Today, we're bringing you the kraken, that wonderful creature that has been around for centuries in both myth and legend and, to an extent, in reality.
Our krakens are not the stuff of sailors' nightmares but the fun of a child's imagination as they go sailing for treasure. Who hasn't loved the idea of buried treasure, marveled at a ship built inside a bottle or shivered at the thought of nameless sea monsters? So many exciting stories built around these – just insert imagination here!
These whimsical designs are perfect, not only for quilts, buts also book bags, big squishy cushions, covers for electronics or an impromptu pirate costume!
For those of you who are wondering... what is a Kraken..... it is one of the largest monsters ever imagined by mankind and, in Nordic folklore, was said to haunt the seas from Norway through Iceland and all the way to Greenland. First mentioned in an account written in 1180 by King Sverre of Norway, the legend of the kraken started with sightings of a real animal, the giant squid. For the ancient sailors, the sea was treacherous and dangerous, hiding a horde of monsters in its inconceivable depths. Any encounter with an unknown animal soon gathered a mythological edge from sailors’ stories. It was said that the kraken could attack vessels with its arms or swim in circles around ships to create a fierce maelstrom to drag the vessel down. And, of course, the kraken could devour a ship's entire crew at once! The legend grew through the centuries and the kraken could still be found in Europe’s first modern scientific surveys of the natural world in the 18th century. Even Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern biological classification, included the kraken among the cephalopod mollusks in the first edition of his groundbreaking Systema Naturae (1735).
In 1853, when a giant cephalopod was found stranded on a Danish beach, Norwegian naturalist Japetus Steenstrup recovered the animal’s beak and used it to scientifically describe the giant squid, Architeuthis dux. And so what had become legend officially entered the annals of science, returning our image of the kraken to the animal that originated the myths.
But enough scary stories!
