The Kraken and the Norwegian deep

The kraken of Norse sailors, a beast so vast it was mistaken for an island and could drag a ship under, is one of the oldest sea legends in Europe, written down by Bishop Pontoppidan in 1752. It has a real animal behind it: the giant squid, up to thirteen metres long, which was only photographed alive in 2004 and filmed in the deep in 2012. Norwegian waters also hold the Moskstraumen, the real maelstrom off Lofoten that Poe and Verne wrote about.