I don’t know how many of you have heard of the Carta Marina: I hadn’t and was agog after reading about it. It is a fascinating geological map showing the mythical monsters in the oceans and where they are to be found.
Completed by Olaus Magnus in Italy in the mid sixteenth century, it attempts to outline all the monsters known at the time in the Nordic regions from various accounts.
In the book, The Underworld – Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean – By Susan Casey, she writes about the Carta Marina:
“On land the action is orderly: tiny figures are farming, hunting, skiing, playing the violin, By contrast, the ocean is in chaos, awash in dangers and tragedies, livid with waves and currents flowing, swirling, pooling, seething. Aid the tumult, twenty-five monsters make their appearance.”
- Susan Casey – The Underworld – Journeys to the Depths f the Ocean
I may have mentioned several times in these archives that the daughter is a mermaid born to human parents. Which is to say the endless fascination with the oceans, and natant joys of reveling in the waters are things we all enjoy.
After reading about the Carta Marina, I went looking for the Kraken picture. When you browse through the daughter’s artwork, there are quite a few aquatic themed paintings. This one – it is Kraken – the mythical creature that is spoken of with awe among the nautical elite. I must admit I am endlessly fascinated with octopii, squid and I suppose the kraken as well.
Dictionary.com summarizes this perfectly: https://www.dictionary.com/e/squid-vs-octopus/
In summary, if you see a sea creature with eight sucker-covered arms and a round shape, that’s an octopus. But if it’s got a long, thin, triangular shape and 10 limbs—eight arms and two tentacles—it’s a squid. If you see it swallowing a ship, it’s a kraken.
Sea-faring must have been a difficult vocation as most vocations in humankinds’ past seems to have been, but it also provided the richest tales of adventure and mystique to those whose fortunes or destinies never allowed them to leave the small square footage they’d been born and raised in.
Even now, as we set out sights on interplanetary travels, I find the deep allure of the deeps as fascinating as ever. Would we see into the eyes of a greenland shark that is rumoured to live on for 350 years or be pulled into the clutches of the mythical Kraken? Or be dumbfounded in the noises of the monster that rises out of the depths of the ocean in the FogHorn – By Ray BradBury (I believe the book is out of print – but I can never truly forget that feeling of deep awe and fear as the monster rears towards the lighthouse thinking it’s being called by a mate. I felt a strange sense of loneliness for the last monster standing the night I read it as a teenager)
As Sylvia Earle says, “Looking into the eyes of a wild dolphin – who is looking into mine-inspires me to learn everything I can about them and do everything I can to take care of them…You can’t care if you don’t know.”
I looked at the picture, and remembered the poem by Lord Tennyson
Below the thunders of the upper deep
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, invaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson
References:
- Life in the Ocean – the Story of Oceanographer Sylvia Earle – by Claira A Nivola
- The Underworld – Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean – By Susan Casey
- The Carta Marina – The map of monsters 16th Century – By Magnus
- The FogHorn – by Ray Bradbury
Nourish-n-Cherish 