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influencing the movers and shakers in high
places, and terrorising the plebs.
Still one of the last great mysteries of the
sea, the giant squid has not yet been seen alive. A creature of myth
and wonder, an early specimen was described as a merman or sea monk
in 16th century Denmark.
In about 1550 a curious sea-creature, reminiscent
of a monk and very large (2.5 m long), was caught in Danish waters
and taken to the King. At that time Denmark had recently undergone
the Reformation and the establishment of the Protestant church.
Monks were not very popular, so the King ordered that the abominable
creature be buried, lest it provide a fertile subject for offensive
talk! But first the King had the sea monk illustrated and sent to
Conrad Gesner in France, for inclusion in his big work on fishes,
Libri de piscibus marinis, published in 1554.
Another account of the sea monk reports that
the drawing was sent to the Emperor Charles V in Spain. As a result
King Christian was included in the 1550 alliance between the Emperor
and the Scots. The nobleman who handed over the illustration to
the Emperor gave a similar one to the illustrious Queen Margreta
of Navarre, who gave the figure to Rondelet. The sea monster was
also reported and illustrated in France (in 1553) by Belon, who
apparently had independent sources. In Zürich (in 1558), Gesner
received a drawing and description very similar to those of Rondelet.
Gesner also received another drawing of the monster from an independent
source. This report said that the King had sent the drawing to the
Duke of Mecklenburg, from whom a drawing reached the Council in
Lüneburg. So the Danish Sea Monk was known all over Europe.
The sea monk was described as having a human
head, shaven like that of a monk. Its clothes were made of scales,
like a monk's cloak. It had two long fins instead of arms and the
lower part ended in a broad tail.
In a popular lecture to the Danish Natural History
Society in 1854, the eminent biologist Japetus Steenstrup showed
that the sea monk was actually a squid. Furthermore, the large size
of the sea monk indicates that it must have been a giant squid -
Architeuthis.
In 1980 this popular talk of Steenstrup's was
translated and published in English by J. Knudsen of the Zoological
Museum, Copenhagen, and M.A. Roeleveld of the South African Museum.
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