We went in search of the kraken today, a lap of Kettla Ness, the southern tip of the island of Burra. The weather was a tad breezy, and it was not hard to imagine this Atlantic edge in the early 1800s.
It was off the coast of Burra that a crew of fishermen spotted what they first took for the vast hull of a derelict ship. As they drew closer, timber became flesh: an immense, living back. A kraken.1Kingshill, Sophia, and Jennifer Westwood. The Fabled Coast: Legends & Traditions from Around the Shores of Britain & Ireland. Arrow Books, 2014. *
This 1822 account, recorded by one Dr. Samuel Hibbert, was no tall tale. It was sworn by affidavit. Hibbert noted that these beasts were said to possess tentacles reaching as high as a ship’s masts. In Shetland folklore, the kraken was not merely a curious animal. Its presence was wound into the very demonology of the northern seas.
Legend has it the creature was a rather accomplished trickster, fond of passing itself off as a tree-covered island to tempt weary sailors ashore before pulling them into the deep. Even its biology was unsporting: the kraken allegedly gave off a scent and clouded the water with turbid waste to draw in schools of fish, turning its own evacuation into a fatal trap. Whether born from giant squid or vast clouds of plankton, the Burra kraken remains a not entirely comfortable reminder that in these waters, the line between myth and monster is rather thin indeed.
We did not see a kraken. Several seals, yes. Or were they mermaids? The kraken, it seems, kept to the deep.
- 1Kingshill, Sophia, and Jennifer Westwood. The Fabled Coast: Legends & Traditions from Around the Shores of Britain & Ireland. Arrow Books, 2014. *
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