Eric Pontoppidan, the younger, Bishop of Bergen, and member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Copenhagen, is generally, but unjustly, regarded as the inventor of the semi-fabulous Kraken, and is constantly misquoted by authors who have never read his work,[1] and who, one after another, have copied from their predecessors erroneous statements concerning him. More than half a century before him, Christian Francis Paullinus,[2] a physician and naturalist of 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. [1] 'Natural History of Norway.' A.D. 1751. [2] Born 1643; died 1712. And a hundred and fifty years before Bartholinus and Paullinus wrote, Olaus Magnus,[3] 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 fishermen lighted a fire on its back, it sank beneath their feet, and overwhelmed them in the waters. [3] 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.