Concerning Certain Sea Monsters: Pontoppidan

Celebrating the month of Octo-ber.

In 1755, Reverend Erik Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen in Norway, and Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Copenhagen published The Natural History of Norway (Versuch einer natürlichen Geschichte Norwegens). In addition to offering a rich and complex description of Norwegian nature, history, landscape, flora and fauna, this two-volume work is significant for being the first scientific description of sea monsters garnered from eye-witness testimony. Pontoppidan argued for the existence of sea serpents, krakens, and mermaids using numerous sighting reports from credible observers to build his case for the existence of these creatures.

Chapter VIII of the second volume contains perhaps the most detailed description of the mythological kraken, a Norwegian word literally meaning "an unhealthy animal."

According to cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans, there were only nine dated and documented sightings of sea serpents before the publication of The Natural History of Norway. But from 1751 to 1800, there were 23; and from 1801 to 1850, there were 166. In their book Abominable Science! : Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids (2012), Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero credit this massive increase in sea serpent sightings to the publication of Pontoppidan's work and its translation into English. They argue that it provided a cultural template with which people could interpret unusual things they saw in the sea.

For this meetup we will read Volume 2, Chapter VIII: "Concerning certain Sea-monsters, or strange and uncommon sea-animals."

Concerning Certain Sea Monsters:

• Chapter VIII (modernized) ∼38pp [NOTE: page numbers refer to the original text; Google translation inserted after Latin, Greek and French text]
• Chapter VIII (original text)

Supplemental:

• Frankenstein's squid (galvanism)

Extracts:

• "There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop Pontoppidan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid. The manner in which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and sinking, with some other particulars he narrates, in all this the two correspond. But much abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he assigns it." (M-D, 59)
• "To be an immortal being in China is no more distinction than to be a snow-flake in a snow-squall. What are a score or two of missionaries to such a people? A pinch of snuff to the kraken." (Confidence Man, 7)
• "Dismasted and adrift, / Longtime a thing forsaken; / Overwashed by every wave / Like the slumbering kraken;" ("The Æolian Harp")
• "The sea-serpent is not a fable; and in the sea, that snake is but a garden worm. There are more wonders than the wonders rejected, and more sights unrevealed than you or I ever ever dreamt of." (Mardi 1.13)

This meetup is part in a series on Muses and Monsters.