But as soon as its stomach and mouth is full, then it locks together its jaws and has the fish all caught and enclosed, that before greedily came there looking for food.
And nor the fish avoid running together there in their great numbers. It is said to be the nature of these fish that when one shall desire to eat, then it stretches up its neck with a great belching, and following this belching comes forth much food, so that all kinds of fish that are near to hand will come to present location, then will gather together, both small and large, believing they shall obtain their food and good eating but this great fish lets its mouth stand open the while, and the gap is no less wide than that of a great sound or bight. Then too, neither would it do for other fish if the hafgufa were of such a number as other whales, on account of their vastness, and how much subsistence that they need. Neither have I heard that one had been caught or found dead and it seems to me as though there must be no more than two in the oceans, and I deem that each is unable to reproduce itself, for I believe that they are always the same ones. Nor can I conclusively speak about its length in ells, because the times he has shown before men, he has appeared more like land than like a fish. Most often in our tongue we call it hafgufa ("kraken" in e.g. There are only a very few who can speak upon it clearly, because it is seldom near land nor appears where it may be seen by fishermen, and I suppose there are not many of this sort of fish in the sea. There is a fish that is still unmentioned, which it is scarcely advisable to speak about on account of its size, because it will seem to most people incredible. The narrator proposed there must be only two in existence, stemming from the observation that the beasts have always been sighted in the same parts of the Greenland Sea, and that each seemed incapable of reproduction, as there was no increase in their numbers. 1250) described in detail the physical characteristics and feeding behavior of these beasts. An illustration from the original 1870 edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules VerneĪfter returning from Greenland, the anonymous author of the Old Norwegian natural history work Konungs skuggsjá ( c.