Kraken

Origin and myth

The kraken belongs to the cold seas off Norway and Iceland. The usual starting point is the Old Norwegian Konungs skuggsjá, the King's Mirror (mid-13th century), which describes the hafgufa ("sea-reek"), the largest monster of the Greenland Sea, a huge fish that "looked more like an island than a living thing". It belches up a flood of food to draw fish in and then shuts its jaws on them, and the author reasons there must be only two in the world, since they are rarely seen and apparently cannot breed. Some scholars think the passage is a garbled account of a whale. In the Icelandic Örvar-Odds saga the hero's crew sail between two "rocks" that turn out to be a monster's nostril and jaw. Later writers folded the hafgufa into the kraken; the word itself is Norwegian, the definite form of krake, probably from Old Norse kraki, "a crooked thing".

The kraken became famous through the Danish-Norwegian bishop Erik Pontoppidan, whose Natural History of Norway (1752-53) described it with a naturalist's seriousness: a creature that could be mistaken for a cluster of small islands, whose arms could pull the largest warship to the bottom, and whose sinking created a whirlpool he compared to the Maelstrom. Fishermen, he said, read unusually shallow soundings over rich fishing grounds as the kraken's back. He was unsure what it was - perhaps a giant crab, perhaps a polyp or a starfish. Linnaeus's genus Microcosmus of 1735 drew on similar reports, though what he meant by it is disputed. The mythic beast merged with the real giant squid, described scientifically as Architeuthis by Japetus Steenstrup in 1857, and Tennyson's poem The Kraken (1830) gave it the image of a sleeper in the abyss waking only at the end of the world.

Appearance

Pontoppidan's kraken was an island-like mass with arms rising like masts; the modern kraken is an enormous cephalopod. For sculpting, base it on a giant squid or octopus scaled up to 30–60 m across: a bulbous mantle, huge lidless eyes, a beak at the centre of the arms, and eight or ten tentacles lined with suckers and, on the club ends, hooks. Skin is mottled and rubbery, with a texture of papillae and scar tissue from old battles with whales.

Colours run from deep red and purple through mottled grey-green to a pale belly. Barnacles, weed and the wreckage of ships caught in the suckers add scale. The classic composition is not the whole animal but the part that breaks the surface: two or three tentacles rising around a ship, with the eye and the tip of the mantle in the water below.

In modern fantasy

The kraken is the default sea monster of modern fantasy: it wrecks ships in Pirates of the Caribbean, Clash of the Titans, Sea of Thieves and dozens of naval strategy and survival games, and it is a top-tier legendary monster in Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. "Release the kraken" has become a catchphrase. Tabletop players usually meet it as a set-piece boss whose tentacles are separate combatants - a useful hint for miniature design.

3D printing notes

A kraken is really a tentacle problem. At 28–32 mm scale the best solution is a set of individual tentacles on 25–40 mm bases rising from water effects, plus an optional head-and-eye section; each tentacle prints in resin at 30–45° with supports on the underside and the suckers facing up. At 75 mm the same modular approach works in FDM if the tentacles are printed vertically in two halves and glued; suckers are shallow enough to print without supports.

A 150 mm or larger centrepiece with a ship is a serious project: print the mantle hollow in resin or FDM with 3 mm walls, print each tentacle in sections with 4–5 mm pegs, and run a wire through the curled tips. Model the tentacles with contact points on the hull so the ship carries some of the load. Articulated print-in-place tentacles are possible using segmented chain links and make a very satisfying desk toy.

Painting and display

A wet, deep-sea look comes from a dark red-purple base, a black-blue wash in the sucker rings and creases, and a pale pink dry-brush on the ridges. Suckers get an off-white ring with a dark centre. Finish with gloss varnish so the surface looks slick. A pale, bioluminescent kraken in blue-green with glowing spots is a striking alternative and pairs beautifully with a cool LED under a clear resin water effect.

Base ideas: a foundering longship, a whirlpool built from clear resin poured in a spiral, or a rocky shore with wreckage. Ultraviolet-reactive paint on the eye makes it glow under a UV LED.

Related creatures

The kraken's Norse neighbour is Jormungandr, the world serpent that circles the earth beneath the waves. The biblical Leviathan is its Middle Eastern counterpart, the many-headed Hydra shares its writhing, multi-limbed silhouette, and the Mermaid belongs to the same sailors' folklore.

Sources

• Wikipedia, Kraken, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken
• Wikipedia, Hafgufa, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafgufa

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