. A live giant squid was not photographed in the wild until the 2000s.
Where does the Kraken come from?
The Kraken legend comes from Norse and Scandinavian seafaring folklore describing a monster in the cold northern seas.