326 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



Eisenach, who evinced in his writings an admiration of 

 the marvellous rather than of the useful, had described 

 as resembling Gesner's ' Heracleoticon,' a monstrous animal 

 which occasionally rose from the sea on the coasts of 

 Lapland and Finmark, and which was of such enormous 

 dimensions, that a regiment of soldiers could conveniently 

 manoeuvre on its back. About the same date, but a little 

 earlier, Bartholinus, a learned Dane, told how, on a certain 

 occasion, the Bishop of Midaros found the Kraken quietly 

 reposing on the shore, and mistaking the enormous creature 

 for a huge rock, erected an altar upon it and performed 

 mass. The Kraken respectfully waited till the ceremony 

 was concluded, and the reverend prelate safe on shore, and 

 then sank beneath the waves. 



And a hundred and fifty years before Bartholinus and 

 Paullinus wrote, Olaus Magnus,* Archbishop of Upsala, in 

 Sweden, had related many wondrous narratives of sea- 

 monsters, tales which had gathered and accumulated 

 marvels as they had been passed on from generation to 

 generation in oral history, and which he took care to 

 bequeath to his successors undeprived of any of their 

 fascination. According to him, the Kraken was not so 

 polite to the laity as to the Bishop, for when some fisher- 

 men lighted a fire on its back, it sank beneath their feet, 

 and overwhelmed them in the waters. 



Pontoppidan was not a fabricator of falsehoods ; but, in 



* Olaus Magnus has sometimes been mistaken for his brother and 

 predecessor in the archiepiscopal see, Johan Magnus, author of a 

 book entitled Gothorum, Suevorumque Historia. Olaus was the last 

 Roman Catholic archbishop of the Swedish church, and when the 

 Reformation, supported by Gustavus Vasa, gained the ascendancy in 

 Sweden, he remained true to his faith, and retired to Rome, where he 

 wrote his work Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, Roma, 1555. 

 An English translation of this book was published by J. Streater, in 

 1658. It does not contain the illustrations. 



