Kraken

Kraken, a sea-monster said to frequent the Scandinavian seas, where the fishermen often mistook it for an island (cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 200-208). The first description we find was by Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, in Norway (d. 1764). He made it 1J miles in circumference; but, like the great sea-serpent, it is not much believed in by scientific men. From his description of the creature seizing and dragging down ships with its enormous arms, the original of the myth would seem to be a gigantic cuttle-fish.