The legendary sea monster of Norse mythology, said to be large enough to swallow ships whole. The discovery of giant squid confirmed part of the legend, but the deep ocean still holds mysteries beyond our reach.
The North Atlantic. Across an endless expanse of grey waves, medieval sailors feared one name above all others.
The Kraken.
It was as large as an island. When it surfaced, sailors initially mistook it for land. But the moment the "island" began to move, all was lost. Colossal tentacles erupted from the sea, seized the ship, snapped its masts like twigs, and dragged crew and vessel alike into the abyss.
Legend? Or a truth the deep ocean has been concealing for centuries?
The earliest known record of the Kraken dates to 13th-century Norway. The Old Norse text Konungs skuggsja (The King's Mirror), written around 1250, describes an enormous sea creature dwelling off the Norwegian coast.
But the most detailed account came from Erik Pontoppidan, an 18th-century Danish-Norwegian bishop and naturalist. In his 1752 work The Natural History of Norway, he catalogued the Kraken as "the largest sea monster in the world." According to Pontoppidan, the creature's body measured roughly 2.4 kilometers across. When it submerged, the resulting whirlpool was powerful enough to drag nearby ships under.
Crucially, Pontoppidan was no mere collector of folklore. He was a systematic naturalist who gathered and cross-referenced fishermen's testimonies. His conclusion was unequivocal: the Kraken was real.
For centuries, the Kraken was dismissed as pure mythology. Then, in the latter half of the 19th century, science finally caught a glimpse.
In 1853, Danish zoologist Japetus Steenstrup studied the remains of a massive squid washed ashore and formally classified it as Architeuthis dux—the giant squid. Specimens reached up to 13 meters in length.
In 1878, fishermen off Newfoundland captured a giant squid measuring 16.5 meters including tentacles—the largest invertebrate recorded at the time.
Then in 2004, a research team from Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science captured the first-ever photographs of a living giant squid in its natural habitat. Nine hundred meters below the surface off the Ogasawara Islands. In the absolute darkness, enormous tentacles coiled and writhed. It was, unmistakably, the Kraken made real.
The discovery of the giant squid gave scientific validation to the Kraken legend. But the story does not end there.
An even larger species has been confirmed: the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), reaching up to 14 meters, armed with tentacles fitted with rotating hooks. This deep-dwelling predator of the Southern Ocean is known for leaving countless sucker scars on the bodies of sperm whales.
More provocatively, some sucker scars found on sperm whales are larger than any known squid could produce. Circular marks exceeding 18 centimeters in diameter. If the creature responsible for these scars exists, calculations suggest it would measure well over 20 meters in length.
Humanity has explored less than five percent of the world's oceans. What dwells in the darkness at 6,000 meters, we largely do not know. The legend of the Kraken is far from over.
