Sea monsters exemplify our fears about the vast ocean, our love of tall tales, and our tendency to personify. The Greeks left us awesome stories about sea monsters, but many cultures have expressed their imaginings about the ocean in stories that have survived centuries to live today.

Sinbad’s Island

On Sinbad’s first voyage, his ship came to a beautiful island, where he and several companions disembarked. Some made fires to heat water for washing, some cooked meals, and Sinbad was one who explored the island. Alas, it began to move! It was actually the back of a giant fish, which had stopped in the midst of the sea so long that tress and plants had grown up upon it. The fires awakened it, and it began to swim back toward the cool depths. Sinbad survived his ordeal by God’s will, while many perished.

The Aspidochelone

A related creature was the Greek Aspidochelone, a monster resembling a turtle that deliberately pretended to be an island and enticed unwary seamen to tie up to it and come ashore to rest on its back. Then it would drag down their ship by its mooring lines and devour all hands. In Old English, a poem tells of the snare of the similar Fastitocalon, which deceives seafarers as Satan does, to their destruction.

Sea Serpents

Sailors also mistook the back of huge Jormungandr, which curved in and out of the water as it circled the earth, for a chain of islands. Another Norse sea serpent was said to live in a cave outside Bergen, and to devour livestock.

People from many cultures have sighted sea serpents in every ocean. Giant waterhorses are reported as well, along with enormous turtles, octopi, and saurians.

The Kraken

The Kraken is particularly Norse, inhabiting the seas off Scandinavia, and sometimes attacking shipping. It resembles a giant squid or octopus, and sleeps on the bottom of the ocean. Awakened, it is inspired to vengeance. The Richard Adams book The Girl in a Swing makes foreboding mention of the Kraken.

Leviathan

Leviathan may be only an old name for a whale. On the other hand, he may be one of the seven princes of Hell. Thomas Hobbes, who thought the strongest government was the best government, used this creature as a metaphor for the state in his political treatise The Leviathan.

Scylla

Scylla was a sea monster who had six heads with three rows of teeth in each of them. Daughter of Lamia and Triton by some reports, she lurked in a narrow strait and seized a tribute of six sailors from each ship that passed her lair. Homer had Circe repeat what she knew as she sent Odysseus to sail between Scylla and Charybdis.

Charybdis

Charybdis was the sea monster on the other side of the narrow strait from Scylla. Three times a day, she sucked huge volumes of seawater into a huge bladder, and then expelled it again, causing great whirlpools that dragged sailing ships down to the bottom.

Tiamat

Tiamat was a Babylonian goddess who, among her other attributes, embodied all the ungovernable chaos of the sea. She may or may not have taken the form of a dragon or sea serpent, but though her mythology makes her the mother of sea dragons, it is quite a simplification to call this mother goddess a sea monster.

Selma and Nessie

Selma and Nessie are water monsters that also serve as roadside attractions. Each inhabits a lake, Selma in Seljord, Norway and Nessie in Loch Ness. Each has fascinated a legion of visitors.

Half-glimpsed whales probably account for many of the monsters of the open ocean. Creativity may account for others, but it is likely that misunderstanding and exaggeration explain many of the imagined dangers of the ancient seas.