krake

plural krakes

1. rareRare form of Kraken.

   We have seen flocks of krakes rising and harassing flocks, a strange thing for this time of year.

   1996, D. J. Conway, The Dream Warrior: A Novel, St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, →ISBN, page 289

   2 more examples

   But the most horrible and hideous monster, that the fables of the Norway fishers have invented, is the krake, sea-horse, or hafgufu, which nobody ever pretends to have seen entire; yet the fishers give out, that when they find a place which is usually 80 or 100 fathoms deep, to be at certain times only 20 or 30, and see also a multitude of fishes allured to the spot, by a delicious exhalation which this creature emits, they conclude that they are over a krake; then they make haste to secure a good draught of fishes, but take care to observe when the soundings grow shallower, for then the monster is rising.

   1821, “The Kraken or Great Sea Serpent”, in Curiosities for the Ingenious: Selected from the Most Authentic Treasures of Nature, Science and Art, Biography, History, and General Literature, London: […] Thomas Boys, […], page 137

   This story is a fit pendant to those of the krake and sea-snake, which likewise rest on the authority of Norwegian fishermen, and which we will mention at another time.[…]For those who are unconvinced by the voluminous but vague proofs of the existence of the sea-serpent, the stories of the krake will have no more weight than those of the mermaid who appeared to Queen Dagmar, and those which the Norse fishers profess to catch, and after giving them milk at their huts, to restore to the same place in the fjord. / The krake, or krabben, the ‘crab’ par excellence, is supposed to be an enormous polypus or medusa infesting the North Sea.[…]He went as far as the polar ice-fields, till they “heard the krake snort in the water,” and there Thor, with a bull’s head for bait, hooked Jormun-gandur, the original sea-serpent, which held the world together in its coils.

   1864, Charles Elton, Norway: The Road and the Fell, London and Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, pages 111 (“Bergen”), 188 (“Up the Dale Fjord”), and 209 (“The Jotun Fjeld”)