What does it mean to dream about kraken?
A kraken in a dream often pictures a vast threat rising from the depths, an overwhelming fear or force from below that dwarfs anything on the surface.
Four ways to read it
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream.
Freud
Freud would read the monster from the deep as an urge surfacing from the unconscious, vast and long submerged. The sea is the mind's lower reaches, and what rises has been held down. Ask what feeling, long sunk, is breaking the surface.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung would see the kraken as a content of the deep unconscious, immense and not yet known, rising into view. Such figures can overwhelm the ego when they emerge unbidden. The dream may point to something large in you that wants acknowledging.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Threat-simulation theory suggests the dreaming brain stages a huge danger from below, matching a fear that feels both vast and hidden. It can follow dread that you cannot quite see the bottom of. Notice whether the creature surfaced fully or only loomed.
Threat-simulation theory (our summary).Mythological
In Norse and later sea lore the kraken is a colossal beast that drags ships under, the terror of unknown waters. It embodies the dread of the deep and what it may hold. The image tends to weigh a fear whose true size you cannot see.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Brewer; Frazer).