Drawings of octopus
The authour also disinguished this from a sea-serpent. The book describes the sciu-crak as a massive "fish" which was many-horned or many-armed. The first description of the krake as " sciu-crak" was given by Italian writer Negri in Viaggio settentrionale (Padua, 1700), a travelogue about Scandinavia. The form krabbe has also suggests an etymological root cognate with the German verb krabben 'to crawl". Some of the synonyms of krake given by Erik Pontoppidan were, in Danish: søe-krake, kraxe, horv, krabbe, søe-horv, anker-trold. Shetlandic krekin for "whale", a taboo word, is listed as etymologically related. He also explained the synonym of krake, namely horv was an alternate form of harv ' harrow' and conjectured that this name was suggested by the inkfish's action of seeming to plow the sea. However, Finnur Jónsson remarked that the krake also signified a grapnel ( dregg) or anchor, which readily conjured up the image of a cephalopod. Swedish krake for "sea monster" is also traced to krake meaning "pole". And krake in the sense of "sea monster" or " octopus" may share the same etymology. Īccording to a Norwegian dictionary, krake, in the sense of "malformed or crooked tree" originates from Old Norse kraki, meaning "pole, stake". The English word "kraken" (in the sense of sea monster) derives from Norwegian kraken or krakjen which are the definite forms, of krake. The claim that Linnaeus printed the vernacular name "kraken" in the margin of a later edition of Systema Naturae fails to be confirmed, and another claim that he published on the cephalapod species Sepia microcosmus has been pointed out to be an utter mistake, though these continue to repeated as fact by modern-day writers. Linnaues had published on the Microcosmus genus (a shield or canopy-like colony of various constituents), and counted several organisms under it, including Bartholin's description of the cetus type hafgufa, and Paullini's monstrous marinum, which are called "krakens" in works by other authors.
If Linnaeus wrote on the kraken, he only did so indirectly. The legend may have indeed originated from sightings of giant squid, which may grow to 13–15 meters (40–50 feet) in length. The great man-killing octopus entered French fiction when novelist Victor Hugo (1866) introduced the pieuvre octopus of Guernsey lore, which he identified with the kraken of legend, and this led to Jules Verne's depiction of the kraken, which he did not really distinguish between squid or octopus. The bishop made an identification of the kraken as an octopus (polypus) of tremendous size, and wrote that it had a reputation of pulling down ships, but the French malacologist Denys-Montfort of the 19th century is better known for these. Egede (1741) described the kraken in detail and equated it with the hafgufa of medieval lore, but first description is often credited the Norwegian bishop Pontoppidan (1753). Kraken, the stuff of sailors' superstitions and mythos, was first described in the modern age at the turn of 18th century travelogue by Francesco Negri, followed by Dano-Norwegian natural history writings. The kraken ( / ˈ k r ɑː k ən/) is a legendary sea monster of enormous size said to appear off the coasts of Norway. (left) a "colossal octopus" that attacked a ship.