2 
SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 
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 be- 
queath to his successors undeprived of any of their fascina- 
tion. According to him, the Kraken was not so polite to 
the laity as to the Bishop, for when some fishermen lighted 
a fire on its back, it sank beneath their feet, and over- 
whelmed 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,' Romae, 
1555. An English translation of this book was published by 
J. Streater, in 1658. It does not contain the illustrations. 
