Swetish folk lore of a giant squid?

Question

i think that it might be called the craukon or the kraucon. I don't really know. All I know is that the word is Swedish and the giant squid attacked swedish ships.

Answer 1

I think you mean the Kraken. The stories of the Kraken may be the stuff of folklore, however, giant squid and giant octopus are now known to exist.

Recently the news media carried a story with pictures of a couple of giant squid that washed up in Australia. I don't know that they would attack ships, but they are pretty large.

H

Answer 2

Kraken it must be. "Encyclopedia Mythica" says that it was first described by Pontoppidan in his History of Norway, 1752.

Wikipedia:
"Kraken ( "krah’ ken" | IPA chart for English RP: /ˈkɹɑːkɛn/ | GenAm: /ˈkɹɑːkɛn/ | AuE: /ˈkɹaːken/) are legendary sea monsters of gargantuan size, said to have dwelled off the coasts of Norway and Iceland. The sheer size and fearsome appearance attributed to the beasts have made them common ocean-dwelling monsters in various fictional works (see Kraken in popular culture). The legend may actually have originated from sightings of real giant squids that are estimated to grow to 13 metres (43 feet) in length, including the tentacles"

Lord Tennyson:
"Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee About his shadowy sides; above him swell Huge sponges of millennial growth and height; And far away into the sickly light, From many a wondrous grot and secret cell Unnumber'd and enormous polypi Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green. There hath he lain for ages, and will lie Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die."

Answer 3

You should watch Pirates of the Caribbean 2 lol. There is a Scandinavian myth about a horrible sea monster called (and I spell it wrong here) the Kraken (and yes it is pronounced krah-ken) which would pull ships beneath the surface. It probably either originated in Sweden and went to Scandinavia or vice versa. A lot of their myths are alike.

Answer 4

Slightly unrelated but... If you go to bbc.com they may still have footage of the first 'live - caught on camera' giant squid as caught by the Japanese (surprise surprise)!

It was really big...

Answer 5

It appears that this is a norwegian folk lore that might have been passed on the sweden since they are close neighbors.

Kraken ( "krah’ ken" | IPA chart for English RP: /ˈkɹɑːkɛn/ | GenAm: /ˈkɹɑːkɛn/ | AuE: /ˈkɹaːken/) are legendary sea monsters of gargantuan size, said to have dwelled off the coasts of Norway and Iceland. The sheer size and fearsome appearance attributed to the beasts have made them common ocean-dwelling monsters in various fictional works (see Kraken in popular culture). The legend may actually have originated from sightings of real giant squids that are estimated to grow to over 15 metres/50 feet in length, including the tentacles. These creatures live at great depths, but will surface to hunt prey and reportedly have attacked small ships.

Kraken is the definite article form of krake, a Norwegian word designating an unhealthy animal, or something twisted.[1] In modern German, Krake (plural: Kraken) means octopus, but can also refer to the legendary Kraken (Terrell, 1999).


History
Although the name kraken never appears in the Norse sagas, there are similar sea monsters, the hafgufa and lyngbakr, both described in Örvar-Odds saga and the Norwegian text from c. 1250, Konungs skuggsjá.[2] Carl von Linné included kraken as cephalopods with the scientific name Microcosmus in the first edition of his "Systema Naturae" (1735), a taxonomic classification of living organisms, but excluded the animal in later editions. Kraken were also extensively described by Erik Pontoppidan, bishop of Bergen, in his "Natural History of Norway" (Copenhagen, 1752–3).

Early accounts, including Pontoppidan's, describe the kraken as an animal "the size of a floating island" whose real danger for sailors was not the creature itself, but the whirlpool it created after quickly descending back into the ocean. However, Pontoppidan also described the destructive potential of the giant beast: "It is said that if it grabbed the largest warship, it could manage to pull it down to the bottom of the ocean" (Sjögren, 1980). Kraken were always distinct from sea serpents, also common in Scandinavian lore (Jörmungandr for instance). A representative early description is given by the Swede Jacob Wallenberg in his book Min son på galejan ("My son on the galley") from 1781:

… Kraken, also called the Crab-fish, which [according to the pilots of Norway] is not that huge, for heads and tails counted, he is no larger than our Öland is wide [i.e. less than 16 km] ... He stays at the sea floor, constantly surrounded by innumerable small fishes, who serve as his food and are fed by him in return: for his meal, if I remember correctly what E. Pontoppidan writes, lasts no longer than three months, and another three are then needed to digest it. His excrements nurture in the following an army of lesser fish, and for this reason, fishermen plumb after his resting place ... Gradually, Kraken ascends to the surface, and when he is at ten to twelve fathoms, the boats had better move out of his vicinity, as he will shortly thereafter burst up, like a floating island, spurting water from his dreadful nostrils and making ring waves around him, which can reach many miles. Could one doubt that this is the Leviathan of Job?

According to Pontoppidan, Norwegian fishermen often took the risk of trying to fish over kraken, since the catch was so good. If a fisherman had an unusually good catch, they used to say to each other, "You must have fished on Kraken." Pontoppidan also claimed that the monster was sometimes mistaken for an island, and that some maps that included islands that were only sometimes visible were actually indicating kraken. Pontoppidan also proposed that a young specimen of the monster once died and was washed ashore at Alstahaug (Bengt Sjögren, 1980).

Since the late 18th century, kraken have been depicted in a number of ways, primarily as large octopus-like creatures, and it has often been alleged that Pontoppidan's kraken might have been based on sailors' observations of the giant squid. In the earliest descriptions, however, the creatures were more crab- than octopus-like, and generally possessed traits that are associated with large whales rather than with giant squid. Some traits of kraken resemble undersea volcanic activity occurring in the Iceland region, including bubbles of water; sudden, dangerous currents; and appearance of new islets.

In 1802, the French malacologist Pierre Denys de Montfort recognized the existence of two kinds of giant octopus in Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques, an encyclopedic description of mollusks. Montfort claimed that the first type, the kraken octopus, had been described by Norwegian sailors and American whalers, as well as ancient writers such as Pliny the Elder. The much larger second type, the colossal octopus (depicted in the above image), was reported to have attacked a sailing vessel from Saint-Malo, off the coast of Angola.

A poem:
The Kraken by Tennyson
Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.



Also look for reference to this Creature in "Pirates of The Carribean 2".